Malinowski: odyssey of an anthropologist, 1884-1920

Abstract

Volume I of Michael Young's biography of Malinowski is a big book: hefty; the fruit of long labour; and about one of anthropology's giants. For many people who have followed in Malinowski's professional footsteps, his life has a visceral fascination, and the attention that Young's book has received since publication last year could be explained partly on these grounds. But Malinowski speaks to a wider audience. It stands as a biography among biographies (shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and represents a feat of research ? on a figure who, as Young notes (p. xx), both personified historical trends, and left complicated legacies, not least for researchers engaged with the Pacific. The journal has hosted this forum in recognition of the different directions from which Young's book can be read: and our participants offer distinctive, and in some respects conflicting readings. Howard Morphy delivers a slightly edited version of a talk he gave at the Canberra launch of Malinowski, and treats the book 'not so much as the biography of an anthropologist as an anthropological biography'. Fellow anthropologist, Linus digim'Rina is of all the members of this panel the most familiar with the site of Malinowski's pivotal fieldwork, oral traditions about him, the biography's author, and indeed, its development. He shares a unique perspective. Peter Hempenstall, both a biographer and Pacific historian, reflects on the relationship of biography to historiography; the biographer as historian; and Malinowski's a-historicism. Henrika Kuklick, whose research on the history of social science has tackled themes central to Young's project, extends the consideration of scholarly method. Indeed, the sharpest differences and some of the most intriguing issues to emerge from this forum relate less to the interpretation of Malinowski the man than they do to the biographical task. Michael Young most generously accepted the invitation to respond, and has the last say.

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