Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922)

“Perhaps as we read the account of these remote customs there may emerge a feeling of solidarity with the endeavours and ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man’s mentality will be revealed to us, and brought near, along some lines which we never have followed before. Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own.” 

Malinowski hopes that the reader will gain understanding of the mentality through which the Kula makes sense. He wishes us to get inside the minds of the natives and see for ourselves their humanity. In doing so, we will come to a better understanding of our own natures, and cultures, as well.

“The difference is that, in our society, every institution has its intelligent members, its historians, and its archives and documents, whereas in a native society there are none of these.” 

According to Malinowski, native cultures lack the sense of history that Western society does, and they lack intellectuals who formulate theory, record history, and are self-reflexive about their culture. In researching institutions and cultural practices, the ethnographer cannot ask the natives broad questions on sociological matters and must instead collect objective data, eventually gathering enough to form his own hypotheses and inferences.

“These are the dwellings of the inhabitants, who are of a distinctly lower culture than the Dobuans, take no part in the Kula, and in olden days were the cowed and unhappy victims of their neighbours.” 

Malinowski’s use of the word “lower” implies a hierarchy of cultures, as was commonly believed at the time.

“If we remain under the delusion that the native is a happy-go-lucky, lazy child of nature, who shuns as far as possible all labour and effort, waiting till the ripe fruits, so bountifully supplied by generous tropical Nature, fall into his mouth, we shall not be able to understand in the least his aims and motives in carrying out the Kula or any other enterprise.” 

Malinowski is referencing a commonly held myth that native peoples are lazy and avoid work. Elsewhere, he describes this as the myth of the “primitive economic man.” Much of the monograph is spent trying to refute this claim by showing the natives’ various motivations for their actions, often to achieve social status, such as in the case gardening and the Kula.

“The Kula is thus an extremely big and complex institution, both in its geographical extent, and in the manifoldness of its component pursuits. It welds together a considerable number of tribes, and it embraces a vast complex of activities, inter-connected, and playing into one another, so as to form one organic whole.” 

Malinowski uses explicitly functionalist language to discuss the Kula as an “organic whole” with each participant, myth, and rite contributing to its overall functioning.

“The psychological and sociological forces at work are the same, it is really the same mental attitude which makes us value our heirlooms, and makes the natives in New Guinea value their vaygu’a.” 

Malinowski has likened the vaygu’a to crown jewels or other delicate heirlooms that are rarely worn, if at all. He makes this point both to explain their purpose and to try to convey the reverence and symbolic power of the vaygu’a for the natives.

“Ownership has naturally in every type of native society, a different specific meaning, as in each type, custom and tradition attach a different set of functions, rites, and privileges to the word.” 

Malinowski cautions against importing ideas from one culture to another without fully appreciating the context in which the concept occurs. In Western society there is a complex, specific legal and economic system that backs up our definition of ownership. But in the Trobriand Islands, this context is entirely different.

“The building of the sea-going canoe (masawa) is inextricably bound up with the general proceedings of the Kula.” 

Because one of the main purposes of a large canoe is to carry out the Kula, the magic and ritual necessary to build a canoe makes heavy reference to the Kula. As Malinowski explains in Chapter 17, there are two types of magic: independent and systematic. Canoe construction and its associated magic falls cleanly into the systematic category—it must be performed in sequence and only under certain circumstances.

“A new sailing craft is not only another utility created; it is more: it is a new entity sprung into being, something with which the future destinies of the sailors will be bound up, and on which they will depend.” 

Canoes are held in reference as both works of human craftsmanship and magical power. In particular, the close association of canoes with magic, myth, and the Kula itself gives the canoe special symbolic significance. By pointing out that the canoe serves more than a utilitarian purpose, Malinowski hints that the Trobrianders view their canoes in a more meaningful and symbolic manner than would the so-called primitive economic man.

“But alas, for one who could look below the surface and read the various symptoms of decay, deep changes would be discernible from what must have been the original conditions of such a native gathering.” 

Malinowski is referencing the interference of Europeans in recent decades, which has weakened the power of local chiefs and headmen in ways that are deep but not immediately obvious to an outsider. In addition, by referring to an “original” state of a native gathering, he assumes that the Trobrianders have not undergone cultural change until European interference. This implies a belief in their “cultural purity” prior to this interference.

“First of all, it is important to realise that a Kiriwinian is capable of working well, efficiently and in a continuous manner.” 

As happens many times throughout the book, Malinowski quickly and clearly dispels a myth that we must assume is commonly held—that of the “lazy and indolent native.” This alludes to the myth of the primitive economic man, who only works to fulfill his own needs and no harder. However, Malinowski then notes that he must be motivated by culturally defined ambitions or sense of duty. “Gain,” or money, is not sufficiently culturally grounded to work as a motivator.

“The main social force governing all tribal life could be described as the inertia of custom, the love of uniformity of behavior.” 

For Malinowski, the general moral rule governing right and wrong is adherence to social norms. To be good is to be normal and do as others do. This is especially true for Trobriand society, which values the past more than the present and advocates looking to the past, especially the mythic past, for moral guidance.

“Again, they have no idea of what could be called the evolution of the world or the evolution of society; that is, they do not look back towards a series of successive changes, which happened in nature or in humanity, as we do.”

According to Malinowski, the natives do not conceive of time as a continuous flow, as Western cultures do, nor of history as a flow of events. Rather, time exists as “now” and “in my father’s time,” with no differentiation between, for example, 100 and 200 years ago. They have no conception of the evolution of society over time, which is evident in myths where technologies like canoes and fishing are practiced in a manner that is identical to today.

“A stone hurled by one of the heroes into the sea after an escaping canoe; a sea passage broken between two islands by a magical canoe; here two people turned into rock; there a petrified waga—all this makes the landscape represent a continuous story or else the culminating dramatic incident of a familiar legend.” 

In the landscape natives can see “evidence” of the myths that give meaning to their society and cultural practices. Seeing these sites, and conducting rituals and rites there, concentrates the power of the myths.

“Magic, and the powers conferred by it, are really the link between mythical tradition and the present day. Myth has crystallised into magical formulae, and magic in its turn bears testimony to the authenticity of myth.” 

In the mythical past people knew stronger magic, which has since been lost. Current magical spells and rites are a weaker form of this magic. For example, in the myth of the flying canoe, the same magic that allowed the canoe to fly is what gives the Trobrianders’ canoes speed and lightness. Often, myth serves as the “backbone” for an institution and its system of magic, and practicing that magic reinforces the truth of the myth.

“Myth possesses the normative power of fixing custom, of sanctioning modes of behaviour, of giving dignity and importance to an institution. The Kula receives from these ancient stories its stamp of extreme importance and value.” 

Myths justify existing customs and institutions, notably in the case of the Kula. The many myths that Malinowski details throughout the monograph help give the Kula its importance in the eyes of the natives. This is a functionalist explanation for the role of myths. The function of myth is essentially to act as a glue that keeps existing practices in place.

“The net result will be the acquisition of a few dirty, greasy, and insignificant looking native trinkets, each of them a string of flat, partly discoloured, partly raspberry-pink or brick-red disks, threaded one behind the other into a long, cylindrical roll

This quote sums up the bizarreness of the Kula for an outsider, as a huge, heavily ritualized institution that ultimately seems to rest only on its symbolic power. By speaking about the Kula exchange in this offhand manner, Malinowski reinforces the wondrousness of the institution. The moment of transaction, the climax, can also be seen as extremely anticlimactic unless the symbolic power and underlying mechanisms of the Kula are understood.

“It is extremely important in sociological work to know well beforehand the underlying rules and the fundamental ideas of an occurrence, especially if big masses of natives are concerned in it. Otherwise, the really important events may be obliterated by quite irrelevant and accidental movements of the crowd, and thus the significance of what he sees may be lost to the observer.” 

This statement provides a caveat to Malinowski’s general insistence on recording the minute details of an event. Where a large-scale festival or ceremony is concerned, he encourages the ethnographer to learn about the event beforehand, including what is expected to happen and what the important aspects are, so he knows what to look out for.

“The objective items of culture, into which belief has crystallised in the form of tradition, myth, spell and rite are the most important source of knowledge.” 

Concrete data in the forms of spells and rites reveals the structures of beliefs about magic as well as associated sentiments. This kind of primary source data is vital to drawing any conclusions about a culture; it is the evidence on which any theory rests.

“Indeed, the undermining of old-established authority, of tribal morals and customs tends on the one hand completely to demoralise the natives and to make them unamenable to any law or rule, while on the other hand, by destroying the whole fabric of tribal life, it deprives them of many of their most cherished diversions, ways of enjoying life, and social pleasures. Now once you make life unattractive for a man, whether savage or civilised, you cut the taproot of his vitality.” 

The “undermining” Malinowski refers to is the interference of Europeans in the Massim region, through plantations, pearl fishing, and other interventions that change native ways of life. A functionalist explanation of this could consider the white influence to be a disease that is weakening the whole system (meaning society).

“Genuine scientific research differs from mere curio-hunting in that the latter runs after the quaint, singular and freakish— the craving for the sensational and the mania of collecting providing its twofold stimulus. Science on the other hand has to analyse and classify facts in order to place them in an organic whole, to incorporate them in one of the systems in which it tries to group the various aspects of reality.” 

Malinowski returns to this concept throughout the book, emphasizing that the urge to find the oddities of a culture directly conflicts with the goal of scientific research. He presents this approach as cruel, naïve, and intellectually useless. On the other hand, the scientific approach requires working from a “neutral” place—suspending the judgment that arises from the researcher’s cultural norms in favor of cool rationality and diligent recording of all details. Only after the data has been processed should the researcher attempt to situate what has been found into an existing or new theory.

“In grasping the essential outlook of others, with the reverence and real understanding, due even to savages, we cannot but help widening our own.” 

Malinowski believes that broadening our scope beyond the cultures we were born into will help us better understand humanity as a whole. In developing our knowledge of humanity’s diversity, we enhance our own insight and wisdom about what it means to be human. Built into this is a sense of deep respect that Malinowski writes is “due even to savages.” This phrasing implies that native peoples were looked down upon during the time of writing and perhaps even considered subhuman.

“Nor has civilised humanity ever needed such tolerance more than now, when prejudice, ill will and vindictiveness are dividing each European nation from another, when all the ideals, cherished and proclaimed as the highest achievements of civilisation, science and religion, have been thrown to the winds.” 

This demonstrates once again Malinowski’s belief in the uniting power of science, along with civilization and religion. He has made clear that these enlightenment ideals can be used to further humanity when wielded correctly. Interestingly, he directs this passage to “civilized humanity,” which we take to mean the West. At the time of writing, Malinowski was unable to return to London due to World War I, so it can be assumed that he is referencing this when he talks about the division of Europe. However, his inclusion only of civilized humanity implies that the “savages” do not have this broad view of humanity.