Re: [tied] Re: Stock Breeding & Patriarchialism.

----- Original Message -----

From: John Croft

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 4:37 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Stock Breeding & Patriarchialism.

Malinowski is regarded as the founder of functionalist anthropology, and I don't think one could accuse him of racism (despite his use of the word "savage", which was not regarded as outright offensive by his contemporaries). His fieldwork in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands was conducted 1914-1918, and he published "The Sexual Life of Savages" in 1929, after he was appointed to the chair of Social Anthropology at London University, so he was no Victorian either (what Victorian would have dared to describe the Trobriand ars amandi in technical detail?). Notwithstanding all of which, he was exposed to the same danger as any investigator who is studying intelligent beings: the objects of your research may deliberately tease you, play friendly jokes at your expense, tell you cock-and-bull (or stork-and-baby) stories with a poker face, etc. -- even if they generally trust you and are otherwise cooperative.

 

Piotr

 

 

I wrote (in response to Mark): It was Bronislaw Malinowski who reported, in his famous study of the sexual life of the Trobriand islanders (The Sexual Life of Savages), that -- keenly as the Trobrianders were interested in lovemaking -- they didn't understand the connection between having sex and having babies. I like to think that the Trobrianders'
confessions to Malinowski were not quite in earnest, and that they
had a jolly good laugh at the scholar's credulity behind his back.

John commented: It is interesting that early anthropologists made the same claim that Aboriginal peoples did not understand the connection between sex, reproduction and paternity, and yet when one studies Aboriginal kinship systems one sees that this is not the case.  Rather it is the Victorian anthrolopogists racist attitudes of superiority that are
showing.