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Crime and Custom in Savage Society
Bronislaw Malinowski achieved international recognition as the founder of "functionalism" in social anthropology, based on his studies of Melanesian society on the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea. His Crime and Custom in Savage Society is now one of the classic works of modern anthropology. In his book, Malinowski describes and analyzes the ways in which Trobriand Islanders structure and maintain the social and economic order of their tribe. This is essential reading for anyone interested in anthropology.
132 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
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About the author
Bronisław Malinowski
63 books149 followersBronisław Kasper Malinowski (IPA: [ˌmaliˈnɔfski]; April 7, 1884 – May 16, 1942) was a Polish anthropologist widely considered to be one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century because of his pioneering work on ethnographic fieldwork, with which he also gave a major contribution to the study of Melanesia, and the study of reciprocity.
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January 5, 2022Nekad čovek pristupi klasiku sa stavom "pa dobro, sve smo ovo već učili u školi a donekle je i prevaziđeno" pa se onda šokira jer je klasik to postao s razlogom. Malinovski i ovde kao i drugde pokazuje jednu rafiniranu i istančanu inteligenciju i zavidan književni talenat. Takođe se prekorno osvrće na čitaoce koji se antropološkim spisima posvećuju prvenstveno zbog sočnih anegdota, ali ih i nagrađuje upravo... pa... sočnim anegdotama iz melanežanske crne hronike. Divan je.
March 8, 2021
Among other things, I aspire to be a full-fledged qualitative-oriented social scientist. Although I have been formally educated as (and work as) a lawyer, over the years I have taken some classes at my uni’s social science school, and currently in my master’s I am trying to make a career shift of sorts from law into academic social science.
In order to make up for my lack of contact with social science, however, I concluded I had eventually to build my tent among the natives and actually read more of the classics first-hand (as opposed to just reading commentary). As ethnography is probably my favorite methodology, and my background is in law, I though I would start by reading Malinowski’s short treatise on “Crime and custom in Savage Society.” And to make up for my lack of writing during this pandemic, I thought I would force myself to draft a quick review of the book. Even though – or perhaps because – life is complete chaos right now, writing about theory might help.
Malinowski is one of anthropology’s most famous authors, and often counted among one of the discipline’s modern “founding fathers” (sic) along with names like Evans-Pritchard, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead (in this case, a founding mother). These and several other researchers were responsible for breaking new ground in fields such as geography, linguistics, psychology, and sociology and in doing so, forming anthropology as an autonomous discipline. Their writings, spanning from the late 19th into the first half of the 20th century, helped debunk racist theories, then hegemonic in science, which viewed people in preindustrial societies as fundamentally different and inferior from the ‘civilized’ peoples of Europe.
One of the main reasons for this progress was methodological: it was only in this period that research anthropologists were beginning to understand importance of doing fieldwork themselves. Armchair anthropology – the kind of ‘study’ of foreign peoples conducted on the basis solely of second-hand sources from travelers or colonizers that hitherto was hegemonic in anthropology – was being shown for what it was, a scientifically shallow enterprise focused more on producing cabinet-of-curiosity-like ‘facts’ to awe its readers than on actual rigorous assessments of social life outside Western societies. Budding anthropologists like Boas and Malinowski urged researchers to go further and actually live for extended periods of time among their subjects of study, master their language in order to communicate sans interpreters, thus participating in their daily lives and customs as an ‘insider’ – or the closest thing possible a researcher can be outside the global tribe of white folk.
Other reasons were material, historical, geopolitical – social. Despite such a politically ‘progressive’ track record, anthropology was birthed precisely in the period wherein neocolonialism was still at full-steam, once sufficient knowledge and material means had accumulated (some might say, from pillaging colonies) in the capitalist empires of western Europe and later, the US, to allow their universities to mass produce enough researchers to have some visit first-hand the ‘savage peoples’ inhabiting the territories they dominated. Thus there is a classic ambivalence between the humanizing thrust provided by ethnographic descriptions of ‘other peoples’, which highlight how similar, at the end of the day, they are to ‘us’ in important respects, on the one hand, and the enormous value of such knowledge for pillagers and colonizers.
This ambivalence is thrown into center stage by Malinowski right in the introduction of his essay. Upon remarking about the importance of anthropology (as those founding a research program often do) to his readers, he directly points to some important “practical applications” of a fuller knowledge of the life of indigenous peoples. Studying native economics, for instance, in addition to increasing “our knowledge of man’s economic disposition”, is also “of value (sic) to those who wish to develop the resources of tropical countries, employ indigenous labour and trade with the natives”. Religious colonizers carrying out missionary work are also an audience Malinowski appeals to, highlighting that an understanding of the “mental processes of savages” might interest “those engaged in educating or morally improving the native”.
The wish to maximize the audience of his writings later is however greeted by sparse remarks on the issue of colonial encroaching of native culture. Later, noting on the importance of sorcerers to the maintenance of ‘law and order’ among the Trobriands, Malinowski writes that “there is hardly anything more pernicious (…) in the many European ways of interference with savage peoples, than the bitter animosity with which Missionary, Planter, and Official alike pursue the sorcerer”, adding that “the rash, haphazard, unscientific application of our morals, laws, and customs to native societies (…) leads only to anarchy and moral atrophy and in the long run to the extinction of culture and race.” Such contradictory character of anthropological knowledge – its importance both for protecting as well as destroying the ‘other’ – continued to haunt anthropology: Margaret Mead, for instance, was famously recruited by the US government to study the nation’s ‘enemies’ in “Soviet attitudes toward authority”.
The bulk of the text is dedicated to a theoretical discussion of the way ‘savages’ deal with ‘law’. Law, as commonly defined in modern legal or social theory, is typically taken to entail the existence of organized social structures, such as formal legislatures, dedicated to the creation and execution of law, usually in the form of written rules and the setting up of a judicial system. Seemingly lacking in this and other formalized procedures, many ‘primitive’ cultures were perceived in Malinowski’s time as having but customary norms, which, among peoples where religion was a central organizing force as was the case of ‘pre-industrial’ colonized folks, were perceived as one and the same as religious mandates. And so the customary rule against incest within one’s kinship group was taken by natives as being as binding a rule as that which proscribed publicly attacking sacred objects (or so anthropologists believed). Under such a description, for the ‘savage’ to incur in rule-breaking behavior is not merely to offend your fellow men, but to offend the gods. If every rule comes from god, even white lies are sins.
This view seems in accordance with a folk theory of anthropology trending then – the notion that tribal folk, even adults, were in practice as gullible and naïve as Western children, underdeveloped human beings (if fully seen as Homo sapiens at all by the average Chicagoan) incapable of caring for themselves and in need of supervision by white folk. I am unsure if this was still a thesis among academics at the time, but it is perhaps still alive today among laypeople (or maybe just non-social scientists) in industrialized countries.
Malinowski divides his analyses and the book roughly in two. The first part discusses ‘civil law’, that is, the host of rules focusing on productive relations and exchange idiosyncratic to Trobriand tribes. The second part delves into ‘criminal law’, describing criminal behavior and punishment (and its aversion), focusing on deviance from lawful (or public) standards of incest, theft, and murder.
In each part, arguing against the consensus among anthropologists of his day, Malinowski describes the existence of behavior among indigenous peoples that deviates from the ideal of conduct they publicly endorse and seek to enforce upon others in public. People fall behind on their kin duties – fathers neglect their rightful heirs (their nephews), instead resorting to nepotism or loopholes in incest law in order to privilege their sons (of whom I should note they had no knowledge regarding biological rapport) –, brothers steal food from each other, and lover quarrel. Rules are broken, and more or less overtly, depending on the severity of the situation and the power difference between the opposing parties. In addition, as happens in our modern legal systems, there are also rules for breaking rules.
One of the characteristics of primitive law stressed by Malinowski that struck me as most interesting is the role played by public accusations in regulating the response to rule-breaching behavior. Malinowski tells the story of a boy who breached the rules against endogamous incest and had sex with his maternal cousin. Although anthropologists as well as natives would describe the breaking of such class of rule as one of the most serious offences one might commit in the Trobriands, the affair
In response to the public accusation, the guilty party committed suicide – and as was customary, this dramatic act was preceded by an equally public exhortation of his accuser, “upon which it became the duty of his clansmen to avenge him”. On a personal note, it appears that this succession of events only played out in such manner due to the relative severity of each successive event. The incest in question was a crime, yes, but a minor one at that; they didn't flaunt their crime, and neither planned on getting married (a completely different situation altogether, of course), in such cases, “ ’public opinion’ will gossip, but not demand any harsh punishment.” Still, a crime it was, and being publicly accused of it entailed the need for a public response – be it punishment or restitution. In paying for his offence with his own life, perhaps in an uncontrollable emotional response, the boy nonetheless seems to have recognized the disproportionality of his response – only thus it would be legitimate of him to expect his fellow brothers to avenge his death, after all.
All this too is similar to what happens in our society, where a level or sphere of discourse often dubbed ‘public opinion’ forms a sort of collective “frontstage”, where ‘events’ and reactions (and anticipations to reactions of reactions to…) are taken as ‘properly’ played out *regardless* of the background “backstage”, tacit, unofficial knowledge regarding the factual occurrence of wrongdoing. In consumer capitalism, to mass produce cheap quality goods is widely accepted (and one supposedly finds in consumer law all the remedies an individual consumer might use to redress any damages he incurs in falling prey to low quality goods), but it is absolutely unacceptable for a company to publicly admit they sell crap to their consumers. Take the example of Gerald Ratner, discussed by Mark Fisher in “Capitalist Realism”:
The acceptance of rule-breaking among humans everywhere seems thus to find a limit in the public admittance of deviance. Although crimes are committed and duties breached and everyone knows this, the notorious deviant must at least appear in public as someone who is trying their best to avoid doing harm – as opposed to systematically circumventing the rules and escaping due punishment. To continue to support a deviant in public is for the kinsmen of incestuous boys and British middle-class consumers, equally, too much to bear.
And so Malinowski, in the way that anthropology does best, debunks all-encompassing theories regarding human behavior using only a few empirical examples. Even though his remarks are limited to Trobriand ‘savages’, the fact that they do *not* obey tradition and custom “slavishly”, but indeed value individual benefit as much as the Londoner, means that ‘savage’ peoples *in general* cannot be said to act as primitive anthropologists used to believe. As a methodology professor once told me, you only need one good counterexample to discredit a theory that aspires to universal generalizability.
I may (or not) review this review later for minor additions or corrections. In any case, I hope it is useful to others as is.
In order to make up for my lack of contact with social science, however, I concluded I had eventually to build my tent among the natives and actually read more of the classics first-hand (as opposed to just reading commentary). As ethnography is probably my favorite methodology, and my background is in law, I though I would start by reading Malinowski’s short treatise on “Crime and custom in Savage Society.” And to make up for my lack of writing during this pandemic, I thought I would force myself to draft a quick review of the book. Even though – or perhaps because – life is complete chaos right now, writing about theory might help.
Malinowski is one of anthropology’s most famous authors, and often counted among one of the discipline’s modern “founding fathers” (sic) along with names like Evans-Pritchard, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead (in this case, a founding mother). These and several other researchers were responsible for breaking new ground in fields such as geography, linguistics, psychology, and sociology and in doing so, forming anthropology as an autonomous discipline. Their writings, spanning from the late 19th into the first half of the 20th century, helped debunk racist theories, then hegemonic in science, which viewed people in preindustrial societies as fundamentally different and inferior from the ‘civilized’ peoples of Europe.
One of the main reasons for this progress was methodological: it was only in this period that research anthropologists were beginning to understand importance of doing fieldwork themselves. Armchair anthropology – the kind of ‘study’ of foreign peoples conducted on the basis solely of second-hand sources from travelers or colonizers that hitherto was hegemonic in anthropology – was being shown for what it was, a scientifically shallow enterprise focused more on producing cabinet-of-curiosity-like ‘facts’ to awe its readers than on actual rigorous assessments of social life outside Western societies. Budding anthropologists like Boas and Malinowski urged researchers to go further and actually live for extended periods of time among their subjects of study, master their language in order to communicate sans interpreters, thus participating in their daily lives and customs as an ‘insider’ – or the closest thing possible a researcher can be outside the global tribe of white folk.
Other reasons were material, historical, geopolitical – social. Despite such a politically ‘progressive’ track record, anthropology was birthed precisely in the period wherein neocolonialism was still at full-steam, once sufficient knowledge and material means had accumulated (some might say, from pillaging colonies) in the capitalist empires of western Europe and later, the US, to allow their universities to mass produce enough researchers to have some visit first-hand the ‘savage peoples’ inhabiting the territories they dominated. Thus there is a classic ambivalence between the humanizing thrust provided by ethnographic descriptions of ‘other peoples’, which highlight how similar, at the end of the day, they are to ‘us’ in important respects, on the one hand, and the enormous value of such knowledge for pillagers and colonizers.
This ambivalence is thrown into center stage by Malinowski right in the introduction of his essay. Upon remarking about the importance of anthropology (as those founding a research program often do) to his readers, he directly points to some important “practical applications” of a fuller knowledge of the life of indigenous peoples. Studying native economics, for instance, in addition to increasing “our knowledge of man’s economic disposition”, is also “of value (sic) to those who wish to develop the resources of tropical countries, employ indigenous labour and trade with the natives”. Religious colonizers carrying out missionary work are also an audience Malinowski appeals to, highlighting that an understanding of the “mental processes of savages” might interest “those engaged in educating or morally improving the native”.
The wish to maximize the audience of his writings later is however greeted by sparse remarks on the issue of colonial encroaching of native culture. Later, noting on the importance of sorcerers to the maintenance of ‘law and order’ among the Trobriands, Malinowski writes that “there is hardly anything more pernicious (…) in the many European ways of interference with savage peoples, than the bitter animosity with which Missionary, Planter, and Official alike pursue the sorcerer”, adding that “the rash, haphazard, unscientific application of our morals, laws, and customs to native societies (…) leads only to anarchy and moral atrophy and in the long run to the extinction of culture and race.” Such contradictory character of anthropological knowledge – its importance both for protecting as well as destroying the ‘other’ – continued to haunt anthropology: Margaret Mead, for instance, was famously recruited by the US government to study the nation’s ‘enemies’ in “Soviet attitudes toward authority”.
The bulk of the text is dedicated to a theoretical discussion of the way ‘savages’ deal with ‘law’. Law, as commonly defined in modern legal or social theory, is typically taken to entail the existence of organized social structures, such as formal legislatures, dedicated to the creation and execution of law, usually in the form of written rules and the setting up of a judicial system. Seemingly lacking in this and other formalized procedures, many ‘primitive’ cultures were perceived in Malinowski’s time as having but customary norms, which, among peoples where religion was a central organizing force as was the case of ‘pre-industrial’ colonized folks, were perceived as one and the same as religious mandates. And so the customary rule against incest within one’s kinship group was taken by natives as being as binding a rule as that which proscribed publicly attacking sacred objects (or so anthropologists believed). Under such a description, for the ‘savage’ to incur in rule-breaking behavior is not merely to offend your fellow men, but to offend the gods. If every rule comes from god, even white lies are sins.
This view seems in accordance with a folk theory of anthropology trending then – the notion that tribal folk, even adults, were in practice as gullible and naïve as Western children, underdeveloped human beings (if fully seen as Homo sapiens at all by the average Chicagoan) incapable of caring for themselves and in need of supervision by white folk. I am unsure if this was still a thesis among academics at the time, but it is perhaps still alive today among laypeople (or maybe just non-social scientists) in industrialized countries.
Malinowski divides his analyses and the book roughly in two. The first part discusses ‘civil law’, that is, the host of rules focusing on productive relations and exchange idiosyncratic to Trobriand tribes. The second part delves into ‘criminal law’, describing criminal behavior and punishment (and its aversion), focusing on deviance from lawful (or public) standards of incest, theft, and murder.
In each part, arguing against the consensus among anthropologists of his day, Malinowski describes the existence of behavior among indigenous peoples that deviates from the ideal of conduct they publicly endorse and seek to enforce upon others in public. People fall behind on their kin duties – fathers neglect their rightful heirs (their nephews), instead resorting to nepotism or loopholes in incest law in order to privilege their sons (of whom I should note they had no knowledge regarding biological rapport) –, brothers steal food from each other, and lover quarrel. Rules are broken, and more or less overtly, depending on the severity of the situation and the power difference between the opposing parties. In addition, as happens in our modern legal systems, there are also rules for breaking rules.
One of the characteristics of primitive law stressed by Malinowski that struck me as most interesting is the role played by public accusations in regulating the response to rule-breaching behavior. Malinowski tells the story of a boy who breached the rules against endogamous incest and had sex with his maternal cousin. Although anthropologists as well as natives would describe the breaking of such class of rule as one of the most serious offences one might commit in the Trobriands, the affair
“had been known and generally disapproved of, but nothing was done until the girl’s discarded lover, who had wanted to marry her and who felt personally injured, took the initiative. This rival threatened first to use black magic against the guilty youth, but this had not much effect. Then one evening he insulted the culprit in public — accusing him in the hearing of the whole community of incest and hurling at him certain expressions intolerable to a native.”
In response to the public accusation, the guilty party committed suicide – and as was customary, this dramatic act was preceded by an equally public exhortation of his accuser, “upon which it became the duty of his clansmen to avenge him”. On a personal note, it appears that this succession of events only played out in such manner due to the relative severity of each successive event. The incest in question was a crime, yes, but a minor one at that; they didn't flaunt their crime, and neither planned on getting married (a completely different situation altogether, of course), in such cases, “ ’public opinion’ will gossip, but not demand any harsh punishment.” Still, a crime it was, and being publicly accused of it entailed the need for a public response – be it punishment or restitution. In paying for his offence with his own life, perhaps in an uncontrollable emotional response, the boy nonetheless seems to have recognized the disproportionality of his response – only thus it would be legitimate of him to expect his fellow brothers to avenge his death, after all.
All this too is similar to what happens in our society, where a level or sphere of discourse often dubbed ‘public opinion’ forms a sort of collective “frontstage”, where ‘events’ and reactions (and anticipations to reactions of reactions to…) are taken as ‘properly’ played out *regardless* of the background “backstage”, tacit, unofficial knowledge regarding the factual occurrence of wrongdoing. In consumer capitalism, to mass produce cheap quality goods is widely accepted (and one supposedly finds in consumer law all the remedies an individual consumer might use to redress any damages he incurs in falling prey to low quality goods), but it is absolutely unacceptable for a company to publicly admit they sell crap to their consumers. Take the example of Gerald Ratner, discussed by Mark Fisher in “Capitalist Realism”:
“Ratner precisely tried to circumvent the Symbolic and ‘tell it how it is’, describing the inexpensive jewelry his shops sold as ‘crap’ in an after-dinner speech. But the consequence of Ratner making this judgment official were immediate, and serious - £500m was wiped off the value of the company and he lost his job. Customers might previously have known that the jewelry Ratners sold was poor quality, but the big Other didn’t know; as soon as it did, Ratners collapsed.”
The acceptance of rule-breaking among humans everywhere seems thus to find a limit in the public admittance of deviance. Although crimes are committed and duties breached and everyone knows this, the notorious deviant must at least appear in public as someone who is trying their best to avoid doing harm – as opposed to systematically circumventing the rules and escaping due punishment. To continue to support a deviant in public is for the kinsmen of incestuous boys and British middle-class consumers, equally, too much to bear.
And so Malinowski, in the way that anthropology does best, debunks all-encompassing theories regarding human behavior using only a few empirical examples. Even though his remarks are limited to Trobriand ‘savages’, the fact that they do *not* obey tradition and custom “slavishly”, but indeed value individual benefit as much as the Londoner, means that ‘savage’ peoples *in general* cannot be said to act as primitive anthropologists used to believe. As a methodology professor once told me, you only need one good counterexample to discredit a theory that aspires to universal generalizability.
I may (or not) review this review later for minor additions or corrections. In any case, I hope it is useful to others as is.
April 28, 2018
In this book, Malinowski uses the results of his studies of the Trobriand Islands to discuss the nature of "law" among preliterate peoples. His use of the term "law" might seem somewhat strange to anything we would actually consider law; he's actually asking what are the social drives and sanctions that ensure compliance with traditional norms of behavior. In fact, the book is largely a polemic against previous theories that interpreted preliterate cultures as having total domination of the individual by the group or clan, by some sort of instinctual unquestioning adherance to traditions and customs or fear of the supernatural. He is concerned to show that there is resistance to cultural norms, that recognition of duties and obligations results from notions of reciprocity and publicity, from the ambitions and vanity of the individual rather than from the individual not being able to imagine acting otherwise than they are supposed to.
He then turns to examples where there are conflicts between different interests or different domains of "law", such as the matrilineal law of descent and the natural sentiment of fathers to prefer their sons over their nephews and official heirs, and shows the compromises which occur in practice between the official "legal" structure and the personal interests and sentiments of individuals. He makes the point that while older travel writers and missionaries looked only at what people did, ignoring what their ideals were, and came up with the idea of the "lawless" savage, the early "hearsay" anthropologists questioning informants through interpreters tended to look only at what people said they did, and hence came up with the idea of the savage completely controlled by custom and taboo. He emphasizes that the ethnologist must live with the people he is studying and compare what they say -- the official norms of the culture -- with what they do in practice. He points out the reverse situation, when the Trobrianders, having been proselytized by the missions about Christian love and brotherhood, and forbidden to wage war, and taking all that the whites said at face value, found out about World War I, and realized that the whites were "great liars". The point being that "primitive" cultures no less than "advanced" ones have both ideal norms and practical hypocrisy, and the ethnologist needs to study both to have a real comprehension of their behavior. This book more than either of the others I have read shows the difference between early and modern anthropology in its methods and theories.
He then turns to examples where there are conflicts between different interests or different domains of "law", such as the matrilineal law of descent and the natural sentiment of fathers to prefer their sons over their nephews and official heirs, and shows the compromises which occur in practice between the official "legal" structure and the personal interests and sentiments of individuals. He makes the point that while older travel writers and missionaries looked only at what people did, ignoring what their ideals were, and came up with the idea of the "lawless" savage, the early "hearsay" anthropologists questioning informants through interpreters tended to look only at what people said they did, and hence came up with the idea of the savage completely controlled by custom and taboo. He emphasizes that the ethnologist must live with the people he is studying and compare what they say -- the official norms of the culture -- with what they do in practice. He points out the reverse situation, when the Trobrianders, having been proselytized by the missions about Christian love and brotherhood, and forbidden to wage war, and taking all that the whites said at face value, found out about World War I, and realized that the whites were "great liars". The point being that "primitive" cultures no less than "advanced" ones have both ideal norms and practical hypocrisy, and the ethnologist needs to study both to have a real comprehension of their behavior. This book more than either of the others I have read shows the difference between early and modern anthropology in its methods and theories.
July 25, 2017
Kitap Malinowski'nin 1900'lerin başında Trobriand Adaları'nda yaptığı etnografik çalışmalardan yola çıkarak, yasa ve suç kavramlarını irdeliyor. Kitap, özellikle Malinowski antropolojinin bilimselleşmesine önemli katkılar sağladığı için son derece önemli. Kitabı okurken adalarda yaşayan yerli halkın son derece karmaşık sosyal ilişkilerini de görebiliyorsunuz. Yazar, zaman zaman kitapta başka kitaplarına referanslar verdiği için her konuyu derinlemesine incelemiyor. Ama oldukça ilgi çekici vaka çalışmaları sunduğu için kitabı okumak son derece zevk veriyor. Hatta zaman zaman farklı kabilelerdeki aşk ilişkilerinden, aile içi ilişkilerden örnekler verdiği için kişileri tek tek tanıyabiliyor, sanki haklarında dedikodu dinliyormuş izlenimine kapılabiliyorsunuz.
Kitabın kendisinde eksik bulduğum nokta şu oldu; bütün gözlem ve çıkarımlar tamamen erkek odaklı, kadınların toplum içindeki rollerinden pek fazla bahsedilmiyor. Özellikle yazarın belirttiği üzere ana soylu olan, baba-çocuk bağının kültürel olarak kabul edilmediği bir toplumda keşke kadınların toplumdaki rolleri yardımcı oyuncu gibi değil, erkeklerle eşit derecede irdelenseydi. Tabii ki bunu 1920'lerde yazılmış bir etnografik araştırmadan beklemek oldukça ütopik. Yine de okuduğum hemen her bölümde cinsiyete dair kafamda pek çok soru işareti kaldı diyebilirim.
Çeviriyi genel olarak anlaşılır ve akıcı buldum. Yalnızca İthaki'nin kuram dizisindeki politikasına bağlı olduğunu düşündüğüm bilimsel terimleri Türkçeleştirmeye özellikle özen gösterilmesi, metnin, seyrek de olsa, zaman zaman tam olarak ne demek istediğini anlamamı zorlaştırdı. Sanıyorum buna bir dereceye kadar benim antropoloji terimlerinin Türkçelerini görmeye çok alışık olmamam da sebep oldu.
Kitabın kendisinde eksik bulduğum nokta şu oldu; bütün gözlem ve çıkarımlar tamamen erkek odaklı, kadınların toplum içindeki rollerinden pek fazla bahsedilmiyor. Özellikle yazarın belirttiği üzere ana soylu olan, baba-çocuk bağının kültürel olarak kabul edilmediği bir toplumda keşke kadınların toplumdaki rolleri yardımcı oyuncu gibi değil, erkeklerle eşit derecede irdelenseydi. Tabii ki bunu 1920'lerde yazılmış bir etnografik araştırmadan beklemek oldukça ütopik. Yine de okuduğum hemen her bölümde cinsiyete dair kafamda pek çok soru işareti kaldı diyebilirim.
Çeviriyi genel olarak anlaşılır ve akıcı buldum. Yalnızca İthaki'nin kuram dizisindeki politikasına bağlı olduğunu düşündüğüm bilimsel terimleri Türkçeleştirmeye özellikle özen gösterilmesi, metnin, seyrek de olsa, zaman zaman tam olarak ne demek istediğini anlamamı zorlaştırdı. Sanıyorum buna bir dereceye kadar benim antropoloji terimlerinin Türkçelerini görmeye çok alışık olmamam da sebep oldu.
April 3, 2015
A truly interesting and easy to comprehend look at Trobriand Islander' laws and custom. However, it is more of an overview of general practice, including a few case examples. There were parts I had wished more fully explored (such as the magic practices), though I am sure there are other works on these practices.
I had to read this book for an Anthropology assignment and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the writing was far easier to digest than many modern academic writings.
I had to read this book for an Anthropology assignment and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the writing was far easier to digest than many modern academic writings.
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November 26, 2024primeiro babado da graduação
February 19, 2016
Malinowski bu kitabında Trobriand Adaları'ndaki yerlileri inceliyor. Yerleşik yabanıl toplumsal ilişkiler ağında gedikler açtığı kitabında özellikle ilkel insanların değer yargıları ve suç algısı üzerinde duruluyor. İlkel insanların belirlenmiş toplumsal normlar karşısında muazzam bir rıza sergilediği ve bunun da tamamen gönüllülük esasına dayandığını gözler önüne seriyor. İlkel toplumlardaki inanılmaz ahengi aynı zamanda karşılıklılık ilkesine yoruyor.
March 21, 2023
Análisis antropológico de la sociedad de las islas Trobriand. El “cuerpo de las costumbres” es la suma total de las reglas, convenciones y esquemas de comportamiento a las que debe someterse el nativo. Él siente respeto por ellas. Existe un “conformismo general de los salvajes” (Malinowski llama “salvajes” a los nativos de las Trobriand) ese conformismo es de utilidad práctica. El mecanismo por el que se imponen las costumbres es mediante imposición a través del castigo del delito. La magia negra también actúa como fuerza jurídica y es el principal instrumento del jefe para imponer sus privilegios y prerrogativas.
Son una sociedad matriarcal.
El suicidio es común para escapar de situaciones sin salida en las islas Trobriand, mediante dos métodos: lo’u (tirarse de lo alto de una palmera) y soka (veneno de la vesícula biliar del pez globo).
La conclusión a la que llega Malinowski es que el verdadero problema del antropólogo no es estudiar la manera como la vida humana se somete a las reglas (pues no se somete), el verdadero problema es cómo las reglas se adaptan a la vida.
Son una sociedad matriarcal.
El suicidio es común para escapar de situaciones sin salida en las islas Trobriand, mediante dos métodos: lo’u (tirarse de lo alto de una palmera) y soka (veneno de la vesícula biliar del pez globo).
La conclusión a la que llega Malinowski es que el verdadero problema del antropólogo no es estudiar la manera como la vida humana se somete a las reglas (pues no se somete), el verdadero problema es cómo las reglas se adaptan a la vida.
August 4, 2025
Basically, the gift (as Mauss proposed it) in the process of law appliance in primitive societies; on how reciprocity is the basis of not only exchange and ceremonies, but also punishment, order and retribution.
Just as businessmen jump off buildings when the company brokes, natives jump off palm trees when the guilt or taboo trespassed is too much: the law are not only commandments or constitutions, law are obligations and retributions that sometimes don't need to be official to summit to them.
I'm not giving this 5 stars because Malinowksi could have spoken of the ideological aspects of law. Sorry not sorry I'm a marxist.
Just as businessmen jump off buildings when the company brokes, natives jump off palm trees when the guilt or taboo trespassed is too much: the law are not only commandments or constitutions, law are obligations and retributions that sometimes don't need to be official to summit to them.
I'm not giving this 5 stars because Malinowksi could have spoken of the ideological aspects of law. Sorry not sorry I'm a marxist.
August 7, 2024
This book really attempts to penetrate into the core of what law is all about. One thing I enjoy about anthropology and the study of primitive communities is that they often reveal modern concepts in a different, arguably even more basic, light. If law is taken to refer to a system of enumerated rules, originating in legislatures and enforced by courts, then one is led to the conclusion that 'savage' societies are lawless, operating solely on the basis of custom. Are they?
Law as Feelings of Rights and Obligations, Socially Enforced, to Ensure Cooperation
Malinowski opts to ground law in binding obligations, which allows him to see law as inherent within all social organization. He shows how even primitive communities organized themselves according to felt rights and obligations, without a body of legal texts. The source of the law is therefore our collective human imagination and its manifestation in our habits of life. Malinowski argues that law's fundamental function, which differentiates it from other norms and customs, is to curb certain natural propensities, to hem in and control human instincts, in order to ensure a type of cooperation based on mutual concessions for a common end.
Firstly, he debunks the popular notion of his time -- the supposition that savages unthinkingly submit to tradition and custom. In fact, they are very much like us: "whenever the native can evade his obligations without the loss of prestige, or without the prospective loss of gain, he does so, exactly as a civilized business man would do". Nevertheless, we often do obey the law naturally and without coercion: "The fact is that no society can work in an efficient manner unless laws are obeyed 'willingly' and 'spontaneously'. The threat of coercion and the fear of punishment do not touch the average man, whether 'savage' or 'civilized'".
Malinowski shows how the activity of fishing together on a canoe involves a series of definite obligations and duties, into which "a sense of duty and the recognition of the need of co-operation enter side by side with a realization of self-interest, privileges and benefits". Upon returning to shore, the fishermen provide members of the inland village with some of the fish. A reciprocal economic exchange occurs, along with a public ceremony. Thus, reciprocity and vanity/ambition/publicity constitute two psychological mechanisms which supply obligations with binding force. "The real reason why all these economic obligations are normally kept, and kept very scrupulously, is that failure to comply places a man in an intolerable position, while slackness in fulfilment covers him with opprobrium. The man who would persistently disobey the rulings of law in his economic dealings would soon find himself outside the social and economic order -- and he is perfectly well aware of it."
Therefore, the law in Malinowski's view is "a class of obligatory rules ... provided with a purely social binding force", which he locates within the body of custom. "The rules of law stand out from the rest in that they are felt and regarded as the obligations of one person and the rightful claims of another ... Law dwells not in a special system of decrees ... [it] is the specific result of the configuration of obligations, which make it impossible for the native to shirk his responsibility without suffering for it in the future".
Punishment as the Restoration of Equilibrium
The next part is concerned with primitive crime: what happens when the law is broken? Interestingly, the ideal of native law does not correspond neatly with its application in real life. Firstly, systems of evasion have been established which allow natives to circumvent the law. For example, some kinds of magic exist to induce a woman to commit adultery, flouting the prohibition of adultery. Secondly, public opinion is lenient. For example, it became generally known that a youth had committed a crime, but public opinion was not outraged until a public accusation was made. Curiously, the youth committed suicide after that. Malinowski goes on to explain how sorcery and suicide support law and order -- for example, sorcery furnishes the main source of the fear of punishment and retribution indispensable to order. Malinowski notes that there is no administration of justice according to code and by fixed methods, only means of "restoring the equilibrium in social life and of giving vent to the feelings of oppression and injustice felt by individuals".
Legal Pluralism
Moreover, native law is comprised of various independent systems which sometimes come into conflict. Noticeably, the primary system of 'Mother-right' is supported by weak sentiment, while 'Father-love' has less legal importance but is backed by strong personal feeling. A man's matrilineal nephew is his nearest kinsman and legal heir, while his own son is not regarded as a kinsman; however, in reality the father is more attached to his own son than to his nephew. This can lead to non-legal practices by fathers to secure privileges for their sons, which become sanctioned by tradition and regarded as the most natural course by the community.
Human cultural reality is "a seething mixture of conflicting principles". Malinowski concludes that "the true problem is not to study how human life submits to rules -- it simply does not; the real problem is how the rules become adapted to life."
Law as Feelings of Rights and Obligations, Socially Enforced, to Ensure Cooperation
Malinowski opts to ground law in binding obligations, which allows him to see law as inherent within all social organization. He shows how even primitive communities organized themselves according to felt rights and obligations, without a body of legal texts. The source of the law is therefore our collective human imagination and its manifestation in our habits of life. Malinowski argues that law's fundamental function, which differentiates it from other norms and customs, is to curb certain natural propensities, to hem in and control human instincts, in order to ensure a type of cooperation based on mutual concessions for a common end.
Firstly, he debunks the popular notion of his time -- the supposition that savages unthinkingly submit to tradition and custom. In fact, they are very much like us: "whenever the native can evade his obligations without the loss of prestige, or without the prospective loss of gain, he does so, exactly as a civilized business man would do". Nevertheless, we often do obey the law naturally and without coercion: "The fact is that no society can work in an efficient manner unless laws are obeyed 'willingly' and 'spontaneously'. The threat of coercion and the fear of punishment do not touch the average man, whether 'savage' or 'civilized'".
Malinowski shows how the activity of fishing together on a canoe involves a series of definite obligations and duties, into which "a sense of duty and the recognition of the need of co-operation enter side by side with a realization of self-interest, privileges and benefits". Upon returning to shore, the fishermen provide members of the inland village with some of the fish. A reciprocal economic exchange occurs, along with a public ceremony. Thus, reciprocity and vanity/ambition/publicity constitute two psychological mechanisms which supply obligations with binding force. "The real reason why all these economic obligations are normally kept, and kept very scrupulously, is that failure to comply places a man in an intolerable position, while slackness in fulfilment covers him with opprobrium. The man who would persistently disobey the rulings of law in his economic dealings would soon find himself outside the social and economic order -- and he is perfectly well aware of it."
Therefore, the law in Malinowski's view is "a class of obligatory rules ... provided with a purely social binding force", which he locates within the body of custom. "The rules of law stand out from the rest in that they are felt and regarded as the obligations of one person and the rightful claims of another ... Law dwells not in a special system of decrees ... [it] is the specific result of the configuration of obligations, which make it impossible for the native to shirk his responsibility without suffering for it in the future".
Punishment as the Restoration of Equilibrium
The next part is concerned with primitive crime: what happens when the law is broken? Interestingly, the ideal of native law does not correspond neatly with its application in real life. Firstly, systems of evasion have been established which allow natives to circumvent the law. For example, some kinds of magic exist to induce a woman to commit adultery, flouting the prohibition of adultery. Secondly, public opinion is lenient. For example, it became generally known that a youth had committed a crime, but public opinion was not outraged until a public accusation was made. Curiously, the youth committed suicide after that. Malinowski goes on to explain how sorcery and suicide support law and order -- for example, sorcery furnishes the main source of the fear of punishment and retribution indispensable to order. Malinowski notes that there is no administration of justice according to code and by fixed methods, only means of "restoring the equilibrium in social life and of giving vent to the feelings of oppression and injustice felt by individuals".
Legal Pluralism
Moreover, native law is comprised of various independent systems which sometimes come into conflict. Noticeably, the primary system of 'Mother-right' is supported by weak sentiment, while 'Father-love' has less legal importance but is backed by strong personal feeling. A man's matrilineal nephew is his nearest kinsman and legal heir, while his own son is not regarded as a kinsman; however, in reality the father is more attached to his own son than to his nephew. This can lead to non-legal practices by fathers to secure privileges for their sons, which become sanctioned by tradition and regarded as the most natural course by the community.
Human cultural reality is "a seething mixture of conflicting principles". Malinowski concludes that "the true problem is not to study how human life submits to rules -- it simply does not; the real problem is how the rules become adapted to life."
March 7, 2021
Es fantástico leer un trabajo antropógico de casi 100 años, el uso del lenguaje, sus preconcepciones y análisis, que parecen tan lejanos, pero al mismo tiempo ofrecen claridad sobre cómo se sigue haciendo ciencia hoy día.
May 14, 2020
Çeviri Öz Türkçeci çeviriden muzdarip.
June 18, 2020
Ótimas ideias, daria um artigo perfeito, mas como livro há momentos que se torna meio repetitivo nas teses.
February 15, 2021
Falan filan inter milan
November 12, 2022
me lo mandaron a leer para la facultad, la verdad bastante ligero y facil de estudiar!! lo meto aca pq cada gramo cuenta para el desafio de lectura
August 22, 2008
Malinowski tries to understand the psychological trends in Trobriand communities that makes law and order work without the State apparatus. Sometimes the reader may find that all things fit in the scheme, perhaps because this volume is too short (about a hundred pages) if compared with other ethnological works.
Read
December 28, 2013Malinowski é um dos grandes nomes da Antropologia. Neste livro ele relata a sua pesquisa de campo, na qual conviveu com os melanésios.
Podemos perceber os traços marcantes do direito primitivo, como a religiosidade e a crença em totens e tabus.
Podemos perceber os traços marcantes do direito primitivo, como a religiosidade e a crença em totens e tabus.
September 19, 2008
Anyone sipping tea and wearing a bonnet should read this book. It's worthwhile to remember we are physically identical to humans we would call savages, monsters, jerks.
Want to read
July 22, 2013
April 11, 2017
The first major contribution to legal andthroopology, legal pluralism, and superceding normative and monolithic notions of law in culture by assessing control, deviation, and internal contradictions.
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