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    Crime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery
    Crime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery
    Crime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery
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    Crime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery

    By Bronislaw Malinowski

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    Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (1884-1942) was a Polish-born anthropologist. Known for his ethnographic work in Oceania in the early twentieth century, his consequent publications in England and Europe earned him repute as a leading developer of social anthropology. Originally published in 1929, this book is regarded as a significant anthropological work of the twentieth century. Based on Malinowski’s studies of Melanesian society on the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea, it chronicles the social and economic practices and customs of a rapidly vanishing race. Read & Co. Science is proudly republishing this vintage work now in a brand new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateMar 23, 2011
    ISBN9781446545256
    Crime and Custom in Savage Society: An Anthropological Study of Savagery

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      Book preview

      Crime and Custom in Savage Society - Bronislaw Malinowski

      1.png

      CRIME

      AND CUSTOM

      IN SAVAGE SOCIETY

      AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL

      STUDY OF SAVAGERY

      By

      BRONISŁAW MALINOWSKI

      First published in 1926

      Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Science

      This edition is published by Read & Co. Science,

      an imprint of Read & Co.

      This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

      way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available

      from the British Library.

      Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

      For more information visit

      www.readandcobooks.co.uk

      Contents

      Bronisław Malinowski

      PREFACE

      INTRODUCTION

      PART I

      PRIMITIVE LAW AND ORDER

      I THE AUTOMATIC SUBMISSION TO CUSTOM AND THE REAL PROBLEM

      II MELANESIAN ECONOMICS AND THE THEORY OF PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM

      III THE BINDING FORCE OF ECONOMIC OBLIGATIONS

      IV RECIPROCITY AND DUAL ORGANIZATION

      V LAW, SELF-INTEREST, AND SOCIAL AMBITION

      VI THE RULES OF LAW IN RELIGIOUS ACTS

      VII THE LAW OF MARRIAGE

      VIII THE PRINCIPLE OF GIVE AND TAKE PERVADING TRIBAL LIFE

      IX RECIPROCITY AS THE BASIS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE

      X THE RULES OF CUSTOM DEFINED AND CLASSIFIED

      XI AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF LAW

      XII SPECIFIC LEGAL ARRANGEMENTS

      XIII CONCLUSION AND FORECAST

      PART II

      PRIMITIVE CRIME AND ITS PUNISHMENT

      I THE LAW IN BREACH AND THE RESTORATION OF ORDER

      II SORCERY AND SUICIDE AS LEGAL INFLUENCES

      III SYSTEMS OF LAW IN CONFLICT

      IV THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL COHESION IN A PRIMITIVE TRIBE

      Illustrations

      PLATE I

      PLATE II

      PLATE III

      PLATE IV

      PLATE V

      PLATE VI

      Bronisław Malinowski

      Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski was born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary (in present day Poland) in 1884. Both his parents were academics, and as a child he excelled academically. Malinowski received his Ph.D. in philosophy, physics, and mathematics in 1908 from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He graduated sub auspicious Imperatoris, the highest honour in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

      Malinowski spent the next two years at Leipzig University, where he was influenced by Wilhelm Wundt, and his theories of folk psychology. He had become acquainted with Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which stimulated his interest in primitive people and a desire to pursue anthropology. At the time, Frazer and other British authors were amongst the best-known anthropologists, and so in 1910 Malinowski travelled to England to study at the London School of Economics.

      In 1914, Malinowski travelled to Papua (later Papua New Guinea) where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu and then, more famously, in the Trobriand Islands. He made several field trips to this area, some of which were extended to avoid the difficulties of emigrating from an Australian colony during the First World War. It was during this period that he conducted his fieldwork on Kula.

      By 1922, Malinowski had earned a doctorate of science in anthropology and was teaching at the London School of Economics (LSE). In that year his most famous work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), was published. Universally regarded as a masterpiece, the book saw Malinowski became one of the best known anthropologists in the world. For the next three decades Malinowski established the LSE as one of Britain's greatest centres of anthropology. He trained many students, including those from Britain's colonies who went on to become important figures in their home countries.

      Malinowski taught intermittently in the United States, and was a lecturer at Cornell University in 1933 and for several years after that. When World War II broke out during one of these trips he remained in the country, taking up a position at Yale University, although he remained actively identified with the Polish partisan cause during the war.

      His career at Yale was less spectacular than previously, but it gave him the chance to study peasant markets in Mexico in 1940 and 1941. Bronislaw Malinowski died in 1942, aged 58. Aside from his Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), his best-remembered works are Myth in Primitive Psychology (1926), Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927) and The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929).

      PREFACE

      THE modern anthropological explorer, who goes into the field fully trained in theory, charged with problems, interests, and maybe preconceptions, is neither able nor well-advised to keep his observations within the limits of concrete facts and detailed data. He is bound to receive illumination on matters of principle, to solve some of his fundamental difficulties, to settle many moot points as regards general perspective. He is bound, for example, to arrive at some conclusions as to whether the primitive mind differs from our own or is essentially similar; whether the savage lives constantly in a world of supernatural powers and perils, or on the contrary, has his lucid intervals as often as any one of us; whether clan-solidarity is such an overwhelming and universal force, or whether the heathen can be as self-seeking and self-interested as any Christian.

      In the writing up of his results the modern anthropologist is naturally tempted to add his wider, somewhat diffused and intangible experiences to his descriptions of definite fact; to present the details of custom, belief, and organization against the background of a general theory of primitive culture. This little book is the outcome of a field worker’s yielding to such temptation. In extenuation of this lapse—if lapse it be—I should like to urge the great need for more theory in anthropological jurisprudence, especially theory born from actual contact with savages. I should also point out that in this work reflections and generalizations stand out clearly from the descriptive paragraphs. Last, not least, I should like to claim that my theory is not made of conjecture or hypothetical reconstruction but is simply an attempt at formulating the problem, at introducing precise concepts and clear definitions into the subject.

      The circumstances under which this thesis came into being have also contributed towards its present form. The material was first prepared and the conclusions framed in response to an invitation from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, before which a paper was read (on the Forces of Law and Order in a Primitive Community) on Friday evening, 13th February, 1925. As often happens, I found myself with more material on my hands and many more conclusions framed than could be included in an hour’s address. Some of these I have had the privilege of publishing in Nature (see Supplement, 6th February, 1926, and article, 15th August, 1925). The full version is contained in this little book.

      I wish to express my thanks to the Council of the Royal Institution for the kind loan of blocks and the permission to reproduce them. To Sir Richard Gregory, the Editor of Nature, I am indebted for allowing me to reprint the articles mentioned. I owe him much, moreover, for the help and encouragement I received from him in my earlier work.

      In the preparation of this volume I received competent assistance from Mr. Raymond Firth, who is carrying on research work at the London School of Economics in the Department of Ethnology. I was able to secure his help through a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The Board of this institution has of late devoted some special attention to the furtherance of anthropology, as a part of its interest in the development of the social sciences. The study of the rapidly vanishing savage races is one of those duties of civilization—now actively engaged in the destruction of primitive life—which so far has been lamentably neglected. The task is not only of high scientific and cultural importance, but also not devoid of considerable practical value, in that it can help the white man to govern, exploit, and improve the native with less pernicious results to the latter.

      The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, through its enlightened interest in anthropology as a branch of the social studies, will earn a deep gratitude from present and future humanists in erecting a lasting monument to the noble woman in whose memory it has been founded.

      B. M.,

      New York City. March, 1926.

      PLATE I

      Fishing Canoes on the Lagoon

      INTRODUCTION

      ANTHROPOLOGY is still to most laymen and to many specialists mainly an object of antiquarian interest. Savagery is still synonymous with absurd, cruel, and eccentric customs, with quaint superstitions and revolting practices. Sexual licence, infanticide,

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