Bronisław Malinowski

(1884 - 1942)

Bronisław Malinowski’s ethnographic research is credited with bringing anthropology “off the veranda”—his work with Trobriand peoples in New Guinea relied not just on observation but on Malinowski’s own participation, recalibrating the way other researchers approached human subjects. Much of the work presented in Argonauts of the Western Pacific was conducted while he was stranded in the area during the outbreak of World War I when, as a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was prevented from leaving the British-controlled region. Twenty years later Malinowski found himself in the United States during the outbreak of World War II; he stayed and taught anthropology at Yale until his death in 1942.