A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term is a collection of the private diaries of the prominent anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski during his fieldwork in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands between 1914-1915 and 1917-1918.^[1] The diary is composed of two diaries, written in Polish.^[1]

Published posthumously by his widow Valetta Swann in 1967,^[1] the diaries, which repeatedly touches upon intensely personal matters such as sexual desires, as well as that of his private prejudices against his interlocutors, has remained extremely controversial. The introduction of the book was written by his pupil Raymond Firth.

History and significance[]

In 1967 when the diary was published Clifford Geertz called it "gross" and "tiresome", and wrote that it portrayed Malinowski as "a crabbed, self-preoccupied, hypochondriacal narcissist, whose fellow-feeling for the people he lived with was limited in the extreme."^[2] Two decades later, however, he praised it as "backstage masterpiece of anthropology, our The Double Helix".^[3]^: 75

In 1985 Malinowski's daughter, Helena Wayne, noted that they were "very personal [and] not meant for other eyes", and that she would have preferred if they remained out of print, instead available only as raw materials for a biographer. She acknowledged, however, that many scholars found the diaries very useful for insights on Malinowski and his work.^[1]

Writing in 1987, James Clifford called it "a crucial document for the history of anthropology".^[4]^: 97

References[]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Wayne, Helena (1985). "Bronislaw Malinowski: The Influence of Various Women on His Life and Works". American Ethnologist. 12 (3): 529–540. doi:10.1525/ae.1985.12.3.02a00090. ISSN 0094-0496. JSTOR 644537.
^ Thompson, Christina A. (1995-06-01). "Anthropology's conrad: Malinowski in the tropics and what he read". The Journal of Pacific History. 30 (1): 53–75. doi:10.1080/00223349508572783. ISSN 0022-3344.
^ Geertz, Clifford (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
^ Clifford, James (1988-05-18). The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-69843-7.

External links[]

"A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term". - publisher's description

This article about an anthropology-related book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[:0-1] Wayne, Helena (1985). "Bronislaw Malinowski: The Influence of Various Women on His Life and Works". American Ethnologist. 12 (3): 529–540. doi:10.1525/ae.1985.12.3.02a00090. ISSN 0094-0496. JSTOR 644537.

[2] Thompson, Christina A. (1995-06-01). "Anthropology's conrad: Malinowski in the tropics and what he read". The Journal of Pacific History. 30 (1): 53–75. doi:10.1080/00223349508572783. ISSN 0022-3344.

[3] Geertz, Clifford (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[4] Clifford, James (1988-05-18). The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-69843-7.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]