The Sexual Life of Savages in North Western Melanesia [Paperback]

Bronislaw Malinowski (Author), Havelock Ellis (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

1929. An ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea. From the Preface: The sexual life of savages has long awaited its natural historian. Owing to sex taboos, that weigh at least as much on the civilized as on the savage mind, this subject has always been veiled in mystery. The mystery has been fascinating or somber according to the general attitude to savagery that happened to prevail. Contents: The Relations Between the Sexes in Tribal Life; The Status of Woman in Native Society; Prenuptial Intercourse; The Avenues to Marriage; Marriage; Divorce and the Dissolution of Marriage by Death; Procreation and Pregnancy in Native Belief and Custom; Pregnancy and Childbirth; Customary Forms of License; Love-Making and the Psychology of Erotic Life; The Magic of Love and Beauty; Erotic Dreams and Fantasies; Morals and Manners; and A Savage Myth of Incest.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bronislaw Malinowski was born in Krakow, Poland on April 7, 1884, died 1942. Through the acquisition of an outstanding education and many years of fieldwork, he became a very influential British anthropologist and the founder of Functionalism.

He attended King John Sobieski public school then continued on to the University of Krakow where he received his Ph.D. in Philosophy, Physics and Mathematics. In 1913, he lectured at the London School of Economics where he earned his Ph.D. in Science in 1916. It was there that he read The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer and sparked his interest in anthropology.

Malinowski founded the field of Social Anthropology known as Functionalism, holding the belief that all components of society interlock to form a well-balanced system. He emphasized characteristics of beliefs, ceremonies, customs, institutions, religion, ritual and sexual taboos. His New York Times obituary named him an "integrator of ten thousand cultural characteristics."

Malinowski’s first field study came in 1915-18 when he studied the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. He used a holistic approach in studying the native’s social interactions including the annual Kula Ring Exchange, finding it to be associated with magic, religion, kinship and trade. He contributed to a cross-cultural study of psychology through his observations of the relationships of kinship. He discovered evidence to discredit Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex in the lives of the Trobianders by proving that individual psychology depends on cultural context. He wrote a book about his fieldwork and experiences entitled Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 732 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417904771
• ISBN-13: 978-1417904778
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,401,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be kind to reprints!, July 5, 2006

By 

Wayne A. (Belfast, Northern Ireland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Sexual Life of Savages in North Western Melanesia (Paperback)

This edition of this book is not-so-hot, largely due to the quality of the photo reproductions. I have access to the first editions of Malinowski, and no later editions are of the same quality in ANY respect, including the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

I URGE readers to be considerate and exercise caution and thoughtfulness when giving bad ratings to books or anything else--especially if there's only one version available--because of quality issues that should really be directed at the publisher. A warning about photo quality is great and helpful to a degree, but a cumulative one star (about to be corrected a bit with my five) may prevent an individual or library from making a purchase and that may, in turn, eventually drive a valuable book off the "store" shelves.

If photo quality is poor in a reprint, it more than likely is due to the degradation or disappearance of the original prints and negatives. A book can also be in the public domain and the originals may not be made available to a re-printer so they'll scan an older copy. Plenty of good reasons that, in themselves, don't deserve one star either.

This is an important book that is cited nowadays more often than read--there's this idea floating around that older anthropologists somehow can't have anything valid to say today. Malinowski worked with degrees of detail that seem to elude modern anthropologists and he also studied people who had not yet been overwhelmed with Western culture (a simple statement of fact, not a value judgement). His writing is exciting to read, like a good adventure story, as he's bringing to light a lot of fascinating information in a way that subtly coves the excitement of discovery. His attitude to the cultures he studied is respectful and often admiring.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars GREAT TITLE, BUT THE KESSINGER EDITION IS A LOUSY REPRODUCTION, February 28, 2006

By 

J. DeMeo "naturalenergyworks" (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Sexual Life of Savages in North Western Melanesia (Paperback)

This book by Malinowski is fantastic, and I already own an earlier edition from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It is a milestone work in ethnography, and a must-read for those interested in human sexuality and the larger issue of social violence. However, this particular Kessinger Publishing edition is TERRIBLE in that virtually all of the photos are unrecognizable. (NOTE: The first time I submitted this review to Amazon, it popped up on several different editions of the Malinowski book, by different publishers -- my criticism applies ONLY to the Kessinger edition, with a plain text yellow-border cover.) Half the value of the Malinowski book is the dozens of photographs which he took, which appeared in all editions since the very first one, but which in the Kessinger reproduction come out looking like bad images from a old fax machine, being transmitted to your telephone from another planet. Don't waste your bucks on this particular edition. Kessinger specializes in republication of old out-of-copyright items, which are OK if all you want is the text. For anything with photos, it is a giant disappointment.