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Under a Creative Commons license Open access AbstractWhile women generally prefer to compete less than men, cultural practices and physiological responses to competition may affect willingness to compete. I examine how kinship structure and stress affect the gender gap in willingness to compete in a lab experiment among individuals from 27 ethnic groups along the matrilineal belt in Central Africa. I find no evidence that matrilineal kinship relative to patrilineal kinship closes the gender gap in competition: 80% of men and 60% of women choose to compete with no differential effect across kinship systems. Using physiological data, I find that women who experience greater stress during competition are less likely to choose to compete. Keywordskinship structure matrilineal culture competition gender stress Cited by (0)© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. 1During World War I, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) conducted an intensive ethnographic study in the Trobriand Island archipelago of Melanesia, a fieldwork locale that came to represent one of the founding moments of modern anthropology. In anthropologists?discourses on the history of their discipline, Malinowski
appears as the ?mythic culture hero of anthropological method? (Stocking, 1983, p. 71), and anthropology students are still expected to absorb the principles he laid down in the Argonauts of the Western Pacific if they want to be able to partake in what he called ?the ethnographer?s magic? (1922, p. 6). But Malinowski?s academic life and scientific production began well before he did his renowned fieldwork in the Trobriands. He published his first book, The Family among
the Australian Aborigenes. A Sociological Study, in London in 1913. [1] It is worthwhile studying this work, subtitled ?a sociological study?, as a matrix for his later research, for in it are to be found not only the lineaments of his future, highly insightful methodological and theoretical innovations, but also certain blind spots and consistent points of tension in his
intellectual exchanges. 2My purpose here is to analyze the embryogenesis of Malinowski?s thought. I use the term deliberately, as I show here that the question of knowledge about how children are conceived was crucial and problematic for Malinowski from the outset. While constituting an essential line of inquiry in his approach to the social life of what were called
savages, the question also played a determining role in how he conceived the specificity of the social sciences. And in all likelihood it was one source of his own hunger for inquiry. 3After briefly recalling the trajectory of Malinowski?s life before his departure for Oceania, I study in detail the 1913 work on family life among the Australian Aborigenes. The book deserves
to be examined in depth for three reasons : in it the author lays down a number of methodological principles which will constitute the basis of all his later works; it contains Malinowski?s first statements about how kinship phenomena should be approached; the question of savages? supposed ignorance of physiological paternity is already of singular importance. 4After
recalling the circumstances of Malinowski?s stay in Melanesia, I examine the persistence of these themes, specifically as they are embodied in a dispute between Malinowski and a colonial administrator named Alex Rentoul. I show how Malinowski?s will to develop specifically scientific knowledge of savages became anchored in his repeated affirmation that they were ignorant of physiological paternity, an idea on which he would brook no contradiction. 5Bronislaw Malinowski was born and spent his childhood in the city of Cracow, in Galicia, a province of what was then the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His father, Lucjan Malinowski, a renowned professor of Slavic philology at Cracow?s Jagiellonian University, showed a lively interest in Polish ethnography and folklore. In 1902,
Malinowski himself entered the university, where after a brief period studying science, he switched to philosophy of science. In 1908 at the faculty of philosophy he defended his doctoral thesis, ?On the principle of the economy of thought?, primarily a commentary on the work of the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. 6Malinowski?s reasons for turning to anthropology have
not been clearly established. The influence of his father?s ethnographic preoccupations has been cited (Weiner, 1987, p. XLI). Malinowski himself insisted on the determining role of reading James Frazer?s major work : ?My first love for ethnology is associated with the reading of The Golden Bough, then in its second edition? (1922, p. XVIII). Referring to a letter Malinowski sent to Frazer, Stocking evokes the possibility that his mother read him The Golden Bough during a
period of convalescence (1983, p. 93). However all this may be, his mother was closely associated for him with his first readings in anthropology : ?A little notebook of hers has survived in which, in her exquisite handwriting, she translated, obviously for Bronio, brief excerpts of The Native Tribes of Central Australia by Spencer and Gillen and from The Golden Bough.? (Wayne, 1985, p. 532).
[2] 7In 1908, Malinowski went to Leipzig, where he attended Wilhelm Wundt?s course in psychology and Karl Bücher?s in economic history. It was here that he met Annie Brunton, a single South African pianist whom Helena Wayne describes as ?considerably
older than himself [?] surely a mother figure to him? (1985, pp. 531-532), and who would have considerable influence on the course of his life. In 1910 she decided to go to London to complete her musical training, and Bronislaw decided to leave with her. The two lived together in London from 1910 to 1914. [3] Malinowski became a post-graduate student at the London School
of Economics, where he attended Edward Westermarck?s courses in sociology and Charles Seligman?s in ethnology. He became integrated fairly quickly into British academic circles. In 1913-1914, as a ?lecturer in special subjects? at the London School of Economics, he began teaching a course entitled ?Primitive religion and social differentiation?. He was a awarded a doctorate in anthropology from London University in 1916. 8At the time there was not yet a clearly drawn boundary between anthropology and sociology. Research problems and currents of thought in the two disciplines were highly interpenetrated. Up until the late nineteenth century, the strong, pervasive influence of the evolutionist paradigm meant that all social science researchers were closely attentive to ethnographic documentation. Monumental
syntheses such as those by Herbert Spencer and James Frazer, in which all available ethnographic material was assembled and ordered, were the work of researchers who had never been in direct contact with the ethnic groups studied. 9During the first quarter of the twentieth century, however, the discipline of anthropology underwent major refocusing and restructuring. More
and more researchers left to work ?in the field? and the practice of intensive ethnography became a prerequisite for any theorizing. From then on it was important for general comments on primitive life to be based on direct field experience. Simultaneously, theoretical approaches changed, with unilinear evolutionism yielding to new modes of interpreting cultural similarities and differences. As early as 1896, in an article entitled ?The limitations of comparative method in anthropology?, Franz
Boas vigorously critiqued evolutionist schemata and methods. The feeling became widespread that the psychological and sociological hypotheses underlying evolutionist doctrine were inadequate. This led some researchers, among them Radcliffe-Brown, to move toward a version of Durkheimian sociology in which all recourse to individual psychology was banished. Others, particularly Malinowski, backed functionalism and social psychology. 10The fact that in this context Malinowski identified some of his first works as sociological reflects his desire both to distance himself from evolutionist speculation, which to his mind still held too strong a sway in anthropological thinking, and to give primacy to the study of the institutional and emotional aspects of primitive peoples? ways of life over their ideals. The aim was no
longer to reconstitute the successive stages of past types of spiritual organization, but rather to study ?the social morphology? (1913, p. 1) of the family as it existed among natives in the present. 11Malinowski?s pre-Oceania publications may be divided into two types : critical reviews in Man and Folk-Lore, namely of works on Australian
Aborigenes; and his own research studies on family configurations and relations between religion and social organization. 12In his first texts there are already indications of what Edmund Leach went so far as to call his ?obsessive empiricism? (1957, p. 120). Malinowski established a sharp opposition between observation and objective description of facts on the one
hand, speculation and purely theoretical constructions on the other, dividing existing works into two categories : ?first-hand observations? (1911a, p. 383) that provide ?a description that is as objective and full as possible of the facts? (1910, p. 139), and works by ?second-hand compilers? (1911b, p. 27), too often pervaded by a ?dogmatic standpoint? (1914, p. 266). 13This opposition provided one of the major organizing ideas in his sharp critique of Durkheim?s Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912), published in 1913 in Folk-Lore. He rejects Durkheim?s view of religion as ?a metaphysical conception deprived of any empirical meaning? (1913b, p. 287).
[4] 14Malinowski?s first book, The Family among Australian Aborigenes (1913a), is based not on ethnographic experience but a critical
compilation of existing literature. It is presented as ?a detailed inquiry into the institution of the family in Australia? (p. V). The author describes his purpose thus : ?I wish only to describe in correct terms and as thoroughly as possible all that refers to actual family life in Australia.? (p. 1). Though he does occasionally refer to Aboriginal societies as being at ?low stages of cultures? (p. 169), his approach goes against evolutionist studies. Indeed, Malinowski?s epistemological
framework rests first and foremost on the major opposition between ?facts? (the term is used positively five times on the first page) and ?speculations? (used negatively three times on page VII). From the outset he presents his work as ?a mere collection and description of facts? (p. V), in contrast to the ?fanciful constructions? and ?somewhat artificial conceptions? (p. VI) of evolutionist theorists. This dichotomy is then linked to a new opposition between a sociological approach to current
phenomena and a study bearing essentially on the past. On the subject of evolutionist study, Malinowski writes : ?It is evident that in all these and similar speculations the chief attention was not drawn to the actual working of the social mechanism, but to survivals, rudiments, and fictitious primeval conditions. And the method of sociological thinking has not been developed upon living social forms, but upon shadows and petrified remains.? (p. VII). Under these conditions it is hardly
surprising to read the following declaration at the very opening of the book : ?I shall avoid making any hypothetical assumptions, or discussing general problems which refer to the origin or evolution of the family.? (p. 1). This initial, crystal clear commitment is of the highest interest to us here. As we shall see, Malinowski kept it throughout the book, with one exception : the problem of ignorance about physiological paternity. 15Exposing the futility of the evolutionist approach had particularly strong implications for the issue of ?group marriage?. Malinowski set out to refute authors who, because they considered the Aborigenes to represent an archaic form of human development, ruled out a priori the possibility of their living within individual families and analyzed Australian kinship phenomena as
survivals of group marriage, in some cases going so far as to see them as present versions of that arrangement. In chapter 4, entitled ?Sexual Aspect of Marriage?, Malinowski works to establish that, contrary to affirmations by Spencer and Gillen as well as Frazer, ceremonial customs staging sexual licence should not be interpreted as evidence of current practice or even a reminiscence of group marriage. Though Malinowski does not specify until the middle of the work in a footnote what he means
by ?family unit?, [5] the claim that this basic unit does indeed exist for the Aborigenes runs throughout it. And he concludes with certainty that the documentation shows ?how the individuality of the family unit shows itself in the Aboriginal mode of living? (p. 167). Moreover, he suggests that there is evidence that individual families exist universally : ?What appeared
to be nearly universal in this connection is the fact that infants and small children are always especially attached, and stand in a specific close relation, to a man and a woman. She is invariably their own mother, who gave them birth; the man is the woman?s husband. The existence of this group, which may be called the family unit or individual family, is the basis upon which kinship may be determined; it is the condition under which it is possible to speak of individual parental kinship in any
given society.? (p. 199). [6] 16Malinowski?s stated determination to stick strictly to the facts raises a delicate methodological problem for him. The documentation on Aborigenes is in fact highly contradictory, particularly on the question of the individual family. Curr, for example, affirms that that type of family does exist for them, whereas Spencer and Gillen are certain the opposite is true. These contradictions require a method of fine-tuning the investigation : ?After we have heard twenty opinions on the same subject which by no means agree with each other, to which shall we adhere ? A method of dealing with evidence must be fixed upon.? (p. 17). The method consists primarily in source critique : ?The view here set out were, briefly, that it is impossible to use the statements in their crude form, and that consequently they must be submitted to criticism [?] Throughout the whole study there was constant necessity for dealing critically with the text of the evidence.? (pp. 293-294). The obvious question is, what criteria did Malinowski use to establish his critical hierarchy of sources ? His first move is to dismiss all studies by ?second-hand compilers? (p. IX). Only publications by authors who fit directly or indirectly into the category of ?firsthand observers? may qualify : ?In the present work no writer is excluded, provided that he has had opportunities of first-hand observation, or opportunities of private information from first-hand observers.? (p. 19, n. 1). But this first cull cannot resolve the difficulty because ?the ethnographic first-hand literature? (p. 27) is also filled with contradictions. It is thus necessary to determine which of these writings are ?the best first-hand authorities? (p. 2), and to do this each author?s statements are to be evaluated through a series of questions : ?Did the author possess all the qualities necessary for a good ethnographer ? Has he good opportunities to observe the natives and a good method of doing so ? Were the latter still in primitive condition, or in an advanced state of decay ?? (p. 20). Answering each of these questions enables Malinowski to cast doubt on the credibility of certain statements and approve and emphasize others. It is important, he affirms, to take into account the observer?s profession : ?It is quite clear, that not only the personal character but also the profession or occupation of the writer influences very considerably the value and trustworthiness and the character of the information given [?] A missionary, a police trooper, or an ethnologist will each look with different eyes upon the same facts; each of them will group the essential features and generalize [?] quite differently, and will express himself in terms which are by no means of the same degree of exactness and clearness.? (p. 23). The critique is aimed particularly at missionaries, the less valued side of the opposition, against whom the qualifications of the professional ethnographer stand out favorably : ?For it is usually the privilege of the missionaries to be in a long and intimate contact with the natives, to have their confidence, and sometimes to understand even their language, while it is the ethnographer?s privilege to understand the aim of his inquiries.? (p. 22). Whereas ?the missionary will be influenced by his creeds and his moral ideas? (p. 24), the trained ethnographer will know, and know how, to be objective : ?a mental training in a scientific direction is exclusively to be found among the ethnographers? (p. 25). In these few pages, and just before becoming its first incarnation, Malinowski draws the figure of the professional anthropologist, the only witness with the necessary credentials for recovering the truth of primitives. 17Malinowski uses his criteria throughout the book. In chapter 3, for example, entitled ?Husband and Wife?, he examines existing literature on the ?general character of the marital relations? (p. 67), noting that published materials on the matter are particularly riven with contradiction on how the husband behaves toward his wife. There are 14 affirmations that he behaves badly, even barbarically, and seven that he behaves decently or well. With the assertion that of the 14 sources suggesting bad treatment, ?only three are fairly reliable,? because ?the majority of observations were made on degenerate blacks (such as were in missions, raised on farms, in the service of white men, etc.)?, he begins to reverse the proportion. ?Four out of the seven authorities who affirm good treatment are very clear and explicit?, he continues, ?and their statements are consequently very consistent with themselves?. This means ?if we reduce both these figures by using only reliable ones, we have four against three in favour of good treatment?. His conclusion : ?This all shows that, in case of contradiction, we may suppose that the statements affirming unusual ill-treatment are affected by errors due to bad material, insufficient observation, and false inference.? (pp. 80-82). [7] 18The book is interesting not only for the methodological rules it uses, but for the ideas the author develops on the way kinship phenomena should be studied. We know Malinowski affirmed that what he called the individual family was ?nearly universal'. However, he also insists that ?the variability and multiplicity of forms of marriage and family? (p. 168) must be fully taken into account, asserting that kinship phenomena vary immensely with ?the varying general conditions of society? (p. 199). In other words, the individual family, while certainly present everywhere, occurs in configurations that vary greatly by social context : ?It must be acknowledged that this social unit undergoes deep changes as other elements of social structure change.? (p. 206). Under these conditions, Western authors?frames of references are no longer adequate : ?Our ideas of kinship are defined by certain facts which are not to be found in the given primitive society.? (p. 169). The problem is particularly acute for the role played by blood ties : ?Parental kinship is in our own society conceived invariably and exclusively in termes of consanguinity, or speaking more explicitly, parental kinship is conceived as established by the tie of common blood, resulting from birth (maternal kinship) or procreation (paternal kinship).? (p. 176). However, social representations of procreation are highly diverse. There are societies that do not acknowledge the physiological processes of procreation; in these societies, therefore, ?the ties of blood play no part in the collective ideas of kinship? (p. 179). Malinowski then claims this to be the case for the vast majority of Aboriginal tribes in Australia : ?Over the greater part of the continent the father?s share in procreation is not known. There cannot be any social acknowledgment of it [?] Accordingly no tie of blood can be supposed to exist between the father and his child; there is no room for any ideas of physiological paternity.? (p. 179 and p. 209). 19Much space is devoted in The Family among the Australian Aborigenes to the question of ignorance of physiological paternity, and the author considers his conclusions on this point to be one of the work?s essential contributions : ?From all the results obtained, the most certain and best founded one is the negative fact that the majority of the Australian tribes are wholly ignorant of the physiological process of procreation.? (p. 232). Malinowski?s main source was Spencer and Gillen?s The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), and their conclusions are cited several times : ?The natives one and all in these tribes believe that the child is the direct result of the entrance into the mother of an ancestral spirit individual. They have no idea of procreation as being directly associated with sexual intercourse, and firmly believe that children can be born without this taking place. They are, for example, in the Arunta country certain stones which are supposed to be charged with spirit children, who can, by magic, be made to enter the bodies of women, or will do so of their own accord.? (Spencer and Gillen, quoted in Malinowski p. 209). Other authors are enlisted on the point, namely Frazer, who in Totemism and Exogamy (1910) had come to support the thesis of the Aborigenes?ignorance of physiological paternity : The view is shared by all the tribes of Central and Northern Australia. In point of fact, I am informed by the Bishop of North Queensland (Dr Frodsham) that the opinion is held by all the tribes with which he is acquainted both in North Queensland and in Central Australia including the Arunta; not only are the natives in their savage states ignorant of the true cause of conception, but they do not readily believe it even after their admission into mission stations, and their incredulity has to be reckoned with the effort of the clergy to introduce a higher standard of sexual morality among them.? (Frazer, quoted p. 226). It is striking how, contrary to the principles he himself has laid down, Malinowski does not hesitate to argue here from statements by a clergyman reported by a ?second-hand compiler?. 20Malinowski is quite cavalier about certain facts that might have led him at least to doubt that the Aborigenes were entirely ignorant of physiological paternity. This point is important because it prefigures quite strikingly the way in which he later dismissed similar objections with regard to his Trobriand material. He knew the Aborigenes clearly stated that sexual relations favored pregnancy, but this fact did not affect his own arguments. The natives understood sexual relations to do no more than prepare the mother to receive an already formed child-spirit : ?In this belief there is absolutely nothing that would point to any individual male as the father of the child [?] it does not imply any knowledge that a given man has contributed to the body or soul of the child.? (pp. 211-212). Malinowski had likewise been informed of the fact that the Aborigenes seemed to know the physiological mechanisms of procreation among animals. Though he acknowledges that ?there is undoubtedly some difficulty [here]?, he immediately adds : ?Nevertheless the case is not quite hopeless : if we assume that this correct physiological knowledge is of a relatively late origin, it is quite natural that it would arise first in relation to the animal world, because the ideas about man being the most important and elaborate, would be the most conservative.? (p. 211). 21This last remark brings us to what is most remarkable in this work : the affirmation that ?primitive humanity was certainly wholly ignorant of the process of procreation? (p. 200). This assertion is extremely surprising for at least three reasons. First, it flagrantly contradicts the methodological principle laid down at the start that no conjectures would be made about archaic states of humanity. Second, Malinowski?s declarative tone on the matter stands in striking contrast to his explicit caution on others. Third, he does not really argue or demonstrate the point, simply affirming that ?this ignorance is of general sociological importance, because there are well-founded reasons for believing that it was once universal amongst primitive mankind, as may be held to be proved by Mr E. S. Hartland in his thorough treatise on Primitive Paternity. For the detailled argument the reader must be referred to this fundamental work? (p. 181). In the consecutive footnote he specifies : The book of Mr Sidney Hartland is undoubtedly the most thorough and most scientific discussion of the present problem. The strength of his arguments and the mass of evidence strongly support his conclusions. The contrary opinion, viz. that the Australian nescience is an accidental result of some animistic beliefs, an opinion chiefly represented by Mr A. Lang, seems to be based more on speculation than on facts. This view that the ignorance of paternity was widespread in primitive mankind is shared by Prof Frazer, A. van Gennep, and Frhr. von Reitzenstein.? (p. 181, n. 1). He thus does not specify Hartland?s arguments or those of his contradictors, citing merely the authors? names as proof of their authority, whereas his affirmation required particularly developed argumentation since it contradicted his own basic rule of not looking into humankind?s earliest past. Malinowski surely had ?sound reasons to believe? that primitives were ignorant of physiological paternity. He did not, however, deem it necessary at the time to specify them. 22At the end of this work, the author acknowledges that his study of Aboriginal family life is ?obviously incomplete? since it only considers ?kinship groups? (p. 303), and adds that ?the writer hopes to return to this subject on another occasion? (p. 303, n. 1). Over the next two decades, the debate on the Aborigenes? ignorance of physiological paternity developed considerably. Some researchers, such as Geza Roheim in Australian Totemism (1925), contested Malinowski?s conclusions, while others, particularly Ashley-Montagu in Coming into Being among the Australian Aborigenes (1937), were at pains to defend him. Malinowski participated in the debate, namely by prefacing a work by Ashley-Montagu. However, he never directly studied Australian Aborigenes again, turning his attention instead to Melanesia. The birth of ethnographic authority23Thanks to extremely careful and detailed historical studies, [8] we now have a precise picture of the circumstances of Malinowski?s stay in Oceania, of which there follows a brief review. 24The annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) was to be held in August 1914 in Melbourne, Australia. Charles Seligman managed to secure Malinowski?s travel fare by getting him appointed president of the association?s anthropology section. Malinowski was to give a lecture on ?primitive religion? at the conference. Above all, he planned to do some firsthand ethnographic study during his stay. It was initially agreed that he would study certain Melanesian groups that Seligman had been able to observe only briefly for his 1904 survey. The First World War broke out even before Malinowski?s ship anchored off Australia, significantly affecting his plans. At the time, he was an Austrian national and was thus considered an ?enemy alien? by the Australian authorities. [9] Throughout the four years of the war, he was under house arrest in Australia, meaning in principle he could neither return to Europe or move freely in that country. But thanks to interventions by various intermediaries he obtained permission to travel to and work in New Guinea and the nearby island archipelagos. [10] The Australian authorities even decided after much hesitation to increase his meager allowance : ?We might as well help the poor chap since we?ll have to support him anyway?, wrote Atlee Hunt, secretary of the department of Foreign Affairs, in a memorandum to his minister (quoted in Young, 1984, p. 9). There can be no doubt that Malinowski intended to do fieldwork when he left Great Britain. Still, it is clear that he would not have remained in Oceania as long as he did had it not been for the war. And it should be noted that his research was conducted under very particular conditions : captivity and forced distance from close friends and family, namely his mother in Poland. 25As we know, Malinowski sejourned twice in the Trobriand Islands, north of the eastern tip of New Guinea, for a total of twenty months, from June 1915 to March 1916 and from December 1917 to September 1918. [11] Contrary to a still widespread understanding, Malinowski was not the first researcher to practice intensive ethnography in a restricted cultural area. [12] He was, however, uncontestably the first to explain in published scientific writings that his theorizing was based on prior fieldwork. He thus initiated a new truth regime in anthropological discourse. As the American historian and cultural theorist James Clifford has pointed out, through the late nineteenth century ?nothing guaranteed the status of the ethnographer as a better interpreter of the native life than the traveler or above all the missionary or administrator? (1983, p. 92). It was only in the early twentieth century that fieldwork studies done by specialized, university-trained researchers became the preferred source for data on remote peoples. From then on, ?for anthropological abstractions to be valid, they would have to based as much as possible on intensive description of cultures observed by qualified researchers? (ibid., p. 91). Malinowski?s writings were central in bringing this about. Before ?ethnographic authority? (p. 100) could become the professional norm, it had to be realized in textual practice. The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) was the ?literary charter for this new authority? (p. 95). In this work, Malinowski initiated a style centered around the affirmation of the ethnographer?s presence, the ethnographer?s ?I was there? (p. 99). From then on, reference to the field and invocation of participant observation would function as procedures of accreditation, giving particular weight to the scientific text and thereby devaluing other possible accounts. 26Malinowski began attacking those who could not claim professional field experience. His texts are riddled with disparaging remarks on research by ?untrained observers? or ?untrained minds? (1922, p. 5 and p. 19). In the preface to the Argonauts he writes : ?The research which has been done on native races by men of academic training has proved beyond doubt and cavil that scientific, methodic inquiry can give us results far more abundant and of better quality than those of even the best amateur?s work.? (p. XV). This affirmation returns like a leitmotiv throughout the study. Clearly the idea is to suffuse the reader with the idea that the observations of missionaries and colonial administrators are necessarily biased, whereas those of the professional ethnographer are of uncontestable value : ?For none of them [white residents] lives right in a native village, except for very short periods, and everyone has his own business, which takes up a considerable part of his time. Moreover, if, like a trader or a missionary or an official he enters into active relations with the native, if he has to transform or influence or make use of him, this makes a real, unbiassed, impartial observation impossible, and precludes all-round sincerity, at least in the case of the missonaries and officials.? (p. 18). 27Remarks of this type have the power of the obvious. It is therefore necessary to keep a critical eye out for any unfair assumptions or accusations they might imply. I will not contest the fact that studies conducted by missionaries or colonial administrators may in some ways be biased by the authors? specific occupations, nor that professional ethnographers? research is often more insightful than that of such ?residents?, though it is important not to generalize or systematically denigrate the observation capabilities of people who may in fact be in more prolonged contact with natives than ethnographers, know vernacular languages remarkably well, and in a position to collect large quantities of precious material. However, I would strenuously protest against any suggestion made on the basis of a ?stylistic? contrast that a professional anthropologist closely following the model of participant ethnography produces descriptions and analyses that are necessarily ?true, neutral, impartial' whereas those of an amateur are not. Such a suggestion is in sore need of demonstration. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to call into question the veracity, neutrality, and impartiality of some of Malinowski?s affirmations. 28The first article Malinowski published on the Trobrianders, ?Baloma : The Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands? (1916), is devoted primarily to what he sees as their ignorance of physiological paternity, a clear indication of how important this theme was in his mind. [13] It is worthwhile looking in some detail at how the author formulates his affirmations on the subject. 29
30The author quickly found himself up against critical commentary from a number of contradictors. 31As early as 1918, Carveth Read published an article criticizing Spencer and Gillen?s conclusions on Australian Aborigenes and Malinowski?s on the Trobrianders. His hypothesis was ?that the natives do know the truth, or have known it (perhaps not all of them), but that a dogma contradicting such knowledge has been established by the animistic philosophy, and has succeeded in repressing it and even, in many cases, expelling it from consciousness? (1918, p. 146). Read?s three supporting arguments are : the people concerned are perfectly capable intellectually of recognizing physiological paternity; there are many empirical indications that they have positive knowledge of the matter; there is a significant amount of historical evidence that this positive knowledge has been obscured by a socially instituted dogma. 32In 1921 the Finnish sociologist Edward Westermarck made use of the fifth edition of his History of Human Marriage to refute his former student?s theses on ignorance of physiological paternity : ?Generally speaking, I do not think that existing ideas about reproduction take us back to a period when man was completely ignorant of the connection between coitus and pregnancy [?] I am not quite sure, after all, that the Kiriwinian theory of human reproduction may not have to some extent been influenced by superimposed animistic ideas, although Dr Malinowski is of another opinion.? (vol. 1, p. 291). Westermarck put forward two supporting arguments : the fact that a particular belief can readily coexist with positive knowledge and that in Malinowski?s writings themselves there are facts that seem to suggest the Trobrianders had a least partial knowledge of paternity. Malinowski was no doubt disappointed not to have won over his teacher. He did not, however, answer him directly, any more than he did Read. 33In November 1924 the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones gave a lecture to the British Psycho-Analytical Society (BPS); it was published in 1925 in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis under the title ?Mother-Right and the Sexual Ignorance of Savages?. In a critical reading of material published by Malinowski, he called into question the natives?presumed ignorance of the mechanisms of physiological paternity and tried to establish that their beliefs about conception constituted a distorted reflection of repressed Oedipal motions. Seligman and Malinowski attended the lecture, as the report on the session attests : ?In the discussion, Professor Seligman thought that Dr Jones had laid too little stress on purely social and economic factors. Mr Malinowski, on the other hand, accepted Dr Jones?s theory of mother-right and agreed that the sexual ignorance he had reported was probably of neurotic origin.? (Bryan, 1925, p. 238). It is fairly surprising to learn that Malinowski expressed agreement with Jones. Indeed, three years later, he published Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927b), in which he maintains all of his earlier affirmations and adopts a significantly harsher tone than before with regard to psychoanalysis. [14] Malinowski versus Rentoul34This brings us to the particularly sharp dispute between Malinowski and a colonial administrator named Rentoul in the early 1930s. The relevant texts, of which there is no French translation, are extremely interesting, particularly for the tones of the two protagonists. 35Malinowski?s adversary was a magistrate with a deep interest in the mores of the people under his jurisdiction. In August 1931 he published an three-page article in Man signed ?Alex C. Rentoul, district officer, Losuia, Trobriand Islands? and entitled ?Physiological Paternity and the Trobrianders?. It is important to note that neither the title or the tone of the article can be deemed unpleasant with regard to Malinowski. The text nonetheless drew an extremely violent response. 36Rentoul presents himself as having ?an experience of sixteen years amongst various Papuan tribes, the last few being spent amongst the peoples of Western Melanesia and in [?] the Trobriand Group itself? (p. 152). He explains that he has read of Malinowski?s claim that the Trobrianders are ignorant of physiological paternity in a book review of one of his works. He is quite open about the fact that he has not had direct access to Malinowski?s text : ?It is a far cry from London to Losuia in the Trobriand Islands; hence it was not until late in the year that the writer had an opportunity of reading in the Spectator of 16th March 1929 a most interesting review of Dr Malinowski?s Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, over the name of J. H. Driberg, in which the reviewer expressed some difficulty in completely accepting Malinowski?s statements that amongst the Trobrianders physiological fatherhood is unknown.? (p. 152). His own contacts with natives have convinced him that Malinowski?s affirmations are incorrect : ?I have not the slightest doubt that they are fully aware of the main ideas of physiological paternity.? (p. 154). He advances the following arguments :
37This text, though not written by an academic authority, is clearly a genuine effort to argue a point of view at very least defensible. Malinowski, however, judged it completely inacceptable coming from a colonial administrator. It was not Rentoul's arguments that unleashed his ire, but rather the following sentence : ?It has been my privilege as a District Officer amongst these most interesting people to come into close touch with their domestic problems. Many of the Trobrianders who have appeared before me have been suffering under the stress of some domestic upheaval, often in the form of adultery, criminal behaviour or sudden death on the part of husband or wife, and under such circumstances, I take it, one might be in a more advantageous position for analysing their true feelings and relationship than would a visiting anthropologist, however gifted.? (Rentoul, 1931, p. 153). 38Malinowski published an inflammatory five-page reply in Man entitled ?Pigs, Papuans, and Police Court Perspective?. The title gives a foretaste of the tone, generally haughty and unpleasant, suggesting Rentoul's text had indeed touched a nerve. His reponse is first and foremost a reaction to Rentoul's expression ?visiting anthropologist?, which he cites no less than seven times. More than half of the text is spent establishing the superior knowledge produced by a professional anthropologist over the slight remarks of a mere colonial administrator?his interlocutor ?sweepingly disposes of the qualifications of the scientific specialist? (p. 34). After citing the a ?visiting anthropologist, however gifted?sentence, he comments upon it thus : ?If my critic were correct, obviously no anthropologist, ëhowever gifted?, would be needed, and all the work could be done by the white residents on the spot. But are such claims valid ?? (p. 34). 39To answer that question, Malinowski engages in a long, laborious comparison between the credentials understood to give each party the right to speak of Trobrianders. He begins by recalling his on-site fieldwork : ?I might answer that in the course of three expeditions, I spent twenty-four months in the Trobriands alone, and that after the first three months I used exclusively the language of Kiriwina.? (p. 35), simultaneously calling Rentoul's qualifications into question : ?I happen to know that Mr Rentoul's residence must have been under 18 months, and I also know that he was not in possession of the language of the natives.? (p. 35). As a colonial administrator, Rentoul is hardly in a position to make relevant observations : ?The perspective of the police court is not very auspicious to field-work.? (p. 34). Moreover, he has no solid scientific training : ?The writer betrays an absence of knowledge about scientific concepts, methods, and use of words.? (p. 37). And he has never published any serious work : ?But even granting that he had considerable advantages, the question to ask would be : ëWhat have you done with your ëadvantageous position?? What have you produced ? ?Article 162 ??? (p. 35). [15] 40Malinowski does restate and criticize certain of Rentoul's arguments, but his responses are unsatisfactory. On Rentoul's reference to native accounts of Trobriander women?s potential ability to ejaculate contraceptively, he remarks : ?This seems to me one of the typical myths which circulate among the semi-educated white residents, ascribing to the members of the inferior culture all sorts of preternatural powers. I am astonished that Mr Rentoul accepted it as a genuine native statement. But, since I am not a specialist in contraceptive methods, I would like only to remark that if Mr Rentoul's ëdiscovery? has anything in it, it ought to be patented, perfectioned, and applied to our own communities and, thus, solve the difficulties of Neo-Malthusianism.? (p. 36). This is meant as a cutting reply but it hardly refutes the argument. The point is is not whether Rentoul naively believed in the effectiveness of the method, but rather that ?many natives? (ie, not white residents) spoke to him about this practice of Trobriander women. Unless we want to call into question Rentoul's honesty, we have to admit that the existence of such accounts does indeed seem to attest to a concern about contraception and thus at least partial knowledge of the role of male semen. 41In December 1932, Rentoul answered Malinowski briefly in Man with a text entitled ?Papuans, Professors, and Platitudes?. With thoroughgoing British irony, he begins by noting Malinowski?s tone : ?I am therefore rather surprised that, instead of dismissing my small effort in half a column of his inimitable writing, Dr Malinowski should exhibit so much annoyance at my statements that he absorbs four and a half pages of this valuable publication, mainly in an endeavour to prove that I am a person of no account.? (p. 274). 42On the respective qualifications of the two protoganists?the question on which Malinowski had focused the dispute? the colonial administrator answers the anthropologist at length : ?What knowledge I possess of my natives has been gained not only in Courts of Native Matters, which, as Dr Malinowski should be aware, have a very different ëatmosphere?from an ordinary police court, but also by living amongst the people, questioning them, and studying them day by day [?] Dr Malinowski asks me to quote my authorities for my various statements. I will say that my authorities are scores of intelligent natives in the Trobriands whom I have interviewed, and whose information I have had sense enough to check and cross-check. It would be impraticable for me to quote the names of all my authorities in such a paper. Perhaps my word counts for something [?] What, after all, are Dr Malinowski?s writings but his own opinions and observations, and the results of his own interviews with various natives ? Is Dr Malinowski the only one who has discovered what the natives think ? Does he not admit the possibility of error on his part ?? (p. 274). 43Regarding the expression ?visiting anthropologist?, which had unleashed Malinowski?s fury, Rentoul tries to bring the debate down to more reasonable proportions : ?In an interesting territory like Papua, we have become used to the appearance of visiting anthropologists, sociologists, technologists and others. These gentlemen spend some little time in the territory working on their own particular thesis, and then depart to compile a book thereon. Dr Fortune, whom Dr Malinowski quotes, is of the type I mean. In my opinion, and I am sure Dr Malinowski will forgive me for again venturing my opinion, such work cannot be compared in value to the steady and continuous work performed by a stationary anthropologist such as Mr F. E. Williams, our Government anthropologist. That is why I used the term ëvisiting anthropologist?to distinguish the type from a permanent officer like Mr Williams, whose splendid work there is no need for me to praise.? (p. 274). 44Substantively, Rentoul reformulates his arguments and holds to his position, specifying : ?As a daily student of the natives themselves, I am content to believe that, like many professing Christians, the individual native can hold two beliefs : 1) that the offspring is the gift of God (or of the Baloma); and 2) that the child is given to the mother through the agency of the male seed. The first is the belief that would be expressed to any visiting anthropologist, and if that anthropologist were, like Dr Malinowski, already impressed by a somewhat similar discovery of Baldwin Spencer?s in North Australia, his acceptance of the same, without making allowance for the second belief, would be all the more understandable (p. 276). 45At the end of the exchange, both actors appear entrenched in their positions; the dispute does not seem to have advanced the debate. Still, it is possible to show that Malinowski?s thinking was shaken by it. The attentive reader can discern a kind of retreat, oddly worded but undeniable, in his response to Rentoul's first text, where he affirms that he has never claimed the Trobrianders are entirely ignorant of the physiological paternity : ?My thesis was not to prove that the Trobrianders know nothing about paternity, nor yet did I reluctantly admit that there exist among them paternal sentiments.? (1932, p. 37). After citing a series of carefully selected statements from previous publications, the anthropologist comments on them thus : ?All this, it is clear, means something quite different from the opinion that the ëTrobrianders are absolutely ignorant of physiological paternity,? which my critic by implication wishes to foist on me.? (p. 38). This assertion is quite odd, since Malinowski had indeed claimed, quite explicitly and several times, often in a quite categorical tone, that the Trobrianders were totally ignorant of physiological paternity. This is thus an unacknowledged about-face, which Rentoul was quick to note in his response : ?I am glad that in his article Dr Malinowski admits that his ëthesis was not to prove that the Trobrianders know nothing about paternity, nor yet did I reluctantly admit that there exist among them paternal sentiments?. He appears to have modified his statement slightly since the quotation in the first paragraph of this article on which I based my protest.? (1932, p. 276). 46That Malinowski?s position had been destabilized is still more blatant in his special preface to the third edition of The Sexual Life of Savages in North-western Melanesia (1932b). He notes first of all how ?disappointed? he is by the commentary elicited by his book (p. XIX); he had hoped his readers would know to perceive it as the culmination of his fieldwork and a demonstration of the validity of the functionalist method. Instead, most commentators focused on the ?sensational details?, such as ignorance of physiological paternity (p. XX). Still, though he has just termed it no more than a detail, he devotes the greater part of the preface to it. Once again he seems to have retreated on the two main aspects of the question. First, he disengages himself from his earlier positions on ignorance of physiological paternity as part of humankind?s original condition : ?In 1916, I defended the evolutionary thesis of Sidney Hartland about the universal ignorance of paternity in primitive mankind [...] In 1923 and again in 1927 I reiterated [?] The fact is that I have ceased to be a fundamentalist of evolutionary method, and I would rather discountenance any speculations about the ?origins? of marriage or anything else.? (pp. XXII-XXIII). Second, his comments on the subject of that ignorance itself have become much less blunt, clearly attesting to a movement of withdrawal : it is now a matter of ?the Trobrianders? incomplete realization of embryological facts? and ?a great confusion of the elements of knowledge and ignorance? (p. XXVII). 47Malinowski?s tone in his exchange with Rentoul was uselessly harsh and unpleasant. He clearly became tense in reaction to contradiction, and here there were simultaneously two points on which he could not brook it : savages? ignorance of physiological paternity, and the notion that the scientist or scholar was the one best equipped to know. 48It is important to note that Malinowski showed similar annoyance and expressed himself just as harshly in his ongoing debate with psychoanalysis. In a passage of the preface to Sex and Repression in Savage Society addressed to Jones, we see curious evidence that he has been shaken. As if he had run out of substantive arguments, he can only assert : ?As an anthropologist I feel more and more especially that ambitious theories with regard to savages, hypotheses of the origin of human institutions and accounts of the history of culture should be based on a sound knowledge of primitive life, as well as of the unconscious or conscious aspects of the human mind. After all, neither group-marriage nor totemism, neither avoidance of mother-in-law nor magic happen in the ëunconscious?; they are all solid sociological and cultural facts, and to deal with them theoretically requires a type of experience which cannot be acquired in the consulting room.? (1927b, pp. IX-X). The last lines are meant to reduce his interlocutor to silence in one blow. The ?ethnographic authority? argument is deployed without the least hesitation, and the question Malinowski focuses on once again is who is more qualified to speak of the Trobrianders. 49I return to Malinowski?s debate with psychoanalysis by design, for the matter of which he presumed the Trobrianders ignorant, which is also a point of sharp tension for him in his exchanges, is hardly insignificant in itself. It is not whether or not the Trobrianders knew anything of the universal laws of gravity, mechanisms of natural selection, or quantum theory. Their supposed absence of knowledge, their silence and denial, concerned something directly related to sexuality. 50At no time does Malinowski note this. On the contrary, he treats this apparent ?defect? in their knowledge as if it were ?nescience? about any scientific matter : ?I think it is rather inconsistent to get excited about the faulty knowledge of the Trobrianders when it comes to processes of sexual fertilization, while we are perfectly satisfied that they posses no real knowledge as to the processes of nutrition, or metabolism, the causes of disease and health, or any other subject of natural history?that they have no correct knowledge and cannot have it. These natives, in fact, do not know very much about Einstein?s theory of relativity, nor about the Newtonian laws of motion, nor yet about the systems of Copernicus and Keppler. Their knowledge of astronomy and physics is limited, their beliefs concerning anatomy and physiology crude. On botany and geology we would not expect them to give us any scientifically valid observations. Why, then, do we demand full and precise ideas on embryology ?? (1932b, p. XXVII). 51For their part, psychoanalysts are necessarily attentive to the fact that what is apparently unknown to the Trobrianders involves sexuality. [16] Psychoanalysts know that repression is especially effective when it comes to sexual representations. In other words, Malinowski neglected an fundamental given here. Whereas there is no serious reason to presume that the Trobrianders could have repressed representations of ?Einstein?s theory of relativity?, for anyone familiar with psychoanlytic theory and clinical work, there are solid reasons to suppose that they could have repressed representations concerning procreation. The hypothesis that representations about the role of sexual relations in child-conception existed for the Trobrianders but may have been repressed has one clear heuristic advantage : it makes it possible to account both for the fact that such representations were absent from Trobriander discourse and that distorted traces of such representations are discernible in that same discourse. [17] In his renowned 1908 article on child sexuality, Freud showed that the question of knowing how children are made is an enigma around which the defensive operations of repression are especially active. This may have been so not only for the Trobrianders, but for Malinowski himself, and it may thus shed light on the particular shape or curvature of his own drive to know. Notes
RÉFÉRENCES
What is the principle called that is based on culturally recognized parent/child connections that define the social categories to which people belong?Cards
Why are kinship terminologies important to anthropologists quizlet?Kinship is important to anthropology because anthropology is the study of human behavior and human behavior is variable. However, much of our behavior is determined by survival success for ourselves and our kin.
Which of the following would not belong to a man's matrilineage quizlet?Different members of one person's kin group may not be related to each other. Which of the following would not belong to a man's matrilineage? His daughter.
Which of the following statements reflects the way anthropologists understand myth?Which of the following statements reflects the way anthropologists understand myth? Myths may justify past action, explain action in the present, or generate future action. Myths are tools for overcoming logical contradictions that cannot otherwise be overcome.
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Which of the following observations about kinship is stressed by the authors of the textbook?
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