Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922)

The Introduction presents Malinowski’s methods and the topic of the ethnography. In the Trobriand archipelago off the coast of New Guinea, excellent seafarers trade goods along established routes and engage in the Kula, a complex trade system of gifts steeped in magic and tradition. When he first arrives, he struggles to understand Trobriand culture. He studies native technology and tools, and later moves to more quantitative data collection. However, he remarks that this information remains “dead material” and gives no “understanding of any real native mentality or behavior” because he cannot get a “native interpretation” of the information or “the hang of tribal life” (4).

Once alone, Malinowski learns the “secrets” of good fieldwork. First, the ethnographer must live without other outsiders in the studied culture. This allows them to observe ordinary aspects of daily life and eventually to get the “feel” of the culture. Second, one must “possess real scientific aims and know the values and criteria of modern ethnography” (11), which he details later in the chapter. Third, he must use special methods of recording data, including recording objective information on every aspect of life in “charts or synoptic tables” (11). He calls this the “method of statistic documentation by concrete evidence” (11).