Ethnology and the Study of Society

Bibliographic Data

ID9720979
AuthorsBronislaw Malinowski (corresponding author)
Year1922
Issue6
Pages208
Publication date1922-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2548314
OpenAlexW2978601703
LanguageEN
Citations received19

EVERY branch of knowledge can be made useful; first, in its direct application to the practical management of the subject; secondly, in opening a wider outlook upon its subject matter, in allowing us to build up a more adequate theory of the phenomena in question.The study of savage and coloured races possesses practical value, in the first sense, for purposes of colonial administration and the management of the relations between white and coloured people.In the second sense, ethnology may be a most powerful means of widening our outlook on human nature, of allowing us to build up a correct theory of society for the future scientificguidance of human affairs.This latter claim sounds yet, in our present state of things, like a mixture of wild utopia and an anaemic truism, but I think even the most pessimistic will have to admit that to cultivate and spread true and correct views of human nature and human society, cannot be without its good effects.Let us say a few words first about the direct application of ethnology to colonial legislation and policy.We must remember that slavery, " dispersing of natives," indiscriminate " punitive expeditions," and the grossest forms of reckless injustice to natives, are things of the very recent past.One has to remember only the opium war on China, the Australian " blackbirding" in the South Seas, the even more recent " transplanting'" of the Hereros in German South-West Africa and the Belgian and French atrocities in Africa scarcely a generation ago.With such an attitude prevalent, it was not to be hoped that a scientific management of natives or native affairs could become the guiding force in colonial policy.Of course, there existed always exceptionally able and far-sighted administrators who understood that in order to govern, one must know the human material.We owe, indeed, some of our best ethnographic information to men like Sir Everard im Thurn, Sir Richard Temple, Captain Francis Barton and other colonial officials.Also, many missionaries understood well that in order to spread a new creed, it is necessary to study thoroughly the existing religion and morality, which have to be supplanted and ultimately destroyed.But neither the religious nor the civil transformers of savage societies, as a body, took any trouble about a systematic, purposeful study of the material on which they were going to work and about the application of this study to practice.And even now, with the possible exception of Holland, none of the colonial powers in existence to-day seems to be willing to spend much money or effort on summoning the help of science to their difficult task of managing the subject native races

Economics · Ethnology · Political science · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Globalization and political ideologies

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