Argonauts of the Western Pacific
- Reading level
- Fairly demanding
- Price
- Free
About the book
"Argonauts of the Western Pacific" by Bronisław Malinowski is an ethnography published in 1922. This groundbreaking work documents the Trobriand people of the Kiriwana island chain near New Guinea, focusing on their complex trading system called the kula. Malinowski revolutionized anthropology by practicing "participant observation"—living among his subjects rather than studying them from afar. The book redefined ethnographic fieldwork and established intensive fieldwork as the foundation of modern social anthropology, earning comparison to Shakespeare's impact on literature.
- Kula exchange
- Massim (Papua New Guinean people)
- Ethnology
- Folklore
- Barter
- Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea)
Updated September 2026. Public domain in the USA. Text and summary from Project Gutenberg eBook #55822. Argonauts of the Western Pacific on Wikipedia.
