Image yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to a native village, while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails away out of sight. Since you take up your abode in the compound of some neighbouring white man, trader or missionary, you have nothing to do, but to start at once on your ethnographic work."
So begins Bronisław Malinowski's book, "Argonauts of the Western Pacific", which established him as one of Europe's most important anthropologists. It describes his work in the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea between 1914-1918 when he's said to have "gone native".
"Argonauts of the Western Pacific" is not everyone's idea of a ramble through the Trobriands, often described as the "Islands of Love" and depicted as a place of sexual freedom ever since these small atolls were made famous by Malinowski, so here's a dramatised version of his work:
Click on FULL SCREEN and enjoy!
