Page 119 - Prathima Volume 12

A Review of Postcolonial Scholarship: Conducting Research on Culture and Society
his Trobriand Island study expressed the Western White man experience of primitive
society without any previous experience or guidance. Unlike armchair
anthropological work, this study was his firsthand experience in doing research while
living with the community.

However, we have come across many shortcomings in his study because he has not
captured the holistic understanding of the village or human behavior. It is important to
realize that his study produced naturally biased information, prejudice opinions and
stereotypes that urged many anthropologists to effectively revise ethnographic
fieldwork methods. Perhaps, they felt that anthropological research should be more
scientific aim-oriented as the interpretative method has further shaped out the modern
ethnography. As a result, anthropologists are trying to produce good conditions of
work while applying special methods without ethnocentric construction.

Early ethnographers worked with verbatim statement; this kind of methodological
application encouraged ethnographers to do disciplinary oriented conceptualization of
functions in the society. For example, Malinowski's (1932 [1922]) study of kula; why
he was interested in studying the economy and exchange system there. In general,
Europeans were curious to study other cultures or societies from their cultural point of
view. Therefore, this case is also not an exceptional one that Malinowski was trying to
deploy a disciplinary definition of economy, which Europeans meant as economy. As a
result, his investigation ended with the Western notion of economy. Furthermore,
nobody denies that there were no economic and trading activities in the Trobriand
Island, but those activities were perceived or constructed in terms of economy. Here,
the major problem is not the study of economy, but the Europeans' conceptualization
of economy. Because, such notions were all about exchange or trading that he was
looking at a society in which people were taking something while travelling, but he did
not know what was going on there or what people were doing with kula. On the other
hand, Annette Weiner (1988) conducted fieldwork in the Trobriand Island nearly 60
years after Malinowski did his fieldwork and she presented a different analysis about
Trobriand life; for instance, Malinowski (1922) had written nothing about women's
role in Trobriand life, but Weiner (1988) has revealed the importance of women's
wealth in Trobriand life. Indeed, she argued, convincingly, that the circulation of status
and 'wealth' in Trobriand society (including in Kula) was actually underlain, and thus
could not be understood without, women's wealth.

Unlike Malinowski, Boas (1896) offered a new shape to the study of culture and
society. He critically argued that European anthropological theories of cultural
evolutionism and diffusionism were too extreme. It should be refuted in order to study
ethnology. Thus, he discussed the major problems that are the forms of classifications
and interpretations. Primarily, cultural evolutionists are racists and Boas critically

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