Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores how Malinowski's early life shaped his method of participant observation. Using found poetry, I juxtapose his descriptions of his parents, fieldwork, and the Trobriand Islands to reveal unacknowledged connections, illuminating the role of personal history in ethnography.

Contribution long abstract:

The question of how to read Bronislaw Malinowski’s public scholarship after the publication of his private fieldwork diaries has been widely debated in anthropology, with scholars such as Geertz (1988) and Young (2015) arguing that the diaries represent an unacknowledged, albeit problematic in this case, part of ethnographic fieldwork. However, these arguments have not adequately addressed the issue of the role of Malinowski’s early life experiences in the development of his method of participant observation. My paper addresses the issue of a lack of attention to the connections between Malinowski’s early life experiences of his parents and his development of participant observation with specific attention to the aesthetics of Malikowski’s writing. Specifically, my project will be looking at Malinowski’s descriptions of his parents in his diaries and letters and his descriptions of participant observation, in order to show that the two sets of descriptions mutually inform one another. Using a technique of creative research practice known as ‘found poetry’, I will read aloud fragments of his descriptions of his parents alongside fragments of his descriptions of participant observation, and juxtapose them against his descriptions of the people and landscapes in the Trobriand Islands. I argue that reading these fragments alongside each other illuminates previously unacknowledged connections between his early life experiences and the development of participant observation. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining these connections, sheds new light on the neglected issue of the role that an anthropologist’s early life experiences play in the making of their ethnographies.