Between science and life : the fieldwork experience and Malinowski's Diary

Abstract: The subject of my essay is personal experience of anthropologists during fieldwork carried out in another culture. It is presented through two cases: the first is Bronis³aw Malinowski's journey to Mailu and the Trobriand Islands and the second Kirsten Hastrup's experience in Iceland. The method I have used is biographical. My basic material is Malinowski's Diary (both the parts published in English in the sixties and the whole text published in Polish in 2001). I have used the text to analyze his experience of interacting with people from another culture, but also to show how it influenced contemporary anthropology. This I have done by comparing Malinowski's and Hastrup's experiences from their fieldwork. I have tried to present this experience not only as a cultural phenomenon, changing in phase with discourses of the time, but also as the part of anthropological work which highlights crucial dilemmas of epistemology and ethics of the social sciences. The choice of the subject was to a large extent motivated by the present interests in qualitative methodology within the Cultural Studies and sociology. Recent postcolonial theories have played an important role in some parts of my essay. Keywords: Malinowski, Hastrup, diary, fieldwork, "exotic", "other", anthropology, epistemology