Conrad of anthropology

虽然主要是在表示对 W. H. R. Rivers 的推崇,但 Malinowski 真的有说自己是“人类学的康拉德”啊。啧啧。

After Malinowski had returned from the field, having studied the realities of a kinship system at close quarters, he began increasingly to react against Rivers’s views and to measure himself against Rivers’s reputation. At that time the works of another great expatriate Pole, Joseph Conrad, had a considerable vogue. I have been told by Mrs. B. Z. Seligman that Malinowski once said proudly, ‘Rivers is the Rider Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad.’


Firth, R. (1957). Introduction: Malinowski as scientist and as man. In Man and culture; an evaluation of the work of Bronislaw Malinowski (pp. 6).

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