If there is a Paradise, this is what it looks like - this is a common sentiment that accompanies looking at photographs of tropical islands scattered across the Pacific. One of them, the Trobriand Islands, often referred to as the 'islands of love', was made famous by the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.

Bronislaw Malinowski - scientist-legend
It would be most appropriate to call Bronislaw Malinowski a scientist-legend, the Darwin of anthropology, although he considered himself the Conrad of this science. Malinowski was both a classicist of the human sciences, who deftly combined knowledge from different branches of science, and a gifted writer. In addition, he was a social and economic anthropologist, ethnologist, philosopher, religious scholar, sociologist... And, of course, a traveller.

The scientific career of Bronislaw Malinowski
Bronislaw Malinowski was born in 1884 in Kraków. In 1908 he defended his doctoral dissertation, On the Principle of the Economy of Thought, at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University, which he wrote in a fortnight, although he had initially begun his studies in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Between 1910 and 1913 he did further doctoral studies, culminating in his defence (1916) on the basis of the works The Family Among the Australian Aborigines (1913) and The Natives of Mailu (1915). At the same time he taught at the London School of Economics belonging to the University of London.
From 1927 to 1938 he was a professor and assumes the chair of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of London, which was created especially for him.

It would take a long time to list the universities that hosted Bronislaw Malinowski, as well as the regions of the world where he conducted research. These included: Kenya, Swaziland, Tanganyika and Zambia (1930-1937); Hopi Indians in the USA (1938); Zapotecs in Mexico (1940-1941). His fame as an anthropologist grew not only in the scientific world but also in the general public. Contributing to this was the world-famous bestseller The Sexual Life of the Wild in Northwest Melanesia (1938; English edition 1929).

He received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 1936 and was a professor at Yale University from 1938. After the outbreak of war in Europe, he remained in the USA.

He was among the co-founders and became the first president of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York, a scientific institution continuing the activities of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in exile.

He died on 16 May 1942, in New Haven, USA, aged 56.

Field research by Bronisław Malinowski
Between 1914 and 1918, Malinowski conducted field research in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands. Initially, on the Ceylon-Australian leg of his journey, he was accompanied by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (who was to be the expedition's draughtsman and photographer). However, on hearing of the outbreak of the Great War, Witkacy returned to Europe to enlist in the Russian army. Malinowski, on the other hand, was threatened with internment because he was a subject of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, with which Australia (as part of the British Empire) was at war. Luckily, the Australian authorities allowed the researcher a kind of voluntary exile to faraway islands.

In 1922. Bronislaw Malinowski returned to the United Kingdom and, according to his diary, planned to return to Poland. In the end he did not settle permanently in Poland, although he visited it twice (1922 and 1930).

Bronislaw Malinowski and the new approach to anthropology
To fulfil the modern ideal of the scholar, one needed a study, a library and a garden. The last was as important as the others, as a microcosm, a particle of nature. This one was crucial: book theory had to be confronted with practice. Nature was seen as its ideal source: orderly, repeatable and sustainable, a kind of perpetual motion machine. But from the nineteenth century onwards, scientists spent more and more time in the study, due to the exponential growth of scientific literature and the need for a rich correspondence.

Malinowski, however, blazed an old-new trail for those involved in the social sciences. "Old" because already in the 19th century there was a swarm of amateurs and scientists documenting folk culture (legends, songs and superstitions), from which authors of the Romantic era drew abundantly and which was the foundation for the "national awakening" in many countries. "New" because Malinowski's time was dominated by so-called "cabinet anthropology", based on reading and analysis of texts, where field research was rare (if conducted at all). Anthropology in particular suffered from this, usually feeding on sensational news of a moral nature, based on colouring, misrepresentation and stereotyping. Even respected anthropologists relied on accounts from various travellers without ever having seen the peoples they described.

Bronislaw Malinowski was the first to shift the emphasis towards intensive field research. At the heart of his approach was, among other things, prolonged and profound contact with the community under study (participatory observation method), so that it would accept the researcher, so that he would become as much a part of it as possible (active hunter attitude). And above all: treating all cultures as equals. This statement was bold and innovative at the time, especially for the British who considered their empire with its centre in London to be the pinnacle of development in the history of mankind to date.

Commemoration of Bronislaw Malinowski in the village of Omarakana
The plaque dedicated to Bronislaw Malinowski started its journey from Poland on the yachts Maria and Victoria, but due to a change in the route of this scientific voyage - it ended up in New Zealand instead of the Trobriand Islands. Eventually, she took a plane from New Zealand to Australia, and from there, on board the Talavera, she reached her destination a few years later. She was delivered to Kiriwina by sailors Monika Bronicka and Mariusz Delgas.

On Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands, in the village of Omarakana, the location of the plaque commemorating Bronislaw Malinowski was determined by local memory: the place where the scientist's tent stood. The only government representative present at the unveiling of the plaque was the Supreme Chief of the Trobriands.

The heading of the plaque's text reads: Toboma Miskabati / Bronislaw Malinowski (the first name - 'an old man worthy of the highest respect' - was what the locals called him). Below, the Polish and English texts read: Great scientist, son of the Polish nation, founder of modern social anthropology, friend of the peoples of the Trobriand Islands and populariser of their culture.