Brings together a number of papers on anthropological subjects. All these papers relate in different ways to the author's continuing interest in the study of social process, especially in the significance within a social context of individual choice and decision.

As a general background, the first two chapters of the book discuss characteristics of Malay rural society, especially in the coastal area, in Kelantan; the main features of Malay marine fishing; and the particular situation of the fisheries in Kelantan and Trengganu. The body of the book then deals with what is in effect an historical case study in economic anthropology, a community of peasant fishermen analyzed in detail. Finally, Professor Firth gives an account on a comparative basis of recent developments in the same community, to bring out some of the underlying social and economic...

When it was first published (in 1967, posthumously), Bronislaw Malinowski's diary, covering the period of his fieldwork in 1914-1915 and 1917-1918 in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands, set off a storm of controversy. Many anthropologists felt that the publication of the diary-which Raymond Firth describes as -this revealing, egocentric, obsessional document--was a profound disservice to the memory of one of the giant figures in the history of anthropology. Almost certainly never intended to be published, Malinowski's diary was intensely personal and brutally honest. He kept it, he said,...