Bronislaw Malinowski is one of the founding fathers of modern social anthropology and the innovator of the technique of prolonged and intensive fieldwork. His writings about the Trobriand Islands of Papua were in their time the most formative influence on the work of British social anthropologists and are of perennial interest and importance. They produced a revolution in the aims and field techniques of social anthropologists, and the method he created is that now normally used by anthropologists in the field.

Malinowski's field material remains compulsory reading for students....