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1

“Mixed identity of circumstances”: Bronisław Malinowski in Australia and Melanesia

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Kosecki K.

Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies

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2021

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issue 30(1)

35-51

EN

During his stay in Australia and Melanesia from 1914 to 1920, the anthropo- logist Bronisław Malinowski frequently experienced dichotomous and contradictory atti- tudes to people, places, and events: the contrast between the ‘civilized’ Australia and the ‘savage’ Melanesia; the background of the Austria-ruled Poland in which he grew up and the British-dominated Australia, Austria’s enemy in the First World War; the emotional tension of simultaneous attraction to two women – Nina Stirling of Adelaide and Elsie Rosaline Masson of Melbourne; the dilemma of the ‘heroic’ versus the ‘unheroic’ related to the war. Most of the dualities of Malinowski’s Australian-Melanesian experience, re- flected in letters to his mother Józefa Malinowska, Elsie R. Masson, and in Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1989), were resolved at the end of the period, which became a turning point in his life.

2

On the human ethology of food sharing

67%

Schiefenhövel W.

Anthropological Review

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2014

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vol. 77

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issue 3

355-370

EN

This paper compares various explanatory concepts of food sharing in humans. In many animal species, parents share food with their offspring, thus investing into the 50% of their own genes present in each child. Even in modern families of industrialised societies, there is a very significant flow of material goods from the parent to the offspring generation. Sharing food between reproductive partners is also easily explainable in evolutionary terms: „food for sex“ as male strategy is observed in some primate species. Sharing within one’s group in small-scale societies can be explained also as consequence of its members being actually rather closely related to each other; this, among others, gives credit to the concept of group selection which gains attention again after having been discarded by classic sociobiology. The ethos of individual and group sharing can quite readily be transferred to larger groups, i.e. a whole nation or, especially in the case of unusually devastating natural disasters, to members of other societies. Food sharing beyond genetic relationship or reproductive interest has been explained as „tit for tat“ and „reciprocal altruism“. Events of give and take, however, are, how the last example demonstrates, quite often non-symmetrical, i.e. one partner shares much more than the other. „Tolerated theft“, a behavioural trait in non-human primate species thought to be a stepping stone for the typical preparedness of humans to share, does not play a big role in traditional societies, which provide an important base to discuss the topic. The Trobriand Islanders, e.g., have a very complex system of sharing. In the years of competitive harvest, their yield of yam is distributed to close relatives, especially to fathers and elder brothers. The donors keep almost nothing for themselves, are however given as well, so that everybody has enough to live. High rank men receive a partly enormous surplus, by which their status is increased. Western farmers would find this generosity quite strange. It is one outcome of the human tendency to create bonds through food gifts. It is interesting, that Marcel Mauss has well described the power of the gift which generates a counter gift, but did not inquire evolutionary nor ontogenetic building blocks of the often very complex acts and rituals of giving and receiving one finds in all cultures. It seems reasonable to take an evolutionary position and argue that those of our ancestors who were generous and socially competent with a well-developed emphronesis (Theory of Mind) were preferred interaction and marriage partners and that this sexual selection was the ultimate mechanism spreading the motivations and behaviours involved in sharing. To counteract cheaters humans have a rather sharp perception to detect those who don’t play by the rules and a very strong motivation to punish them, even accepting, in doing so, high costs for themselves. This strongly disproves the idea that humans mainly act on rationale choice. Rather, we are endowed, one must conclude, with a very powerful, archaic sense of balanced social interaction, of fairness and justice. This raises the interesting question whether the laws governing social conduct, made by all cultures of the world, are contra or secundum naturam. For quite some time, in the wave of sociobiological thinking, the common stand was that humans are dangerously egoistic beings and that their antisocial instincts must be kept in check by powerful laws. As Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the founder of human ethology as a discipline, has stated and as recent primatological and anthropological research has corroborated, humans are much more social than postulated by some authors. The Ten Commandments are built on not against basic human tendencies. Konrad Lorenz spoke of animals having “morally analogous” behaviours and was criticised for this. Modern research is rehabilitating him. The joy of sharing, a proximate behavioural set of motivation, is typical for our species. Notwithstanding expectations of economic and status gain this biopsychologically rooted tendency most likely is the engine driving the systems of do ut des, so marvellously developed in our species.

3

Il Melanesian Institute – la sua Missione e il suo ministero pastorale e sociale

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Steffen P. B.

Nurt SVD

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2013

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issue 1

73-116

PL

Instytut Melanezyjski jest jednostką naukową, której celem są studia teologiczne, kulturowe, społeczne i gospodarcze, mające służyć kościołom i społecznościom Melanezji. Instytut powstał na fali ducha odnowy po Soborze Watykańskim II. Antropolog kulturowy Ernest Brandewie oraz Gerald Bus włączyli się w podobną inicjatywę w Papui Nowej Gwinei. Instytut w roku 1969 powołało do życia Stowarzyszenie Przełożonych Religijnych Papui Nowej Gwinei i Wysp Salomona. Zgodnie z wizją fundatorów Instytut powinien wypełniać następujące cele: 1) prowadzić adekwatne badania antropologiczne i socjogospodarcze; 2) organizować kursy wprowadzające dla misjonarzy; 3) publikować „Melanezyjskie Zeszyty Społeczno-Duszpasterskie”; 4) pomagać we wdrażaniu schematów i eksperymentów dotyczących rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego. W roku 1974 Instytut przekształcił się z jednostki międzyzakonnej, której członkowie wywodzili się z różnorodnych katolickich kongregacji misyjnych – w ośrodek ekumeniczny, którym kierują cztery największe kościoły Melanezji. W czasie ponad czterdziestu lat działalności przyczynił się do studiów socjologicznych, kulturowych i duszpasterskich nie tylko w zakresie socjologicznej, kulturowej i duszpasterskiej formacji księży, ale także do formacji wszystkich wychowawców i przywódców Melanezji.

EN

The Melanesian Institute (MI) is a scientific institute aimed at theological, cultural, social and economic studies at the service of the churches and the society in Melanesia. The MI was born out of the renewal spirit of the Second Vatican Council. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Brandewie and Gerald Bus joined in proposing such an initiative for Papua New Guinea. The MI was founded in 1969 by an Association of Religious Superiors of Papua New Guinea and Salomon Islands. According to the vision of its founders, the MI should accomplish the following goals: 1) to carry out relevant anthropological and socioeconomic research; 2) to organise orientation courses for missionaries; 3) to publish “Melanesian Social Pastoral Papers”; 4) to help implement socio-economic development schemes and experiments. The MI developed in 1974, from an inter-congregational institute staffed by members of various Catholic missionary congregations – to an ecumenical institute under the guidance of the four major churches in Melanesia. In over four decades it contributed with its social, cultural and pastoral studies not only to the social, cultural and pastoral formation of church ministers, but to that of all educators and leaders in Melanesia as well.

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1 Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies

1 Anthropological Review

1 Nurt SVD

1 Kosecki K.

1 Schiefenhövel W.

1 Steffen P. B.

1 2021

1 2014

1 2013

“Mixed identity of circumstances”: Bronisław Malinowski in Australia and Melanesia

On the human ethology of food sharing

Il Melanesian Institute – la sua Missione e il suo ministero pastorale e sociale