The Transformation of Ethnography: From Malinowki's Tent to the Practice of Collaborative/Activist Anthropology

One hundred years ago, in 1917-1918, Bronislaw Malinowski was immersed in his second expedition to the Trobriand Islands. The onset of World War I prevented Malinowski from returning to Britain since he was a Pole, a citizen of Australia, and thus technically one of the enemy. He was required by the Australian government to report his movements, but Australian anthropologists agreed to financially support his research and offered him a place to write during the fifteen months between his two field trips. His research primarily focused on the island of Kiriwina and on the village of Omarakana but with side trips to other islands in order to follow the exchanges that were part of the Kula. The transformation of ethnography began only ten or fifteen years after Malinowski lived in his tent on the Trobriands. Malinowski's female students as well as those of Boas helped to pioneer studies of colonialism, ethnographies about women, and dialogical forms of writing.