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Malinowski gilt als Begründer der Methode der Feldforschung mit teilnehmender Beobachtung . In seinem Werk Argonauten des westlichen Pazifik stellte er als erster einen konkreten Forderungskatalog auf, in dem er festhielt, welchen Ansprüchen "gute" Feldforschung genügen sollte. Darüber hinaus entwickelt er ein Modell zur Kulturanalyse bestehend aus Skelett, Fleisch und Blut, sowie Geist.
Zitat
"Proper conditions for ethnographic work. These, as said, consist mainly in cutting oneself off from the company of other white men, and remaining in as close contact with the natives as possible, which really can only be achieved by camping right in their villages (...). It is very nice to have a base in a white man's compund for the stores, and to know there is a refuge there in timer of sickness and surfeit of native. But it must be far enough away not to become a permanent milieu in which you live and from which you emerge at fixed hours only to " do the village." It should not even be near enough to fly to at any moment for recreation. For the native is not the natural companion for a white man, and after you have been working with him for several hours, seeing how he does his garden, or letting him tell you items of folk-lore, or discussing his customs, you will naturally hanker after the company of your own kind. But if you are alone in a village beyond reach of this, you go for a solitary walk for an hour or so, return again and the quite naturally seek out the natives' society, this time as arelief from loneliness, just as you would any other companionship. And by means of this natural intercourse, you learn to know him, and you become familiar with his customs and beliefs far better than when he is a paid, and often bored, informant."
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922): Argonauts of the Western Pacific , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, S. 6-7.
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