Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922)

This chapter synthesizes Malinowski’s ideas about magic. Magic is important for all matters of significance to the natives. It usually corresponds to a natural phenomenon, human activity, or “some real or imaginary force” like artistic skill, witchcraft, or beauty (319). Strong emotions are accompanied by equivalent magic, whether death, childbirth, or love, as are social activities like gardening, dancing, and the Kula. The pervasiveness of magic leads Malinowski to deem it a primary “psychological [force] which allows for organisation and systemisation of economic effort in the Trobriands” (306). Though magic equips humans with powers of control and protection, it also leaves them at the mercy of black magic and evil spirits; death and sickness in all forms is the result of magic.

Malinowski attempts to define the native’s “essential conception” (307) of magic. This is a challenge because the native takes magic as a “fundamental assumption” that is never questioned. Any attempt on the part of the ethnographer would be rife with leading questions; he must therefore draw his own conclusions through indirect fieldwork data such as spells and myths. Only once he has “penetrated into the natives’ attitude” may he test his hypothesis by “translating them into native modes of thought” (308).