sociological analysis

is a mode of seeing rituals such as the kula as convenient pretext to perform a host of. Socializing activities. Anthropological analysis sees the same ritual from the perspective of individuals who 'know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them'.

(jib) Malinowski's distinction between sociological and ethnographic description serves our purposes well. After describing the many 'preliminary activities' such as 'the building of canoes, preparation of the outfit, the provisioning of the expedition, the fixing of dates' as 'subsidiary to the Kula' he implicitly invites his reader to wonder if we might instead see the Kula as convenient pretext to perform all of these socializing activities. Malinowski promptly reassures us that such a reversal is precisely the sociological move, a move which he most expressly does not want to make: 'Here, however, I am not dealing in sociological, but in pure ethnographical description, and any sociological analysis I have given is only what has been absolutely indispensable to clear away misconceptions and to define terms' (100). Certainly Malinowski's comment on sociological description is intended less as a dismissal than as an exposition of the number of analytic modes within which he chooses to work He applies both with equal frequency throughout his text. These two views are not reducible to one another. For Malinowski, unlike with functionalist after him, personal motivations (ethnographic details) are not necessarily subsumed under functionalism even if they can be adequately explained in terms of functionalism. At some points the two views run parallel, at other points they inhabit distinct and incommensurable spaces. In the functionalist worldview, Malinowski's hypothetical 'is magic from the economic point of view a waste of time'' (116) is a valid question and can be answered in terms of how it helps or hinders a particular task. The ethnographic view does not allow any room for this kind of question to even be posed. In this view, magic itself is what leads to success not the indirect sociological implications of magic! The ethnographic-level logic works just fine for the Trobrianders and as Malinowski shows, 'they have know knowledge of the total outline of any of their social structure' (83) yet they 'know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them' (ibid). Malinowski was perhaps a little too intent on showing the heroism of the ethnographer over the profundity of this insight in these pages, yet the point is clear. These two logics have no need for each other, yet the anthropologist has a responsibility to both of them.

sociological analysis, n.All

sociological analysis