Westermarckian Elements in Bronislaw Malinowski’s Anthropology

At LSE, Westermarck’s closest student and colleague was Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski is often described as the founder of modern social anthropology, but the Westermarckian roots of his work have been largely overlooked. This chapter explores Malinowski’s debt to Westermarck by examining Malinowski’s writings on family, magic and religion, reciprocity, and law, including his ethnographic fieldwork. Their criticism of Durkheim was also very similar. Malinowski’s key writings show clearly recognisable traces of Westermarck’s teaching and research, but there are also essential differences in their theoretical and methodological approaches. Overall, Westermarck’s and Malinowski’s views of social phenomena and institutions have much more in common than anthropologists and historians of anthropology have assumed.