ABSTRACT
When Malinowski is praised as an excellent ethnographer, it is always his technique of participant observation and his working through the native language that are emphasized. What deserves equal appreciation are the epistemological aspects of his research methods. Although he always assumed the natives’ rationality, he also realized that they cannot formulate ‘definite, precise and abstract’ statements about the ‘fundamental assumptions’ underlying their belief (Malinowski 1922:396). These, however, have to be grasped by the ethnographer, for it is only in relation to them that the notion of the natives’ rationality has any meaning. Malinowski has overcome the problem by assuming that the native professes the reality of belief he faces not only ‘with his tongue, but lives through partly in imagination and partly in actual experience’ (1922: 397). The ‘fundamental assumptions’ that make the belief or conduct rational have thus to be formulated by the ethnographer him- or herself. In this respect, ‘the objective items of culture, into which belief has crystallized in the form of tradition, myth, spell and rite are the most important sources of knowledge’ (ibid.). In formulating it, the ethnographer’s work is a creative one in that it ‘brings to light phenomena of human nature which, in their entirety, had remained hidden even from those in whom they happened’ (ibid.).
