ABSTRACT
Grasping opportunities, allowing oneself to be carried by one's field, remaining open for the unexpected, for crises, for interruptions in routine, and for details – this is the method utilised and favoured by Bronislaw Malinowski in order to realise "scientific field work". Malinowski believed that he had found a general model of the circulation of ceremonial goods. Behind the ethnographic description, we find a double system of circulation of goods which is symbolic and at the same time utilitarian. In fact, Malinowski shows that besides the ceremonial goods which circulate through the Kula and which therefore never enter into the utilitarian circuit. In this he develops his functional approach to culture which is based on two sorts of needs: basic needs, which are individual physiological needs, and derived needs, which are at the origin of great human institutions which organise production, distribution and consumption, and hence the survival of the group.
