Compare And Contrast Malinowski And Evans
Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and E.E Evans Pritchard in their book "Argonauts of the western pacific" and "Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande" state how unique and interesting a primitive man's life style is than of a modern man. A few conclusions and theories are formed about the lifestyle of a primitive man in both readings. Not only is a primitive man shown differently from a modern human being but each society has a different lifestyle such as a Trobriand Islander is very different than an Azande. In the beginning of the reading “Argonauts of the western pacific” a primitive man is shown as a savage and a person who can only live in a simple way which can exist in the past and who can’t work with any modern industry
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For Evans Pritchard data was not hard to collect and he did not have a hard time fitting in the community as Malinowski did "I had no difficulty discovering what Azande think about witchcraft, nor in observing what they do to combat it" (Evan Page 1). There are a few conclusions about the primitive man Malinowski and Evans supported and a few they had opposite opinions about. Unlike Malinowski who just took part in the Trobriand Islanders daily life Evans decided to challenge the beliefs of the Azande and ask them questions and not just take part in their rituals and practices. For the Azande natural science cannot be considered part of their culture Evan thought that magic had nothing to do with changing nature and it should not to be compared with science and experiments "Azande act very much as we would act in like circumstances and they make the same kind of observations as we would make. But Azande are dominated by an overwhelming faith which prevents them from making experiments, from generalizing contradictions between tests, between verdicts of different oracles, and between all the oracles and experience. To understand why it is that Azande do not draw from their observations the conclusions we would draw from the same evidence, we must realize that their attention is fixed on the mystical properties of the poison Oracle and that its natural properties are of so little interest to them that they simply do not bother to consider them"( Evans page
For Evans Pritchard data was not hard to collect and he did not have a hard time fitting in the community as Malinowski did "I had no difficulty discovering what Azande think about witchcraft, nor in observing what they do to combat it" (Evan Page 1). There are a few conclusions about the primitive man Malinowski and Evans supported and a few they had opposite opinions about. Unlike Malinowski who just took part in the Trobriand Islanders daily life Evans decided to challenge the beliefs of the Azande and ask them questions and not just take part in their rituals and practices. For the Azande natural science cannot be considered part of their culture Evan thought that magic had nothing to do with changing nature and it should not to be compared with science and experiments "Azande act very much as we would act in like circumstances and they make the same kind of observations as we would make. But Azande are dominated by an overwhelming faith which prevents them from making experiments, from generalizing contradictions between tests, between verdicts of different oracles, and between all the oracles and experience. To understand why it is that Azande do not draw from their observations the conclusions we would draw from the same evidence, we must realize that their attention is fixed on the mystical properties of the poison Oracle and that its natural properties are of so little interest to them that they simply do not bother to consider them"( Evans page