What do you think?
Rate this book
The Sexual Life of Savages
The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea is a 1929 book by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski.
The work is his second in the trilogy on the Trobrianders, with the other two being Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Coral Gardens and Their Magic (1935).
The work is his second in the trilogy on the Trobrianders, with the other two being Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Coral Gardens and Their Magic (1935).
506 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1929
8 people are currently reading
671 people want to read
About the author
Bronisław Malinowski
62 books148 followersBronisław Kasper Malinowski (IPA: [ˌmaliˈnɔfski]; April 7, 1884 – May 16, 1942) was a Polish anthropologist widely considered to be one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century because of his pioneering work on ethnographic fieldwork, with which he also gave a major contribution to the study of Melanesia, and the study of reciprocity.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 2, 2009
Picked up a very very early addition of this book, tattered and taped together like a paper Frankenstein, in my early teens at some thrift store. It made me want to become an anthropologist. If I graduate this year, maybe I'll buy another copy because mine is a relic.
May 15, 2020
An interesting little book about sexual life and marrige of a specific group of "cavemen". Surprisingly, there are more commonalities than differences in their sexual life compare with modern western sexual life. Another interesting part is that the group of people the author studied lived in a matriarchal society. It can be seen that the roles of gender do not simply swap between men and women in a matriarchal society compared with a patriarchal society. The book is not very academical and it is fun in general. I recommand it if you are interested in life of "ancient people".
Want to read
March 14, 20231929.
August 17, 2018
For what it is - an anthropological study before current anthropological methods were invented - this book is high quality, I guess. Malinowski is thorough and the information he provides is half interesting. I did get the sense sometimes that he wanted to be scandalous, that his book was meant more as entertainment than science. Other times it just dragged on and on with too much information.
Today, the average American reader and especially those who were brainwashed by academia, would read this book and think how ideal it is that the teenagers in this native society get to "explore their sexuality" without judgement and whatnot. What they would fail to realize, just as I failed to realize for many years, is that these guys lose. The hunter-gatherers LOSE. It is not the free-sex cultures that conquered the world. Quite the opposite. It's not about good or bad sexuality or healthy or unhealthy - I don't think there is such a thing. Humans are highly adaptable. It's about looking at history and other cultures and noticing trends and what successful cultures have in common and realizing that we can only change successful strategies at a very high risk.
I recommend skipping this book and reading Mother Nature by Hrdy.
Today, the average American reader and especially those who were brainwashed by academia, would read this book and think how ideal it is that the teenagers in this native society get to "explore their sexuality" without judgement and whatnot. What they would fail to realize, just as I failed to realize for many years, is that these guys lose. The hunter-gatherers LOSE. It is not the free-sex cultures that conquered the world. Quite the opposite. It's not about good or bad sexuality or healthy or unhealthy - I don't think there is such a thing. Humans are highly adaptable. It's about looking at history and other cultures and noticing trends and what successful cultures have in common and realizing that we can only change successful strategies at a very high risk.
I recommend skipping this book and reading Mother Nature by Hrdy.
April 22, 2022
Bronislaw Malinowski (born 1884, died 1942) was a respected anthropologist and ethnographer. Do not be misled by the title, The Sexual Life of Savages, of the second of his three books on the people of the Trobriand Islands in the Melanesia region. In the foreword, he wrote. “Sex is not a mere physiological transaction to the primitive South Sea Islander any more than it is to us.” He notes how “It dominates in fact almost every aspect of culture.” Then, he clarifies the title. “Sex, in its widest meaning — and it is thus that I have used it in the title of this book — is rather a sociological and cultural force than a mere bodily relation of two individuals.” Still, the later chapters deal more with sex. One chapter is titled “Lovemaking and the Psychology of Erotic Life.”
This book is based on Malinowski’s field studies of the natives. He spoke their language, lived with them, and had informants among them providing information to supplement what he witnessed. From the many photos in the book, the Trobrianders appear to be primitive. However, the Trobriand people had elaborate rules and rituals around love, marriage, pregnancy, death, and more. The length of the book is due to the complexity of their lives.
In the Trobriands, an unmarried pregnant girl was bad, but out of wedlock intercourse was fine, except for the special taboos of adultery, exogamy, and incest. The book’s introduction notes that marriage was the licensing of parenthood, not sexual intercourse. They did not recognize that intercourse caused pregnancy. They did not believe that a man contributed biologically to the children of his sexual partner. This belief had a tremendous impact on the lives of the Trobriand people. Fathers and family were important. However, a child’s clan was the clan of his mother not his father.
The Trobriand people believed in matriliny. A chief’s son enjoyed privileges while the chief was alive. However, when the chief died, the rightful heirs were the sons of the chief’s sister. To get around this, the chief would have his son marry his sister’s daughter. This was called cross-cousin marriage. There was another practice called infant betrothal in which this marriage was arranged at a time when the prospective husband and wife were infants.
This book is very complete and detailed. I learned a great deal, not just what I describe above. Native words are introduced along with their translations. The lyrics of ditties and songs are presented in both the native language and in English. Malinowski refers to individual people by name, describing their specific lives and relationships. When he returned to the Trobriands some time after his first visit, he was brought up-to-date with the lives of the friends he made on that first visit and reported on them in the book. I felt part of the village, observing the lives of the people along with Malinowski, albeit around a hundred years later.
What I found most interesting in the book was the brother-sister relationship.
Brother sister incest was the strongest taboo among the Trobriand people. Yet the society’s structure seemed to be based on the brother sister relationship. In fact, their mythology states that the four Trobriand clans existed underground first, with the same existence as they later had above ground. One brother sister couple from each clan came from underground to the Earth’s surface through a hole. The sister started the lineage of that clan. The brother protected her and looked after her affairs. They didn’t believe that the male participated in reproduction, so this could happen without incest. However, it would seem logical to assume that incest was how the lineage was started on the Earth’s surface, if you otherwise believe this myth.
The last chapter is about a brother-sister incest myth which was the source of love magic. In brief, a girl accidentally bumped a vessel containing coconut oil; it got into her hair. The power of magic entered her. She chased down her brother who was bathing in the ocean. He became affected by the magic. They copulated in the water, on the beach, and in a grotto. Then, shame and remorse caused them to not eat or drink. They died, and a plant grew through their bodies. This became the source of love magic. This last chapter also reported on some real life brother-sister incest cases.
The Sexual Life of Savages is a long book, but an interesting book. It is worth reading.
This book is based on Malinowski’s field studies of the natives. He spoke their language, lived with them, and had informants among them providing information to supplement what he witnessed. From the many photos in the book, the Trobrianders appear to be primitive. However, the Trobriand people had elaborate rules and rituals around love, marriage, pregnancy, death, and more. The length of the book is due to the complexity of their lives.
In the Trobriands, an unmarried pregnant girl was bad, but out of wedlock intercourse was fine, except for the special taboos of adultery, exogamy, and incest. The book’s introduction notes that marriage was the licensing of parenthood, not sexual intercourse. They did not recognize that intercourse caused pregnancy. They did not believe that a man contributed biologically to the children of his sexual partner. This belief had a tremendous impact on the lives of the Trobriand people. Fathers and family were important. However, a child’s clan was the clan of his mother not his father.
The Trobriand people believed in matriliny. A chief’s son enjoyed privileges while the chief was alive. However, when the chief died, the rightful heirs were the sons of the chief’s sister. To get around this, the chief would have his son marry his sister’s daughter. This was called cross-cousin marriage. There was another practice called infant betrothal in which this marriage was arranged at a time when the prospective husband and wife were infants.
This book is very complete and detailed. I learned a great deal, not just what I describe above. Native words are introduced along with their translations. The lyrics of ditties and songs are presented in both the native language and in English. Malinowski refers to individual people by name, describing their specific lives and relationships. When he returned to the Trobriands some time after his first visit, he was brought up-to-date with the lives of the friends he made on that first visit and reported on them in the book. I felt part of the village, observing the lives of the people along with Malinowski, albeit around a hundred years later.
What I found most interesting in the book was the brother-sister relationship.
Brother sister incest was the strongest taboo among the Trobriand people. Yet the society’s structure seemed to be based on the brother sister relationship. In fact, their mythology states that the four Trobriand clans existed underground first, with the same existence as they later had above ground. One brother sister couple from each clan came from underground to the Earth’s surface through a hole. The sister started the lineage of that clan. The brother protected her and looked after her affairs. They didn’t believe that the male participated in reproduction, so this could happen without incest. However, it would seem logical to assume that incest was how the lineage was started on the Earth’s surface, if you otherwise believe this myth.
The last chapter is about a brother-sister incest myth which was the source of love magic. In brief, a girl accidentally bumped a vessel containing coconut oil; it got into her hair. The power of magic entered her. She chased down her brother who was bathing in the ocean. He became affected by the magic. They copulated in the water, on the beach, and in a grotto. Then, shame and remorse caused them to not eat or drink. They died, and a plant grew through their bodies. This became the source of love magic. This last chapter also reported on some real life brother-sister incest cases.
The Sexual Life of Savages is a long book, but an interesting book. It is worth reading.
July 21, 2019
I was mostly interested in what he had to say about a different culture's sexual practices and beliefs. I think the book has a lot of good detail and it's worth reading. In the beginning of the book, Annette Weiner wrote that he was mostly correct about the sexual practices. One part that bothered me is when he spoke about the custom of men giving gifts for women to have sex with them. He claimed that it is VERY different from prostitution as the motive of prostitution is only to get money or some gift whereas the motive in the case of the Trobriander women is sex and the gift is just a custom. Nevertheless, he mentioned in the same section that women will refuse sex if no gift is offered and he mentioned in another section that "cynical" informants claimed to him that young women would sometimes travel to other villages looking for sex partly just so they could get gifts from young men. To me, it seems silly to claim that it is SO different from prostitution. It is transactional sex. I also know for a fact that some sex workers have reported in their blogs or in research studies that they do the work for the money AS WELL AS other reasons (e.g. some enjoy the sex!). So, there isn't this neat divide. If you don't stigmatize prostitution and you aren't trying to defend Trobrianders while buying into said stigma, then there is less motive to try to separate one from of transactional sex from another.
Another issue I had was the fact that the author claims in a section on love magic that it's different from scientific thinking. He also portrays scientific thinking in a negative way. Then he goes on to describe how, under "ideal" and "perfect" conditions, certain highly systematized spells would always work. Sounds deterministic. EVEN IF things are partly indeterministic, that doesn't contract something like quantum mechanics. It seems to me that, again, he was trying to defend the Trobrianders and in reality they had their own sort of science and theories about causation. They were just incorrect because they didn't know how things actually work. It kind of gives insight into religion in general. Early Christians probably had similar thinking about sacrificing living beings to gods, prayer, exorcising demons, magic, etc. Now, "sophisticated theologians" try to claim that a lot of the bible is simply metaphorical. I would imagine that some of the bible is metaphorical, but I also think that it isn't implausible that a lot of it was actually literally believed by the cultures of the time it was written. Anyway, I digress. The book is worth reading to see a very different view from what you might hear from conservatives, people raised in Christian/Jew/Muslim influenced societies regarding how sex MUST be for society to function.
Another issue I had was the fact that the author claims in a section on love magic that it's different from scientific thinking. He also portrays scientific thinking in a negative way. Then he goes on to describe how, under "ideal" and "perfect" conditions, certain highly systematized spells would always work. Sounds deterministic. EVEN IF things are partly indeterministic, that doesn't contract something like quantum mechanics. It seems to me that, again, he was trying to defend the Trobrianders and in reality they had their own sort of science and theories about causation. They were just incorrect because they didn't know how things actually work. It kind of gives insight into religion in general. Early Christians probably had similar thinking about sacrificing living beings to gods, prayer, exorcising demons, magic, etc. Now, "sophisticated theologians" try to claim that a lot of the bible is simply metaphorical. I would imagine that some of the bible is metaphorical, but I also think that it isn't implausible that a lot of it was actually literally believed by the cultures of the time it was written. Anyway, I digress. The book is worth reading to see a very different view from what you might hear from conservatives, people raised in Christian/Jew/Muslim influenced societies regarding how sex MUST be for society to function.
August 14, 2025
This book is more of a synthesis of his previous work. Malinowski does a great job in ignoring psychoanalysis (not really his strength) and other biological discussions.
From myths, folklore, economy, subsistence, culture, dances, rituals, magic, ceremonies, kinship, love, etc. Malinowski relates all this phenomena to sexual life. He really does a better job than in 'Sex and Repression', not dwelling on the complexes nor theorising nonsense.
This is the first time in all his ouvre where he names his method and school of thought: functionalism. So there is that.
Still no ideology mention nor a valid discussion about the power dynamics between the chief, his wives and the commoners. No 5 stars my fellow anthropologists. We cannot undermine nor ignore the logic of private property and its discontents.
From myths, folklore, economy, subsistence, culture, dances, rituals, magic, ceremonies, kinship, love, etc. Malinowski relates all this phenomena to sexual life. He really does a better job than in 'Sex and Repression', not dwelling on the complexes nor theorising nonsense.
This is the first time in all his ouvre where he names his method and school of thought: functionalism. So there is that.
Still no ideology mention nor a valid discussion about the power dynamics between the chief, his wives and the commoners. No 5 stars my fellow anthropologists. We cannot undermine nor ignore the logic of private property and its discontents.
December 13, 2024
Despite the rather off-putting title, this is an excellent and thorough work, and thought-provoking for anyone interested in kinship. Like all of Malinowski's work, it can be drawn-out and repetitive at times, and especially so for anyone who has read any of his other books — there is a not-insignificant amount of overlap, to some extent the necessary consequence of his dedication to giving a richly contextualized and almost fully self-sufficient account of the topics he treats. At times, this does feel a little bit overdone and his description unnecessarily protracted. But he is charming, reflexive, and funny. His witty and entertaining narration carries the reader through their fifteenth description of Trobriand beauty magic with minimal resentment.
October 24, 2021
土著人的性爱生活其实和现代人相差无几，除了开始接触性的年龄更早——大概从6～8岁开始，就以游戏和嬉笑的方式接触性。当然他们的传统里严格禁止近亲交媾，成年人也不会娈童，给小姑娘破瓜。进入青春期之后，土著人的性观念开始成熟，他们有一套默认的审美观，以此判断谁是美女，谁不具备性吸引力。婚后如果有私通的事情发生，在土著人看来也是天塌的大事，小则斗殴吵骂一场，大则可以处死失去生命。
June 14, 2015
Бронислав Малиновски в началото на 20 в. прекарва доста време сред няколко племена туземци и описва техния живот, като набляга на отношенията между мъжете и жените. Интересно четиво, в което ще намерите шокиращи паралели със съвременния живот и ще разберете, че може да имаме коли и телефони, но сме си хора такива, каквито явно сме би��и преди сто, и преди сто хиляди години.
June 15, 2009
Read certain chapters for one of my summer classes - interesting and definitely worth getting from the library, especially when one hears the back story on Malinowski himself and what he did while doing this ethnography that is *not* included in the book ... very scandalous!
June 30, 2022
Sometimes I feel their social relations are too Australian.
And about sex is a bit messy if pocking around the same village is taboo and other villages are for special hidden expeditions only.
Anyway, it's good to wear shoes and browsing internet😁!
And about sex is a bit messy if pocking around the same village is taboo and other villages are for special hidden expeditions only.
Anyway, it's good to wear shoes and browsing internet😁!
December 17, 2008
For some classic knowledge on sex from an anthropological point of view. Being an anthro and sociology minor, I of course found this very interesting.
February 24, 2011
An early anthropological view of how relationships develop among the Trobriand people and why they exist. Recommended for those interested in looking at themselves through a fun mirror.
April 28, 2009
fantastic view of a society vanished just after the writing of the book.
April 10, 2017
Heavily out to date
Want to read
December 6, 2018Part 5, chapter 4 "Of Woman Born".
Mentioned in reference to the belief that pregnancy was not related to sexual contact. Rather a woman was impregnated by the spirits of the dead.
Mentioned in reference to the belief that pregnancy was not related to sexual contact. Rather a woman was impregnated by the spirits of the dead.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews