Crime and Custom in Savage Society. by Bronislaw MalinowskiReview by: Frank H. HankinsSocial Forces, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Mar., 1928), pp. 499-500Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3004890 .

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LIBRARY AND WORKSHOP 499

interested and retarded. The attitude toward school was revealed by her answers to many questions, by her school stand- ing, and by statements of parents and other relatives. This was taken as a truer basis for grouping than reasons for going to work which were too often a combination of economic and other factors in the personal, family and school situa- tion. Further groupings according to type of job, her rate of pay, the quality of her reading and her recreation all show close correlation with these four group- ings.

Another conclusion of interest is that almost all of the girls like continuation schools regardless of their attitude toward the regular school. This is rather sur- prising in view of the many obvious dis- advantages under which the continuation school has to labor, to which should be added the less known but appalling fact that the student body has a turnover of probably 300 per cent a year. The present reviewer wishes that the study told more about the school work done by the 500 girls interviewed which interested them when the regular school did not; but perhaps a consideration of the question of content and attitude toward specific studies is too much a matter of educational method to have had a place here.

This study shows that in the main it is the child rather than the parent who makes the decision to stop school and go to work; also that she does not depend on the facilities provided her by the school to help her to decide and to get a job. Her youth and lack of training open to her only routine, rather uninteresting jobs, but she does not dislike the work, even 'if she is seldom enthusiastic about it. She has given little thought to what her present job will lead-why should one at I4 or is?-and so it is perhaps surprising

that we find only one-fifth described as holding blind alley jobs.

One phase of the girl's life, only touched upon, is perhaps a matter for a real psy- chological study, though it is certain the interviewers of these 500 girls must have learned many valuable things. This re- lates to the several sides, the several personalities as it were, which she shows at home, at continuation school, and at work. The suggestion is made that at each, people think she must be doing better at the other two!

Dr. Ormsbee feels that in the norm established by this study there are many suggestions of concrete value in enabling "'the state and the community to dis- charge their responsibilities to the young employed girl." She needs advice and guidance before she makes up her mind to go to work, and not after she has a job and is applying for a work certificate; she needs industrial supervision after going to work; she needs friendly guidance and opportunities for wholesome recreation. Most of all, it seems apparent that there are some in Group I, a few in Group II, and some even in Group III who could profit by more schooling and who could be kept at school if they could be found before they have actually stopped. There are enough agencies and facilities to do so if these could be applied to the right children and adjustment made in time.

HARRIET L. HERRING.

University of North Carolina.

CRIMB AND CUSTOM IN SAVAGE SOCIETY. By Bronis- law Malinowski. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, I926. xii + I129 pp. $21oo.

The fruits of Professor Malinowski's three sojourns among the Melanesians of the Trobriand Islands have been appear- ing under various titles, notably in The Father in Primitive Psychology, Sex and

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500 SOCIAL FORCES

Repression in Savage Society, and Argonauts of the Western Pacific. He has new and interesting viewpoints to set forth and does it with force and logic, though not without an obvious consciousness of his own importance to anthropological theory. His main thesis in this work is that the typical anthropological view of primitive man as living in strict accord with certain fundamental principles of tribal law, such as clan exogamy, mother right, clan communism, the avunculate and a moral code with supernatural sanc- tion is altogether too simple a view. This is an ideal view which is only roughly approximated under the stress and strain of daily living. There is among savages a conflict of law and sentiment, of morals and passion, of customary rules of gentle- manly behavior and self-interest such as may be observed among us. This is a valuable corrective for the prevailing view of primitive man as bound by rigid custom and as always obedient to group demands.

But it may still be true that primitive man has less freedom of personal variation than have we moderns, just as our grand- fathers of the small town community had less than we urbanites and commuters have. Moreover, Malinowski's thesis that the primary coercive element in the daily life of his Trobrianders is the reciprocal obligation of giving and receiv- ing is not altogether satisfactory. True he

supplements this with the desire for pres- tige and the fondness for ceremony as factors inducing the savage to conform, but in the course of his argument he cites inci- dents showing the irresistible force of group opinion, resulting in banishment or suicide. If the older anthropology erred in making the primitive a socially moved automaton, it seems that Malinowski has gone to the opposite extreme and made him too much the self-calculating, utility-seeking modern. His own empha- sis on the power of sorcery should have suggested that, at least in many respects, there is a larger mystical coercive element in savage thought than in our own.

Nor is the author convincing in his thesis that the necessity for a reciprocity of relations c divides primitive society into two groups. How does one know. Perhaps it was the existence of two groups that led to the scheme of mutual obliga- tion to give and to receive. His explana- tion of the origin of cross-cousin marriages is simple and logical enough, but the social origins of complex relations are not always that way. One might wish for answers to numerous questions regarding primitive law and jurisprudence, but Malinowski has said a great deal for so small a book. This little treatise is destined to be widely read and oft re- ferred to.

FRANK H. HANKINS. Smith College.

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