Structuralism and ecology

Fifty years ago, in 1922, Bronislaw Malinowski ended his classic study of the Kula ri,ig, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, with these words : &dquo;The study of ethnology so often mistaken by its very votaries foran idle hunting after cwios, for a ramble among the savage and fantastic shapes of ’barbarous customs and crude superstitions’ might become one of the most deeply philosophic, enlightening and elevating disciplines of scientific research. Alas! the time is short for ethnology, and will this truth of its real meaning and importance dawn before it is too late ?&dquo; More than any antlrropologist of his time, Profes-