Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski.

  • Bronisław Malinowski
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    171/360 page 153
    5 Freedom Through Organization WE HAVE now to supplement the above considerations which so far were facing the individual, groups, and the community at large, with the analysis of human action as it actually occurs, that is, within institutions. There is one point on which an im¬ portant addition to the problem of freedom has to be made. Freedom is primarily related neither to the isolated individual, nor even to society, nor yet perhaps to the potentialities of freedom and slavery given to man by machine. The real instru¬ ment both of freedom and oppression is always the organized partial constituent of a community: the institution. We have already foreshadowed the importance of these organized systems of activities. We must now discuss them fully. An ethnographer taking a rapid survey of various types of human culture, from the most primitive to highly developed ones, would make an interesting discovery. He would find that the work of culture is not done by any community as a whole, nor yet by individuals, but by smaller organized groups, that is, institutions, which are organized and integrated to form the community. The significance of this discovery is due to two facts, first, that an institution always presents the same structure, and
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