"Although hardly of central importance, the biographies of Boas and Malinowski may shed a little light on their unorthodox approaches to cultural variation. As indicated above, both men spent most of their adult life abroad; the German Boas in the USA, the Pole Malinowski in England. One may wonder if the uprootedness and alienation they must have felt, both in relation to their native countries and towards their adopted ones, could not have been a valuable resource when they set out to develop their new science."