Kula ring
Malinowski's seminal work on the topic, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922),[1] directly confronted the question, "Why would men risk life and limb to travel across huge expanses of dangerous ocean to give away what appear to be worthless trinkets?"
Malinowski's study became the subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, author of The Gift ("Essai sur le don", 1925).
[3] Participants travel at times hundreds of miles by canoe in order to exchange Kula valuables, which consist of red shell-disc necklaces (veigun or soulava) that are traded to the north (circling the ring in clockwise direction) and white shell armbands (mwali) that are traded in the southern direction (circling counterclockwise).
The act of giving, as Mauss wrote, is a display of the greatness of the giver, accompanied by shows of exaggerated modesty in which the value of what is given is actively played down.
"[5] Kula valuables never remain for long in the hands of the recipients; rather, they must be passed on to other partners within a certain amount of time, thus constantly circling around the ring.
Participants will often strive to obtain particularly valuable and renowned Kula objects whose owner's fame will spread quickly through the archipelago.
However, strong social obligations and the cultural value system, in which liberality is exalted as highest virtue while meanness is condemned as shameful, create powerful pressures to "play by the rules".
And lastly, in the hierarchical areas, Kula necklaces and bracelets are saved for external exchange only; stone axe blades are used internally.
[9] The Kula exchange system can be viewed as reinforcing status and authority distinctions since the hereditary chiefs own the most important shell valuables and assume the responsibility for organizing and directing the ocean voyages.
Malinowski placed the emphasis on the exchange of goods between individuals, and their non-altruistic motives for giving the gift: they expected a return of equal or greater value.
They were not simple, alienable commodities to be bought and sold, but, like the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, embodied the reputation, history, and sense of identity of a "corporate kin group", such as a line of kings.
Jonathan Parry has demonstrated that Mauss was arguing instead that the concept of a "pure gift" given altruistically only emerges in societies with a well-developed market ideology, such as the West and India.
[14] Mauss' concept of "total prestations" was further developed by Annette Weiner, who revisited Malinowski's fieldsite in the Trobriand Islands.
Her critique was twofold: first, Trobriand Island society is matrilineal, and women hold a great deal of economic and political power.
Albert Schrauwers has argued that the kinds of societies used as examples by Weiner and Godelier (including the Kula ring in the Trobriands, the potlatch of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, and the Toraja of South Sulawesi, Indonesia) are all characterized by ranked aristocratic kin groups that fit with Claude Lévi-Strauss' model of "House Societies" (where "House" refers to both noble lineage and their landed estate).
Total prestations are given, he argues, to preserve landed estates identified with particular kin groups and maintain their place in a ranked society.
