Moka exchange
Moka refers specifically to the increment in the size of the gift; giving more brings greater prestige to the giver.
However, reciprocal gift giving was confused by early anthropologists with profit-seeking, as the lending and borrowing of money at interest.
Social status in the 'Big man' political system is the result of giving larger gifts than one has received.
These gifts are of a limited range of goods, primarily pigs and scarce pearl shells from the coast.
[3] Big men are the preferred people to give gifts to, since one has a reasonable chance of repayment with extra.
The extra one receives back can be re-gifted to others, increasing the number of exchange partners, and building a wider network.
Gift-giving thus becomes a competition between a limited number of high-status men, each of whom tries to give bigger gifts than they received.
The networks can grow to encompass several hundred men, each competing with the others, to give the biggest gift to a competitor.
[4] The expansion in size of gift and counter-gift, and of the political network it creates, eventually reaches its upper limit set by the carrying capacity of the land, and the ability of followers to husband the pigs.
When a Big man is finally unable to repay a gift with moka, he is defeated; however, the winning competitor is now without the "extra" he requires to repay his gifts to his followers, and his reputation also suffers and the expansive network that had been built up starts to crumble.
Redistribution, in contrast, involves the collection of tribute (e.g. tax) by a legitimate authority, who re-allocates it to members of the group.
[7] Karl Polanyi emphasized that economic exchange in non-market societies is "embedded" in other social institutions.
[7] The redistributive exchanges found in the Polynesian islands, in contrast, are embedded in a kinship system based on rank.
Marilyn Strathern, writing on a similar area in Papua New Guinea, dismissed the utility of the opposition in "The Gender of the Gift" (1988).
