Malinowski:
His approach to anthropology was predicated on functionalism and culture. Functionalism ascribes indicating, function, and purpose to the elements within a complete. Culture defines that whole, and it constitutes the entity in which the various efficient elements take action and are interdependent.
Malinowskis knowledge of functionalism was in large part produced from a system of healthy reciprocity that he witnessed while doing fieldwork. This technique is recognized as the Kula Diamond ring and involves twelve-monthly inter-island goes to between trading companions who exchange highly valued shell ornaments. The goods used in Kula exchanges contain two types: necklaces (soulava) and armbands (mwali). Neither trade item is specially well made or made of uncommon materials. He inferred that the principal desire for the extensive expenditure of commitment involved in Kula expeditions to be non-utilitarian.
In the machine, each participant is associated with two partners. One partner trades a necklace in substitution for an armband of similar value. The other makes a reverse exchange of armband for a necklace. While each Kula partner is linked with only two other associates, each contact comes with an additional interconnection on either end of the circulation chain. This eventually sorts the Kula Band and this links more than a dozen islands over hundreds of miles of sea. Malinowski reasoned that the trouble and preoccupation with Kula trade must be useful in nature & most likely served to solve fundamental spatial problems in the Islanders lives. He argued that Kula Ring offered three functions in Trobriand population.
- First, it will serve to determine friendly relations one of the inhabitants of different islands and maintain a style of peaceful contact and communication over great ranges with trading associates who might or might not speak the same language.
- It provides the occasion for the inter-island exchange of utilitarian items. These utilitarian items are delivered backwards and forwards in the course of Kula expeditions.
- Finally, they strengthen status, because the hereditary chiefs own the most important shell valuables and it is their responsibility for directing ocean voyages.
Sahlin
Second, symbolic things and gifts have long been recognized as a kind of interartion that can create interpretation for group memebers, especially in terms of fostering interconnection among group memebers or between groups. Polanyi (1944) and Sahlin (1972) showed how, until very just lately in history, had not been about gaining income but about forging and keeping group solidarity.
Marcel mauss:
To give, to accept, and reciprocate.
Door Janet T. Landa
Malinowski rejected the notion that Kula surprise exchanges were motivated by economic concerns. Alternatively, Malinowksi emphasized that the motives were communal and subconscious. Thus began a long question among anthropologists attempting to to unravel the puizzle of the Kula wedding ring. As a result of subsequent work by anthropologists, a view started out to crystallize that the instrumental function of the Kula Diamond ring was the creation op political order via the creation of sites of alliances among stateless societeies so as to accomplish commercial trade. This view, implicitly or explicitly, attributed an root financial function to Kula gift exchanges and does much to describe a major puzzle of the Kula band. The anthropological viewpoint - that the Kula present exchange system creates primitive laws and regulations and order in a stateless societies - is consistent with modern PR Laptop or computer theory, which emphasizeds the value of institustions in facilitating exchange. Richard Posner (1980) in his insightful newspaper on the monetary functions of companies of primitive societeies, talks about the Kula ringa as an establishment that facilitated trade. Quoting Belshaw (1965), Posner says:
" The Kula itself wsa not oriented to mindividual trade in ints ceremonial activities. But alonghside the kula persons visiting theru partners took good thing about the oppurtunities to activate in trade. Malinoswki makes point that kula lovers would exchange presents of a trade persona in addition to vaygu 's (the ornamental things exchanged in the kula ring), and the szecurity afforded by the partenership would allow the visitor to make contact with other people in the town and trade with them.
An justification of the Kula engagement ring in terms of its role in facilitating trade, while describing the major puzzle of the kula diamond ring, leaves unanswered tow other major puzzles of the kula wedding ring - not discussed by anthropologist or anyone else. Both puzzled, which this paper will try to explain, are
1. Why is the Kula trade sorted out in the form of a ring of connected partners? and
2. why in the kula wedding ring is there two different ceremonial goods circulating in reverse directions perceptually around the ring?
In this chapter we on PR-PC theory of the economics od signaling to develop a theory of the Kula ring that will unravel the Kula puzzles. Fundamental to your theory of the Kula band is the assumption that deal costs are positive. The focus on the value of the foundations of modern PR-PC theory and modern economic theory. Recdently, the insoight that "institutions matter" in a global with positive transactin costst has been lengthened to clarify certain organizations of primitive societies.
The theory of the kula ring provided in this chapter is consisten with the business deal costst approach to intitutions in emphasizing that the kula ring can be an institutional agreement that emerged mostly in orde to economize on transaction costs of intertribal commercial exchange in stateless societies.
WAY OF GIVE AND TAKE IN KULA
A going to Kula partner occurs with a "solicitary present" (e. g. food) which is given an "beginning item", say a necklace, from his web host Kula spouse, the must be reciprocated woth a counter-gift, an armshell, of comparative value at another date. It ought to be noted that no kula valuables are continued international kula expeditions; the browsing kula partner trips his host spouse in order to get gifts rather than to give them. Between any two kula partners, the can be an institutionalized delayed reciprocity, affecting two opposite kinds of items. But at the same time, each of these two items must be passed on in one way only so that a chain of unidirectional trading kula associates is made up in the kula engagement ring. The global composition of the kula exchange is one that is characterized by cyclical, indirect reciprocation between linked pairs of partners (levi-strauss 1969). Furthermore, a period limit is also approved for a recipient of a gift to cross it to one of his partners:
A man who is in the kula, never helps to keep any article for longer thas, say, yearly or tweo. Even this exposes him to the reproach of being "niggardly" and certain districts hold the bad reputationj of being "slow" and "hard" in the kula. . . (Malinowski, 1961).
In this Kula present exchange the equivalence of the closing gift is still left to the giver. What are the mechanisms for making certain the associates will honor the obligation to reciprocate? Four mechanisms can be revealed.
1. Role of "intermediary gift ideas": if the kula partner cannot repay his partner when the last mentioned appointments him, he must reciprocate the opening gift with an inferior item, and "intermediary item", given in token of good trust, which itself must be reciprocated by his spouse. Thus enough time interval between receiving the opening gift idea and reciprocating the final gift idea is bridged by some smaller present exchanges between Kula lovers.
2. Role of reputation: A kula partner would you not repay a gift will lose his reputation and Kula associates.
3. Role of "give and take" moral code in which the rich man is obligated to talk about wealth: the higher the rank the greater the obligation
4. Role of public marvelous rites and ceremonial serves: sensational rites and general population ceremonial serves always come with an abroad Kula expedition; these rites and ceremonies "act indirectly on your brain of one's partner and make him tender, insteady in mind and wanting to give kula gifts". Malinowski also recommended the use of sorcery by a kula trader resistant to the defaulting partner.
A third group of rules governs account in the kula diamond ring. Kula exchange is not free exchange between anonymous parties whenever the ability arises. Strict guidelines govern that can type in the Kula band. To go into the ring, a man must inherit a kula thing and magic from his dad or mother's brother. Once he obtains a kula thing, he can start a kula partnership along with his father's or mother's brother's associates or other companions in the kula engagement ring. Once a kula relationship is established, it is just a lifelong partnership and is also offered from technology to era: " Once in the kula, always in the kula. " Not all East Papuo-Melanasionans in massim, however, can take part in the Kula wedding ring. For instance, ceratin "inferior" sub-clans in Kiriwana are excluded.
A man can have few or many associates depending on his list. A commoner in the trobriands would have a few partners who resided in near by islands, whereas a key would have a huge selection of partners sent out over several islands. But there's a geographic limit beyond which no kula traders, not the most important key, has any partnerd and the furthest boundaries of kula relationship are the same for all the memebers of the kula community. Thus, for example, no man in SIneketa has any partners in Kitiva, and no man in S. E. Dobu or Dobu island has Kila companions in Sineketa. Beyond the geographic limit, however, a kula trader still know the mnames of his indirect partners, i. e. the partnersfo his companions. . Members of the kula engagement ring respect the kula trade as acircular system (Damon 1983). The pattern of kula exchange is ver comples. The easiest composition of exchange would be one where:
If we were to imagin that in the kkula ring, there are extensive peopke who have only 1 partern at each aspect, the the engagement ring would consist of a lartge volume of finished circuits, on each of which the same article swould constantly move.
However, the genuine framework of the kula exchange is a lot more technical since
Every small kula man, as a a rule, has on one part or the other, the top one, that is a key. And every key takes on the part of a shunting -stop for kula items. Having so many companions on each area, he constantly exchanges an object in one strand to some other.
EIGEN TEKST (uit boven staande site ge parafraseert)
Structure of intertribal commercial trade
Anthropologists that analyzed Malinowski's accounts of the Kula wedding ring (Campbell 1983; Dalton 1978); Mauss 1979; Sahlins 1969; Uberoi 1971), believe that Malinowski underestimated the value of the economical function of the Kula engagement ring, and how it made commercial exchange easier. Looking deeper at the trade process, it is mentioned that there surely is a section and specialization of work. Different get-togethers have different specialties for which they are really known (e. g. yams, real wood bowls, pots, sago, canoes, etc. ), and there is a certain structure in the different kinds of those finest products that are exchanged between islands in the Kula ring (e. g. yams from the Trobriands against pots from the Amphletts).
MAIN POINTS Matching TO MS KOMTER
- Its all about relationships, public capital.
- Kula the diamond ring of power, individuality/status
- Identification confirmed with what you receive
- Will the kula make it through ї article question
- Right of passage
- Commitments (internal)
- Generosity ї exoectations of return
- Magic
- Role of taking risks ї negative more important than positive encounters, dare to be courageous. Going right through all shit enables you to a man.
Classical anthropologists and ethnologists like Malinowski, Mauss and Lvi-Strauss analyzed the roots of public order by concentrating at a very concrete habit that are wide-spread in archaic modern culture: the exchange of gift ideas. The theory of give-and-take, or reciprocity, demonstrates to be the primary underlying rule, which is this theory that fulfills a crucial role in creating public ties, trust and community. The exchange of items makes possible other types of exchange: of material and nonmaterial goods, services, help and information. These anthropologists not only detailed the methods of gift presenting in great information but also pointed to their manifold - cultural, religious, psychological, esthetical, juridical - functions. The functionalist procedure exemplified in the work of Malinowski is echoed in Durkheim's views on the functions of mechanised and organic solidarity. Through the anthropological studies a larger range of possible motives for solidarity can be distilled set alongside the tests by sociologists.
GOOD QUOTES
Levi-Strauss: Goods are not only economic goods but vehicles and instruments for realities of another order: effect, power, sympathy, position, sentiment; and the competent game of exchange consists of a intricate totality of maneuvers, mindful or unconscious, in order to gain security and also to fortify one's do it yourself against risks incurred through alliances and rivalry.
Radin 1971: There is no such thing as a free gift
Levi-strauss 1969: Exchanges are peacefully solved wars and wars are the result of unsuccessful trades.
