Gift Exchange

The Kula Ring of the Trobriand Islands

The Kula Ring is a gift-exchange system carried on by different East Papuo-Melansian tribal communities located in a ring of islands, hence the ring structure of the Kula. Twice each year, “Big-Men” of the various tribes lead large canoe expeditions to visit their Kula partners.

Strict rules govern Kula exchange. The gifts exchanged must be two different kinds of valuables of equivalent value, traveling in opposite directions in the Kula. The giver must give a necklace to a Kula partner located in a clockwise direction from the giver. At a future date, the recipient of a necklace must reciprocate with a countergift of an armshell to his Kula partner located in a counterclockwise direction. Thus, the Kula is a delayed, reciprocal gift-exchange system. Thus, the gift is given voluntarily by the original giver, and the recipient who accepts the gift is obligated to reciprocate the gift with a countergift at a future date. To become a member of the Kula Ring, a person must inherit a Kula object or magic from his father or mother's brother.

There are four puzzles associated with the Kula exchange. First, what is the function of the Kula gift exchange? For Malinowski, Kula gift exchange exists mainly to satisfy participants' psychological needs.

Marcel Mauss and Singh Uberoi, however, argued that gift-exchange is how stateless tribal societies create political alliances among the different tribes so that Kula partners can come to each other's islands to engage in peaceful commercial barter trade.

Second, why is the Kula Ring organized in a ring structure? Janet Landa argued that the ring structure is an efficient way of reducing traveling costs to all other islands around the ring, given the absence of a central market: each Big-Man needs only to travel to two markets—on the left and right side of his island—to obtain the commodities of all other islands.

Third, what mechanisms exist to enforce the obligation to reciprocate the gift? Malinoswki identified four enforcement mechanisms: intermediary gifts, reputational effects, give-and-take moral code, and magic rites and sorcery. Landa argued that the mechanism for contract enforcement is built into the ring structure of Kula exchange. If any Kula partner holds on to the valuables for too long, then all other partners can identify who the offending party is because every Kula partner is directly and indirectly connected together in a circular trade network. Kula partners can impose social sanctions on the deviant Kula partner by forming a grand coalition to bypass the offending party, thus excluding the offending party from barter trade. Kula gift exchange is a classic example of private ordering or an extralegal system of enforcing primitive contractual obligations in stateless societies.

Fourth, what motivates a man to put a Kula valuable into circulation around the ring, since Kula valuables are public goods that circulate through the ring of Kula partners? The puzzle was solved when anthropologists Annette Weiner and Frederick Damon discovered the role of Kula valuables as private property (kitoums), initially produced by some specific named persons. As kitoums, Kula valuables that circulate the longest and are the most valuable perform an important signaling function of establishing the reputation of the named individuals as well as their clans for trustworthiness in Kula transactions. Kula valuables therefore establish a hierarchy of reputations or statuses among the Kula partners. There is therefore no incentive for any Kula trader to free ride. The Kula gift exchange system functions much like the “clublike” ethnically homogeneous middleman groups (EHMGs)—for example, Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia, East Indians in East Africa, Syrians in West Africa, Lebanese in North Africa, Jewish merchants in medieval Europe, and so on—that is, as an informal institutional arrangement for the enforcement of contracts. The system is an alternative to the state for contract enforcement because of the existence of social norms and codes of ethics embedded in the EHMGs that promote mutual trust.

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