Summary Of the Kula Exchange and Comparision to The Moka Exchange
In Bronislaw Malinowski description of the “Kula exchange” in The Essentials of the Kula, he is quick to qualify his descriptions of this exchange by making it abundantly clear that the Kula is to be considered in separate light than then trade that happens within communities involved in the Kula exchange. Of the Kula exchange, he says that it has an “Extensive, inter-tribal character” and that while there are other activities associated and connected to it, the Kula is always the most important (Malinowski, 1979, p. 81). The author writes that “The natives sharply distinguish it [Kula] from barter, which they practice extensively, of which they have a clear idea, and for which they have a settled term” Most important then in understanding the Kula, is that it has it’s own cultural heartbeat, and while it may have emerged from trading, for the Trobriand people, it is it’s own spiritual animal deserving the reverence of to the letter observance. It, for instance, is distant from the Moka, in with status is given to loans that are repaid with a surplus.
Malinowski, after studying the Kula extensively, concluded that it was an “extensive, complicated, and yet well ordered institution” (Malinowski, 1979, p. 83). In modern terms, the Kula exchange is a social network where prominence is governed by beads. There are two material items that are exchanged in the Kula exchanges. The first is a long necklace made from a red shell called soulava. The second is a bracelet made from a white shell called mwali. Further in this essay the rules that govern these articles movements will be explained. By one person giving them to another, these two items move in opposite directions along a chain of Islands on the North and East end of New Guinea. What connects these people across 450 kilometers of distance is not a shared government, but their people’s participation in the Kula exchange. The mwali shells move counterclockwise and the soulava moves clockwise. (Malinowski, 1979 p. 81).
Except in very rare exceptions, no one in the Kula exchange ever owns any of the bracelets and necklaces being passed from hand to hand. All one can ever do is possess them for a period of time, the length of which is governed by strict codes of acceptability—a person does not want to be found out to have been sitting on a necklace or bracelet for two long.
The exchange is not done haphazardly. A person can only exchange with anyone, but only with a person with whom he is in a Kula relationship with. These relationships form lifelong bonds between the exchangers, for “one in the Kula, always in the Kula” (Malinowski, 1979, p. 83). This, as the author points out, also stays true to the items being exchanged. Once they enter the Kula, they are to be past around from hand to hand in perpetuum.
Certain lavish articles within the exchange are known throughout the exchange circuit. People can say famous men living or dead who were once in possession of these articles. In this way, part of the villages within the exchange’s shared oral history and traditions are to be found within the articles of the exchange.
Another advantageous advantage the Kula establishes lifelong friends and allies. Partners in the Kula will always exchange the same article for the “same different” article. In this way the appropriate direction of the articles is always maintained. Malinowski estimates that it takes between 2-10 years for an article to make an entire circuit. This means that even within a participants lifetime, he is likely to run into the same objects multiple times. Each will have accumulated new stories of who has been the temporary possessor of it.
Partners in the Kula always try to procure an article that matches or surpasses the lavishness of the one received. Participants who are away of one of their partners having hold of a particularly tempting article, will give gifts to their partner in order to sway their decision to pass it on to them. Sociologically speaking, the Kula is a well-ordered system that has the outcome of creating, sustaining, and strengthening friendships in an egalitarian way. It is likely this outcome that has led this “simple action—this passing from hand to hand of two meaningless and quite useless objects—has somehow succeeded in becoming the foundations of a big inter-tribal institution, in being associated with ever so many other activities” (Malinowski, 1979, p. 86).
So much of the daily life and ritual of the One can imagine how, in much older times, perhaps such gifts were brought in from one direction due to the availability of the shells to create them, and the shells from another beach were given in return, and so the tradition may have began. While bigger men in the Kula exchange are defined by having more exchanging partners than those ranked lower, the Kula is distinct from the Moka exchange, which while also highly ritualized, creates “Big men” through a gift economy. The Moka exchange encourages competition, and outdoing others in order to rise above them. The Kula exchange, while exchange partners feel a certain obligation to match another’s gift, this is governed by terms of reciprocity that remain benign enough to foster mutual accord, not rise above another’s partners, who are also intimate friends, either through the exchange, or who began exchanging because of that close tie.
The Moka exchange is a system in which debts are repaid, plus a surplus. Moka is the increase to the gift. It is not necessary, in that there is no action taken against one who simply repays a gift without a Moka, but this is governed by strict codes, which will cause a person who does not include a Moka with a repayment of a gift to a “rubbish man.” A person does not want his name associated with rubbish man, so he includes a “then some,” or a Moka. He then will be seen as a big man for giving more than he received and his status within the community will rise.
A good example of this is the 1976 documentary film Ongka’s Big Moka, brought the concept of the Moka exchange to a large audience. The film follows Ongka, as he prepares for a Moka with a tribe that hosted one ten years ago. That tribe gave them 400 pigs, so in order for a Moka to take place, he must repay more than this amount. The Moka that Ongka has is of a far greater value than he received ten years ago from the tribe hosting it. In his speech to them, he says, “Now that I have given you these things, I have won. . . I have knocked you down by giving so much.”
This, in one sense, is the end game of the Moka—giving so much that it can never be paid back and becoming a “Big man” among “Rubbish men.” This, like the Kula, serves a cultural need. It encourages trade, and “giving” and also allows one tribe to maintain a relationship with another. It also allows wealth to be redistributed. While trade accompanies the Kula, nothing of actual use, nothing that can be consumed, is given as part of the Kula itself. An exception might be found within gifts given in the attempt of receiving a coveted article, but property and the redistribution of it is not at the heart of Kula. Kula, it could be said, is the humbler, softer of the exchanges. Both though, create large networks of social interactions between people and ensure the continuance of that interaction. Just as the Kula is never over because objects remain in motion perpetually, the Moka between families and tribes continues to grow, since participants must to more than simply return gifts, they must give a larger gift, and as a result they will likely receive a larger gift until the other party finds it simply impossible to do given the resources that he/she possesses. This then leads to a collapse of the system, and like Ongka’s speech, can lead to one party winning and another losing. In Kula, there is no winner or loser, only participants with larger and smaller networks.
Sources:
Ongka's big moka. Dir. Charlie Nairn. Perf. N/A. Granada Television International, 1976. DVD.
Malinowski, B. 1979. Essentials of the Kula; Technicalities of the Kula. In M. Young (ed.), The Ethnography of Malinowski, pp.162-171, 181-198. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
