Kula ring

Kula is a term used in social anthropology ( ethnology).

It involves a ritual gift exchange system with delayed reciprocity among the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands. Be exchanged between the roughly circularly arranged Melanesian islands clockwise soulava, which are necklaces made ​​of small red shell discs, in the other direction ( in mill sense) mwali, these are bracelets made ​​of a white conch ring. The individual chains and maturity have sacred character, depending on their own orally transmitted history and must be replaced after a while.

The word Kula means a ritual exchange and prestige object without direct benefit for the person who gets it. By obtaining the obligation implicates to give something adequate within a certain period of time the giver. The social function of this complex, non-profit exchange trading is to strengthen the social ties between the acephalous associated Trobrianders and flanking real barter ritual is. Donor and recipient are doing to each other in a constant ( hereditary ) position of the host's.

The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, the Kula system described in detail in his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922 and made ​​famous in the European social sciences.

Marcel Mauss in his work "The Gift " nor any detailed research on this complex topic and made ​​cross-cultural comparisons about the gifts exchange.

The realization of Malinowski, that there are economies without profit, affected the entire economic anthropology, but also the Western economic thought.