Items For Trade
All Kula valuables are non-use items traded purely for purposes of enhancing one's social status and prestige. Carefully prescribed customs and traditions surround the ceremonies that accompany the exchanges which establish strong, ideally lifelong relationships between the exchange parties (karayta'u, "partners"). The act of giving, as Mauss wrote, is a display of the greatness of the giver, accompanied by shows of exaggerated modesty in which the value of what is given is actively played down.Such a partnership involves strong mutual obligations such as hospitality, protection and assistance. According to the Muyuw, a good Kula relationship should be "like a marriage". Similarly, the saying around Papua is: "once in the Kula, always in the Kula" (Malinowski, 1922: 83).
Read more about this topic: Kula Ring
Famous quotes containing the words items and/or trade:
“In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness—a color, a weight, a texture—that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“Whatever trade one is in, one will find some fault with it.”
—Chinese proverb.