Play By The Rules
The right of participation in Kula exchange is not automatic. One has to "buy" one's way into it through participating in various lower spheres of exchange (Damon, 1980:278). The relationship giver-receiver is always asymmetrical: the former are higher in status. Also, Kula valuables are ranked according to value and age and so are the relationships that are created through their exchange. Participants will often strive to obtain particularly valuable and renowned Kula objects whose owner's fame will spread quickly through the archipelago. Such a competition unfolds through different persons offering pokala (offerings) and kaributu (solicitory gifts) to the owner, thus seeking to induce him to engage in a gift exchange relationship involving the desired object. Kula exchange therefore involves a complex system of gifts and countergifts whose rules are laid down by custom. The system is based on trust as obligations are not legally enforceable. However, strong social obligations and the cultural value system, in which liberality is exalted as highest virtue while meanness is condemned as shameful, create powerful pressures to "play by the rules". Those who are perceived as holding on to valuables and as being slow to give them away soon get a bad reputation (cf. Malinowski, 1920:100).
Read more about this topic: Kula Ring
Famous quotes containing the words play and/or rules:
“No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)