Kula Ring, Anthropology of

Abstract

This article discusses features of the kula exchange ring, a long distance, directionally oriented exchange of armshells and necklaces of southeastern Papua New Guinea. Drawing on recent field research that updates Malinowski's (1922) classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific, it modifies some of the simplifications which have tended to hypostatize kula in anthropological discourse. In this connection, it exemplifies some of the respects in which kula is a historically changing, intrinsically dynamic network informed by local sociocultural differences, and explains critical new information about kula practices (notably the principal of kitomu shells that operate as a category of property in kula) deriving from this research. Brief consideration is also given to certain broad anthropological approaches to kula stemming on the one hand from Malinowski's research as well as his use-oriented functionalism, and on the other from Mauss' (1950) essay on gift exchange with its emphasis on the symbolic and ontological bonds between persons and things. The article concludes by noting some of the frameworks of interest in contemporary anthropology in terms of which kula has been reconsidered.