K is for kula
Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third. –Marge Piercy
"When attention is directed onto an object, it remains in the object. Throughout the mystery of Kula, trading the mwali and soulava became ‘living personalities’ with definite cultural identities." – John Kasaipwalova
Kula is a system of exchange of shell armbands and shell necklaces. The exchange network stretches over a distance of hundreds of kilometres and involves a large circle of islands in the South East of Papua New Guinea. It is known as the kula circle because necklaces are moved clockwise and arm bands move counter clockwise around these islands, with each piece taking anywhere between two and fifty years to arrive back at its starting point. Through the exchange process a complex system of partnership evolves, with one piece moving through as many as twenty partners in the circle before it is back where it started.
And so, her white paper ballpark hot dog holder joined her other treasures at home on a plate atop the microwave: a soy corn dog stick with pieces of soy dog still attached, a small piece of green pepper that looked miraculously like a “J” when it was fresh and is now so shriveled that it is a microscopic lower case “j”, three long pieces of uncooked spiraled pasta, an entire bulb of garlic that was so gorgeous she fell to the floor in a swoon, and two tiny pancakes, no bigger than ¼ of an inch across.
My snack today was a tame, tripartite, taupe pleasure: one cracker with almond butter, fifteen peanuts, and baked potato chips. We dined together, enjoying our white paper ball park hot dog holder snacks and plotting our next game.
Marcel Mauss’ book, The Gift, was an early and important study of reciprocity and gift exchange. He focused on the way that the exchange of objects between groups builds relationships between them, providing one of the earliest forms of social solidarity used by humans. Mauss drew on Bronislaw Malinowski’s study of kula exchange to demonstrate how widespread practices of gift giving were in non-European societies. In conclusion, he suggested that industrialized, secular societies could benefit from recognizing this dynamic of gift giving. And indeed we could. Other, later books have also focused on the ethic of generosity.
The Kula ring is an exchange cycle in the Trobriand Isles documented by Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Twice each year, Trobriand islanders launch their canoes and visit other islands, carrying gifts and local specialties for barter. When they arrive, the travelers give gifts, barter, and are feasted by their hosts. Kula shells are carried from one island to another in a ring, the armlets in one direction and the necklaces in another, in a constant cycle of exchange called ‘kula’.
Malinowski chastised writers who referred to kula shells as money. They are better seen as an exchange of gifts in a moral framework. He used the kula to make the more general point that the economy is embedded in social relations.
Marilyn Strathern did her field work in Melanesia, arguing that Melanesians don’t conceive of objects and persons as independent entities involved in exchange. She argues that the person who gives does not exist before they give and the relationship that occurs with this giving. This person only has an identity as part of and as a result of the giving relationship. Thus, she concludes, people only acquire their identities from the relationships in which they participate.
From The Magic of kula, we learn much about this ritualized trading culture:
“Kula was and still is a life sustaining cultural exchange. The kula circle has always been associated with making contact with far off neighbors. The Kula tradition is carried by word of mouth. It is a motion, an action of giving and taking between people–two people (partners) to begin with. This action results in the growth of participants.
"Kula is not just giving and receiving but an experience encountered by two personalities, be they individuals or entire communities. It is the simple human experience of growth and growing as an individual or a community engaged in giving and receiving.
“Kula allows communities to obtain Mwasila. Mwasila is the building or creation of a good feeling amongst people. To be happy, free, to have no worries. For the people of New Guinea it is a cleansing,
Kula creates a two-way return of favors. Unlike today’s forms of trade where you trade items and the commitment is absolved, in Kula once you are a part of the Circle it is a permanent connection. The saying around Papua is once in Kula, always in Kula.
Intentions: I will see myself as an integral part of continual giving relationships, remembering, as Emerson has told us, that the “greatest gift is a portion of thyself.” In a giving relationship, the object that is given bears the identity of the giver. This is particularly clear when Mauss describes the phenomenon of the Maori Hau, which can be loosely translated as the "spirit of the gift". The hau demands that the gift be returned to its owner. I will gift more. And I will create circles of giving. In the traditional Kula rings, a person who participates usually does so in order to develop a name for himself or acquire fame. In my Kula ring, we will give in order to develop our own identity, our Self, and the relationship between. I will give more gifts on white paper ballpark hot dog holders, the kind that make me swoon with their beauty and their simplicity and my anticipation of giving them to you. What kind of giving circles do you know and participate in?
