The Kula ring is a ceremonial exchange system spanning 18 island communities of the Massim archipelago in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, including the Trobriand Islands, involving thousands of participants. Two classes of non-utilitarian valuables circulate in fixed, opposite directions around the ring: red shell-disc necklaces (soulava) travel clockwise and white shell armbands (mwali) travel counterclockwise, exchanged between long-term ceremonial trading partners. Even brief possession of a valuable confers prestige and status, and the exchanges are bound up with political authority, courage, and elaborate magic and ceremony. Bronisław Malinowski documented the system in his 1922 ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific, an observation that became foundational to anthropological gift-exchange theory, later built on by Marcel Mauss.
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Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountThe Massim archipelago, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, including the Trobriand Islands specifically. 1 Documented YearSourced to the subject's own accountPublication year of Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, based on fieldwork conducted roughly 1915-1918. Cross-Tradition Connections
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