The Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders
by B. Malinowski (April 7, 1884-May 16, 1942)
Economic Journal, volume 31, 1921, pp. 1-16.
[Resume of a course of lectures given at the London School of
Economics in the Summer Term, 1920, embodying some results of the
Robert Mond Ethnographic Expedition to British New Guinea.]
Only a very slight acquaintance with ethnological literature
is needed to convince us that little attention has been paid so
far to the problems of economics among primitive races. A certain
amount of speculation has been devoted to origins of economic
institutions -- more especially to origins of property; to the
stages of economic development, and to certain questions of
exchange, "primitive money," and rudimentary forms of division of
labour. As a rule, however, small results have been achieved,
because the amount of serious consideration given by theoretical
writers to economic problems is in no way proportional to their
complexity and importance, and the field observations extant are
scanty. Again, the lack of inspiration from theoretical work has
reacted detrimentally on ethnographic field work, and a careful
survey of the best records of savage life reveals little or
nothing that might be of value to the economist.
A student of economics, in possession of a systematic theory,
might be naturally tempted to inquire how far, if at all, his
conclusions can be applied to a type of society entirely
different from our own. He would attempt in vain, however, to
answer this question on the basis of the ethnological data
extant, or, if he did, his results could not be correct. In fact,
the question has been set forth and an attempt at its solution
made by C. Buecher in his Industrial Evolution. His conclusions
are, in my opinion, a failure, not owing to imperfect reasoning
or method, but rather to the defective material on which they are
formed. Buecher comes to the conclusion that the savages -- he
includes among them races as highly developed as the Polynesians
-- have no economic organisation, and that they are in a
pre-economic stage -- the lowest in that of the individual search
for food, the higher ones in the stage of self-sufficient
household economy.
In this article I shall try to present some data referring to
the economic life of the Trobriand Islanders, a community living
on a coral archipelago off the north-east coast of New Guinea.
These natives, typical South Sea Islanders of the Melanesian
stock, with a developed institution of chieftainship, great
ability in various crafts and a fine decorative art, certainly
are not at the lower end of savagery. In their general level of
culture, however, they may be taken as representative of the
majority of the savage races now in existence, and they are less
developed culturally than the Polynesians, the bulk of North
American Indians, of Africans, and of Indonesians. If we find,
therefore, distinct forms of economic organisation among them, we
are safe in assuming that even among the lowest savages we might
expect to find more facts of economic interest than have been
hitherto recorded.
I shall first give an outline of the natural resources of the
Trobrianders and a broad survey of the manner in which these are
utilised. The natives live on flat coral islands, covered with
rich, heavy soil, very well suited for the cultivation of yams
and taro, and they also enjoy a good regular rainfall. The coast
is surrounded in parts with a fringing reef, in parts it encloses
a big, shallow lagoon, teeming with fish. Having such excellent
natural inducements, the natives are splendid tillers of the soil
and first-rate fishermen, efficient and hard-working in both
pursuits. These in turn reward them with a perennial abundance of
food, efficient to support a population very dense, as compared
with other tribes of that part of the world. In gardening the
natives obtain their fine results in spite of using only the most
primitive implement -- a pointed stick, made and discarded every
time they go to work. In fishing they use big nets, also traps,
fish-hooks and poison. As manufacturers they excel in
wood-carving, basket-weaving, and the production of highly-valued
shell ornaments. On the other hand, through lack of material,
they have to rely on the importation from other tribes of stone
implements and pottery, as, of course, neither hard stone nor
clay are obtainable on a coral island. I have begun by giving
this general outline of their resources, pursuits and crafts, in
order to indicate the narrow frame within which the current
accounts of economics are encompassed. The data would there, no
doubt, be given with a much greater wealth of detail --
especially in the technological aspect -- but it would be mainly
the successive description of the various activities, connected
with the quest for food and the manufacture of objects, without
any attempt being made at a discussion of the more complex
problems, referring to organisation of production, apportionment,
and to the mechanism of tribal life in its economic aspect.
This will be done here, beginning with production, and taking
agriculture as an example.
The questions before us are, first, the important problem of
land tenure; next, the less obvious problems of the organisation
of production. Is the work in the gardens carried out by each
family, or each person individually and independently? Or is
there any general co-ordination of this work, any social
organisation of their efforts, and, if so, how is it done, and by
whom? Are the successive stages of the work integrated into any
organic whole, by any supervision, by any personal guidance, or
any social or psychological force?
Land tenure among the Trobriand natives is rather complex,
and it shows well the difficulties of solving ethnographic field
problems of this type and the dangers of being misled into some
inadequate approximation. When I began to inquire into this
subject, I first received from my native informant a series of
general statements, such as that the chief is the owner of all
land, or that each garden plot has its owner, or that all the men
of a village community own the land jointly. Then I tried to
answer the question by the method of concrete investigation:
taking a definite plot, I inquired successively, from several
independent informants, who was the owner of it. In some cases I
had mentioned to me successively as many as five different
"owners" to one plot -- each answer, as I found out later on,
containing part of the truth, but none being correct by itself.
It was only after I had drawn up complete plans of the garden
land of several village communities, and inquired successively
into the details, not only of each separate garden unit, but also
into the details of each of the alleged forms of "ownership,"
that I was able to reach a satisfactory conclusion. The main
difficulty in this, as in ever so many similar questions, lies in
our giving our own meaning of "ownership" to the corresponding
native word. In doing this we overlook the fact that to the
natives the word "ownership" not only has a different
significance, but that they use one word to denote several legal
and economic relationships, between which it is absolutely
necessary for us to distinguish.
The chief (Guya'u) has in the Trobriands a definite
over-right over all the garden land within the district. This
consists in the title of "master" or "owner" (Toli), and in the
exercise of certain ceremonial rights and privileges, such as the
decision on which lands the gardens are to be made, arbitration
in garden disputes, and several minor privileges. The garden
magician (Towosi) also calls himself the "master of the garden"
and is considered as such, in virtue of his complex magical and
other functions, fulfilled in the course of gardening. Again, in
certain and over certain portions of the land, the same title is
cases, to notables or sub-chiefs, who carry out certain minor
offices given in connection with it. Finally, each garden plot
belongs to some individual or other in the village community,
and, when the gardens are made on this particular land, this
owner either uses his plot himself or leases it to someone else
under a rather complicated system of payment. The chief, the
magician and the notables also own individually a number of
garden plots each, independently of their general over-rights.
Now the reason why an economist cannot ignore such
over-rights and complications is that the natives value them
extremely, and, what is more important, that such over-rights
carry with them definite functions and wield definite influences
of economic importance.
Thus the complex conditions of land tenure, the not
infrequent quarrels about gardening, and the need for summoning
and maintaining communal labour require a social authority, and
this is supplied by the chief with the assistance of the
notables. On the other hand, the Towosi, the hereditary garden
magician of each village community, has to a great extent the
control over the initiative in the more detailed proceedings of
the work. Each stage of gardening is inaugurated by a magical
rite performed by him. He also orders the work to be done, looks
after the way in which it is carried out, and imposes the periods
of taboo, which punctuate it.
The proceedings of gardening are opened by a conference,
summoned by the chief and held in front of the magician's house,
at which all arrangements and the allotment of garden plots are
decided upon. Immediately after that, the members of the Village
community bring a gift of selected food to the garden magician,
who at night sacrificially offers a portion of it to the
ancestral spirits, with an invocation, and at the same time
utters lengthy spell over some special leaves. Next morning, the
magician repairs to the garden, accompanied by the men of the
village, each of whom carries an axe with the charmed leaves
wrapped around its blade. While the villagers stand around, the
Towosi (magician) strikes the ground with a ceremonial staff,
uttering a formula. This he does on each garden plot
successively, and on each the men cut a few saplings with their
axes. After that, for a month or so, the scrub is cut in the
prospective gardens by men only, and communal labour is often
resorted to. The Towosi has to decide when the next stage, the
burning of scrub and the clearing of soil, has to begin. When he
thinks that the cut scrub is efficiently dry, he imposes a taboo
on garden work, so that any belated cutting has to be suspended.
In a series of rites, lasting, as a rule, for about three days,
he inaugurates the work of clearing the garden plot; this
afterwards is carried on by men and women jointly, working in
families, each on its own plot, without the help of communal
labour. The planting of yams is inaugurated by a very elaborate
ceremony, also extending over a few days, during which no further
garden work is done at all. A magical rite of its own inaugurates
each further stage, the erection of supports for the yam vine;
the weeding of the gardens, done by female communal labour; the
cleaning of the yam roots and tubers; the preliminary harvest of
early yams; and finally the main harvest of late yams.
When the plants begin to grow a series of magical rites,
parallel with the inaugural ones, is performed, in which the
magician is supposed to give an impulse to the growth and
development of the plant at each of its successive stages. Thus,
one rite is performed to make the seed tuber sprout; another
drives up the sprouting shoot; another lifts it out of the
ground; yet another makes it twine round the support; then, with
yet other rites, the leaves are made to bud, to open, to expand,
respectively.
The Towosi (garden magician) always performs a rite first on
one of the four garden plots selected for the purpose each
season, and called Leywota. In certain ceremonies he afterwards
carries the magic on into each garden plot, in others the magic
is performed on the selected plots only. The Leywota are
important from the economic point of view, because the owner of
such a plot is bound to keep pace with the progress of magic,
that is, he may not lag behind with his work. Also, the Leywota
plots are always worked with a special care, and they are kept up
to a very high standard of gardening. Thus, both in the
regularity and in the quality of the work done, these plots set a
definite pattern to all the others.
Besides the indirect influence which the Towosi exercises on
garden work by giving the initiative and inaugurating the
successive stages, by imposing taboos, and by setting the
standard by means of the Leywota plots, he also directly
supervises certain activities of general importance to all the
gardens. Thus, for example, he keeps his eye on the work done in
fencing round the garden. All the plots are placed within a
common enclosing fence, of which everyone has to make his share,
corresponding to his plot or plots. Thus, the neglect of one
careless individual might result in a damage to all, for bush
pigs or wallabies might find their way in and destroy the new
crops. If this happens, the garden magician gets up in front of
his house in the evening and harangues the village, often
mentioning the culprit by name and heaping blame on him -- a
proceeding which seldom fails to take effect.
It is easy to see that the magician performs manifold and
complex functions, and that his claim to be the "master of the
garden" is not an empty one! What is now the economic importance
of his functions? The natives believe deeply that through his
magic the Towosi controls the forces of Nature, and they also
believe that he ought to control the work of man. To start a new
stage of gardening without a magical inauguration is, for them,
unthinkable. Thus, his magical power, exercised side by side with
their work, his magical co-operation, so to speak, inspires them
with confidence in success and gives them a powerful impulse to
work. Their implicit belief in magic also supplies them with a
leader, whose initiative and command they are ready to accept in
all matters, where it is needed. It is obvious that the series of
magical rites-punctuating the progress of activities at regular
intervals, imposing a series of rest periods, and, in the
institution of standard plots (Leywota), establishing a model to
the whole community -- is of extreme importance. It acts as a
psychological force, making for a more highly organised system of
work, than it would be possible to achieve at this stage of
culture by an appeal to force or to reason.
Thus, we can answer the questions, referring to the
organisation of production, by summing up our results, and saying
that the authority of the chief, the belief in magic, and the
prestige of the magician are the social and psychological forces
which regulate and organise production; that this latter, far
from being just the sum of uncorrelated individual efforts, is a
complex and organically united tribal enterprise.
Finally, a few words must be said about the character of
native labour in the Trobriands. We would see their economic
activities in an entirely wrong perspective, if we were to
imagine that these natives are temperamentally lazy and can work
only under some outside pressure. They have a keen interest in
their gardens, work with spirit, and can do sustained and
efficient work, both when they do it individually and communally.
There are different systems of communal work on various scales;
sometimes the several village communities join together,
sometimes the whole community, sometimes a few households.
Distinctive native names are given to the various kinds of
communal work, and payment in food also differs. In the more
extensive kinds of work, it is the chief's duty to feed the
workers.
An interesting institution of ceremonial enterprise deserves
special attention. This is known as the Kayasa, and might be
described as a period when all activities, whether gardening,
fishing, industrial or even merely tribal sports and merrymaking,
are carried out with special intensity. When the season is good,
and the time is felt by the whole community to be propitious, the
chief announces the Kayasa, and inaugurates it by giving a big
feast. The whole period of the Kayasa is punctuated by other
feasts, also provided for by the chief, and everyone who takes
part is under an implicit obligation to do his best, and work his
hardest, so that the Kayasa may be a success.
We have discussed their production on the example of
gardening. The same conclusions, however, could have been drawn
from a discussion of fishing, building of houses or canoes, of
from a description of their big trading expeditions. All these
activities are dependent upon the social power of the chief and
the influence of the respective magicians, In all of them the
quantity of the produce, the nature of the work and the manner in
which it is carried out -- all of which are essentially economic
features -- are highly modified by the social organisation of the
tribe and by their magical belief. Customary and legal norms,
magical and mythological ideas, induce system into their economic
efforts and organise them on a social basis. On the other hand,
it is clear that if an ethnologist proposes to describe any
aspect of tribal life, without approaching it also from the
economic point of view, his account would be bound to be a
failure.
This will be still more evident after a description of the
manner in which they apportion the produce and utilise it in what
could be called the financing of tribal enterprise. Here, again,
I shall speak, for simplicity's sake, mainly of the garden
produce. As each man has allotted to him for each season one or
several garden plots, we might expect that, following the
principle of "closed household economy," each family would by
themselves consume the results of their labour. As a matter of
fact, the apportionment or distribution, far from following such
a simple scheme, is again full of intricacies and presents many
economically interesting features. Of these the two most
important are: the obligations, imposed by rules of kinship and
relationship-in-law, and the dues and tributes paid to the chief.
The first-named obligations involve a very complex
redistribution of garden produce, resulting in a state of things
in which everybody is working for somebody else. The main rule is
that a man is obliged to distribute almost all his garden produce
among his sisters; in fact, to maintain his sisters and their
families. I must pass over all the complications and consequences
implied by this system, and only notice that it means an enormous
amount of additional labour in handling and transporting the
produce, and that it enmeshes the whole community into a network
of reciprocal obligations and dues, one constant flow of gift and
counter-gift.
This constant economic undertow to all public and private
activities -- this materialistic streak which runs through all
their doings -- gives a special and unexpected colour to the
existence of the natives, and shows the immense importance to
them of the economic aspect of everything. Economic
considerations pervade their social life, economic difficulties
constantly face them. Whenever the native moves -- to a feast, to
an expedition, or in warfare -- he will have to deal with the
problems of giving and counter-giving. The detailed analysis of
this state of affairs would lead us to interesting results, but
it would be a side issue from our main theme -- the public
economy of the tribe.
To return to this, we must first consider, what part of the
whole tribal income is apportioned to the chief. By various
channels, by dues and tributes, and especially through the effect
of polygamy, with its resulting obligations of his
relatives-in-law, about 30 per cent of the whole food production
of his district finds its way into the large, finely-decorated
yam houses of the chief. Now to the natives the possession and
display of food are of immense value and importance in
themselves. Pride in possessing abundant food is one of their
leading characteristics. One of the greatest insults that can be
uttered is to call someone "Man with no food," and it would be
bitterly resented, and probably a quarrel would ensue. To be able
to boast of having food, is one of their chief glories and
ambitions. Their whole conduct, in the matter of eating in
public, is guided by the rule that no suspicion of scarcity of
food can possibly be attached to the eater. For example, to eat
publicly in a strange village would be considered humiliating,
and is never done.
Their ambitions in this direction are also shown by the keen
interest taken in the display of food. On all possible occasions
-- at harvest time, when there is an interchange of gifts, or
when the enormous food distributions (Sagali) take place -- the
display of the food is one of the main features of interest. And
there are even special food exhibitions, in which two villages
compete against each other, and which in the old days used to be
taken so seriously that often war was the result.
The chief is the only person who owns a big yam house, which
is made with open interstices between the beams so that all may
look through and admire the yams, of which the finest are always
placed to the front. The chief is, as a matter of fact, also the
only person who can accumulate, and, as a matter of privilege,
the only one who is allowed to own and display large quantities.
This gives him a definite status, is a sign of high rank, and
satisfies his ambition. Finally, it enhances his power, broadly
speaking, in the same manner as possession of wealth does with
us.
Another important privilege of the chief, is his power to
transform food into objects of permanent wealth. Here again, he
is the only man rich enough to do it, but he also jealously
guards his right, and would punish anyone who might attempt to
emulate him, even on a small scale.
The Vaygua -- objects or tokens of wealth -- consist of
several classes of highly-valued articles, mainly big ceremonial
axe-blades, necklaces of red shell discs, and armshells of the
conus millepunctatus shell. These objects are hardly ever put to
any real use, but they are extremely highly valued in themselves
by the natives. The material of which they are made is rare and
difficult to obtain, and much time and labour must be spent in
working it. Once made, however, the objects are very durable,
almost indestructible. Their main economic function is to be
owned as signs of wealth, and consequently of power, and from
time to time to change hands as ceremonial gifts. As such, they
are the foundation of certain kinds of native trade, and they
constitute an indispensable element of the social organisation of
the natives. For, as mentioned above, all their social life is
accompanied by gift and counter-gift. These are, as a rule,
arranged so that one party has to give a substantial present of
when the other offers one of the tokens of wealth.
The chief, as said, has the means and the customary privilege
of producing these objects. He also, in definite circumstances,
frequently acquires them in exchange for food. In any case, about
80 per cent of these objects remain in his possession (or at
least this was the proportion before the chief's power and all
their tribal law had been undermined by white man's influence).
This acquisition of valuables, side by side with possession of
food, is the basis of his power and a mark of his dignity and
rank.
The chief finally is (or, more correctly, in olden days was)
the owner of about three-quarters of all the pigs, coconuts and
betel nuts in the district. By a system of metayage, there are in
the various villages certain people, who look after his right
over these three classes of things; they also receive their
share, but have to bring him the bulk of the produce.
Thus, the possession of the beautiful yam houses, always
ready to receive the crops, and often filled with them; the
acquisition of a large amount of Vaygua (tokens of wealth), and
of the greater part of the pigs, coconuts and betel nuts, give
the chief a greater static basis of power, prestige and rank. But
also the control over all these classes of wealth allows him to
exercise his power dynamically.
For in a society where everything has to be accompanied by
gift and payment, even the chief, the highest and most powerful
individual in the community, though, according to customary rule,
he can command the services of all, still must pay carried for
them. He enjoys many personal services, such as being carried
about on his journeys, sending people on errands, having all
forms of magic performed for him. For such services, rendered by
retainers and picked specialists, a chief must pay immediately,
sometimes in Vaygua, sometimes in food, more especially in pigs,
coconuts and betel nuts.
The essential of power is, of course, the possibility of
enforcing orders and commanding obedience by means of punishment.
The chief has special henchmen to carry out his verdicts directly
by inflicting capital punishment, and they must be paid by
Vaygua. More often, however, the punishment is meted out by means
of evil magic. How often the sorcerers in the Trobriands use
poison, it would be difficult to say. But the enormous dread of
them, and the deep belief in their power, renders their magic
efficient enough. And if the chief were known to have given a
Vaygua to a powerful sorcerer in order to kill a man, I should
say that man was doomed.
Even more important than theexercise of personal power, is,
the command, already mentioned once or twice, which wealth gives the
chief over the organisation of tribal enterprises. The chief has the
power of initiative, the customary right to organise all big tribal
affairs, and conduct them in the character of master of ceremonies. But
there are two conditions incidental to the role he has to play. The leading
men, such as the headmen of dependent villages, the main
performers, the always indispensable magicians, the technical
specialists, have all to be paid, and are, as usual, paid in
objects of wealth, and the bulk of the participants have to be
fed.
Both these conditions can be fulfilled by the chief in virtue
of his control over a considerable portion of the consumable and
condensed wealth of the tribe.
As a concrete example of big tribal affairs, organised and
financed by the chief, we can quote first of all the
above-mentioned Kayasa, a term embracing several kinds of
ceremonial enterprises. In these, as we saw, the chief, by means
of gifts, imposes a binding obligation on the participants to
carry out the undertaking, and by means of periodical
distributions he keeps everyone going during the time of dancing,
merry-making or communal working. In former times during war,
when the inhabitants of two hostile districts used to forgather
in their respective chiefs' villages, the chief had to summon his
vassal headmen by gifts of Vaygua.(1*) Then at an initial
ceremonial gathering, there would be a distribution of food, in
particular the specially coveted pig's flesh, coconuts and betel
nuts. And, later on, when during the progress of hostilities
large numbers had to camp in or near the chief's village, his yam
houses would be severely taxed in order to keep the warriors
provided with food. Again, there is an important feature of their
tribal life -- the Sagali, or ceremonial distributions of food
from one clan to another, associated with their mortuary ritual.
In these the chief's wealth often had to be called upon to a
considerable extent if the nominal giver of the feast had any
claim on him as his kinsman, clansman, or relative-in-law.
We see, therefore, that in following up the various channels
through which produce flows, and in studying the transformations
it undergoes, we find a new and extremely interesting field for
ethnological and economic interest. The chief's economic role in
public life can be pointedly described as that of "tribal
banker," without, of course, giving this term its literal
meaning. His position, his privileges, allow him to collect a
considerable portion of tribal yield and to store it, also to
transform part of it into permanent condensed wealth, by the
accumulation of which he gives himself a still bigger fund of
power. Thus, on the one hand, the chief's economic function is to
create objects of wealth, and to accumulate provisions for tribal
use, thus making big tribal enterprises possible. On the other
hand, in doing so, he enhances his prestige and influence, which
he also exercises through economic means.
It would be idle to generalise from one example, or to draw
strained parallels -- to speak of the chief as "capitalist" or to
use the expression "tribal banker" in any but the most
unpretentious way. If we had more accounts of native economics
similar to this -- that is, going more into detail and giving an
economic synthesis of facts -- we might be able to arrive, by
comparative treatment, at some interesting results. We might be
able to grasp the nature of the economic mechanism of savage
life, and incidentally we might be able to answer many questions
referring to the origins and development of economic
institutions. Again, nothing stimulates and broadens our views so
much as wide comparison and sharp contrast, and the study of
extremely primitive economic institutions would no doubt prove
very refreshing and fertilising to theory.
It is necessary to point out that, in such a short article,
where the broad outline of the institutions and customs has to be
given with a few strokes, I have had to summarise certain things.
Thus I speak of "the chief," whereas in a more detailed account I
would have shown that there are several chieftainships in the
tribe with a varying range and amount of power. In each case the
economic, as well as the other social conditions, are slightly
different, and to these differences I have not been able to do
justice in this article. I have tried to present the general
features which, in a manner, are common to all the districts of
Kiriwina. A greater wealth of detail, though it might blur
certain outlines and certainly would make things look less
simple, would have allowed us to draw our conclusions even more
forcibly and convincingly.
To sum up the results so far obtained, we may say that both
the production and its apportionment in the native communities
are by no means as simple as is usually assumed. They are both
based on a special form of organisation, both are intertwined
with other tribal aspects, depending and reacting on other social
and psychological forces.
Through the institution of chieftainship and the belief in
magic, their production is integrated into a systematic effort of
the whole community. By this a considerable amount of consumable
wealth is produced, a great part of which is controlled by the
chief, who transforms some of it into permanent wealth and keeps
the rest in store. This, again, coupled with the natives' regard
for wealth, and the importance of material give-and-take in their
social institutions, allows the chief to wield his power to
organise and finance tribal life.
We have not spoken of exchange yet, and, indeed, it is such a
vast subject in the Trobriands -- that is, if treated in the
light of a more precise analysis -- that in this paper I shall
not attempt to deal with it exhaustively. There is, however, one
point to which I want to draw attention. The tokens of wealth
have often been called "money." It is at first sight evident that
"money" in our sense cannot exist among the Trobrianders. The
word "currency" -- differentiated from "money" in that it is an
object of use as well as a means of exchange -- does not help us
much here, as the articles in question are not utilities. Any
article which can be classed as "money" or "currency" must fulfil
certain essential conditions; it must function as a medium of
exchange and as a common measure of value, and it must be the
instrument of condensing wealth, the means by which value can be
accumulated. Money also, as a rule, serves as the standard of
deferred payments. It is obvious at once that in economic
conditions such as obtain among the Trobrianders, there can be no
question of a standard of deferred payments, as payments are
never deferred. It is equally clear that the Vaygua do serve as a
means of condensing wealth -- in fact, that this is their
essential role.
The questions of a common measure of value and a measure of
exchange require, however, some consideration. Exchange of useful
articles against one another does exist in Kiriwina, both in
internal and external trade. Indeed, barter among the natives is
very well developed. Their exchange sometimes takes the form of
free gift and following counter-gift -- always repaid according
to definite rules of equivalence. Sometimes it is real barter
(for which they have a term -- Gimwali), where one article is
traded against another, with direct assessment of equivalence and
even with haggling.
But in all cases trade follows customary rules, which
determine what and how much shall be exchanged for any given
article. Thus the villagers of Bwoitalu are the professional
carvers in hard wood and produce excellent carved dishes. They
are, on the other hand, in need of coconuts and yam food, and
they like to acquire certain ornaments. Whenever one of them has
a few dishes of certain dimensions on hand, he knows that in the
village of Oburaku he can get about forty coconuts for one grade,
twenty for another, ten for another, and so on; in the central
villages of Kiriwina, he can obtain a definite number of yam
baskets; in some other villages, he can get a few red shell-discs
or turtle-shell ear-rings. Again, some coastal villages need a
special kind of strong creeper for lashing their canoes. This
they know can be obtained from villages near swamps for a
definite payment -- that is, one coil of creeper for one coconut
or betel nut, or ten coils for a small basketful of yams.
All the trade is carried on in exactly the same way -- given
the article, and the communities between which it is traded,
anyone would know its equivalent, rigidly prescribed by custom.
In fact, the narrow range of exchangeable articles and the
inertia of custom leave no room for any free exchange, in which
there would be a need for comparing a number of articles by means
of a common measure. Still less is there a need for a medium of
exchange, since, whenever something changes hands, it does so
always because the barterers directly require the other article.
This leads us first of all to the conclusion that we cannot
think of Vaygua in terms of "money." Moreover, what is more
important still, we see that in Kiriwina the character of the
exchange does not admit of any article becoming money. Certain
things, no doubt, more especially basketsful of yams, bundles of
taro and coconuts are very frequently exchanged, and against a
wide range of other articles, and in economic considerations they
may serve us as measures of value, but they are not regarded or
purposely used as such by the natives.
When reading ethnological accounts about native "money" --
such, for example, as those about the diwarra shells in New
Britain or about the big stones in the Carolines -- the
statements appear to me singularly unconvincing. Unless it is
shown that the mechanism of exchange among the natives there
requires or even allows of the existence of an article, used as a
common measure of value or medium of exchange, all the data given
about an article, however much they might lend it a superficial
resemblance to money, must be considered worthless. Of course,
when a savage community comes into commercial relations with a
higher culture-as in Africa, where trading between Arabs and
Europeans has long taken place -- then money can and even must
exist. Some forms of the so-called South Sea "money" may have
acquired this character recently under European influence, and
the diwarra may possibly be a case in point.
The discussion of the problem of money among primitive
peoples shows very clearly how necessary it is in ethnology to
analyse the economic background of the conditions indispensable
to the existence of certain complex phenomena. The existence of
"money" or "currency" so easily assumed, so glibly introduced by
the use of these terms, proves with close analysis to be an
hypothesis extremely bold and probably equally misleading.
One further function of the tokens of value should be
mentioned here, that is, their exchange in the form of circular
trading, called by the natives Kula, which takes place over a
wide area amongst the islands and coasts of this part of British
New Guinea. This peculiar form of circular trade presents many
interesting economic features, but as it has been described
elsewhere I shall not enter into the subject now.(2*)
All the facts adduced in this article lead us to the
conclusion that primitive economics arc not by any means the
simple matter we are generally led to suppose. In savage
societies national economy certainly does not exist, if we mean
by the term a system of free competitive exchange of goods and
services, with the interplay of supply and demand determining
value and regulating all economic life. But there is a long step
between this and Buecher's assumption that the only alternative
is a pre-economic stage, where an individual person or a single
household satisfy their primary wants as best they can, without
any more elaborate mechanism than division of labour according to
sex, and an occasional spasmodic bit of barter. Instead, we find
a state of affairs where production, exchange and consumption are
socially organised and regulated by custom, and where a special
system of traditional economic values governs their activities
and spurs them on to efforts. This state of affairs might be
called -- as a new conception requires a new term -- Tribal
Economy.
The analysis of the natives' own economic conceptions of
value, ownership, equivalence, commercial honour and morals opens
a new vista of economic research, indispensable for any deeper
understanding of a native community. Economic elements enter into
tribal life in all its aspects -- social, customary, legal and
magico-religious -- and are in turn controlled by these. It is
not for the observer in the field to answer or to contemplate the
metaphysical question as to what is the cause and effect -- the
economic or the other aspects. To study their interplay and
correlation is, however, his duty. For to overlook the relation
between two or several aspects of native life is as much an error
of omission as to overlook any one aspect.
NOTES:
1. For a general description of the Kiriwinian war customs, which
are a thing of the past, see the article by the writer in Man,
January, 1920.
2. See article by the writer, "Kula: Circulating Exchange of
Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern Guinea" Man, July,
1919.
