Notes on the Trobriands

-4 main islands (Kiriwina the most important) and numerous small ones located off the coast of Papua New Guinea
-12,000 people in 60 villages
-speak Kilivila and Melanesian Pidgin

studied by Bronislaw Malinowski (from 1915 to 1918), who championed the modern ethnographic method of long term fieldwork
                        
functionalism
magic and gardens and canoe building

a chiefdom (in our band/tribe/chiefdom/state division)
    -ranked society, with noble and commoner lineages
    -ascribed authority
    -redistribution
    -BUT horticulturalists:
        'I yam what I yam"
                Yams are at the heart of much of Trobriand life (materially and symbolically)
                2 types of yam gardens: one for trade, one to eat from

kinship: web of relations based on blood (consanguines) or marriage (affines); notions of kinship are found in all societies
Descent groups: culturally recognized groups of consanguineal relatives linked to a common ancestor through parent-child relations
    Two types:    1. Unilineal:
                                    a. Matrilineal (15% of societies)
                                    b. Patrilineal (40% of societies)
                         2. Cognatic or bilateral (about 45% of societies)

Trobrianders are matrilineal
        -matrilineages
- 4 matriclans:
                    Pigs (Malasi)
                    Dogs (Lukuba)
                    Crocodile/Snake/Opossum (Lukwasisiga)
                    Iguana(Lukulabuta)
-viri-avunculocal residence: living with husband's mother's brother

Brother-Sister versus Husband-Wife relationship
implications for oedipal theories

practice clan exogamy
polygyny (esp. for nobles and chiefs)
FZD preferred marriage partner (x cousin):

Death and the work of mourning:

Yams, power, and prestige

Harvest festivals in July and August
    kayasa yam competitions
    kuvi yams (10' - 12' long)
    dances

Malinowski: Brothers give yams to their sister's husbands
Annette Weiner: actually yams given to women and then passed to husband
must be paid back with women's wealth: skirts and banana leaf bundles

Redistribution--goods consolidated by a single person on office and then redistributed, often used to justify and reinforce power

Kula Ring
The kula is a circuit of gift exchanges between individuals on different islands that involves the trade of symbolic goods, with 
    i. mwali armbands traveling counter-clockwise, and
    ii. bagi (or soulava) necklaces travelling clockwise
           
*trading partners on other islands; each item has its own history and fame; subsidiary items also traded (pigs, salt, ax blades, etc.)--Marvin Harris says this is what it is really all about
*creates strong alliances, helps chiefs solidify and gain power through personal fame

reciprocity--mutual exchange of gifts
Marcel Mauss' (1924) The Gift and the Maori concept of hau