Abstract
CEREMONIAL EXCHANGE IN EASTERN MELANESIA.—M. Raymond Lenoir, who has made a special study of the institution of north-west America termed, in his opinion improperly, potlatch, has published in L'Anthropologie, T. xxxiv. No. 5, an examination of the system of ceremonial exchange in the trobriands described by Dr. fe Malinowski in his “Argonauts of the Western Pacific,” in the light of conclusions derived from a consideration of the evidence relating to similar customs not only from America, but also from the Asiatic Eskimo, the Chukchees, and the Melanesians of Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons. Dr. Malinowski found that sea voyages, entailing a long and expensive communal preparation in accordance with a certain ritual, were undertaken with a view to the exchange of certain objects of wealth which were passed on by the recipients from, island to island in an endless chain. This ceremonial he regarded as a phase of primitive economics. M. Lenoir, however, regards it as an institution which has grown out of a state of war, of which it is an attenuated form, and intended to preserve the relative status of different social groups. The maritime expedition is a raid in which the booty carried off by the victors or the gift received by them at the making of peace is represented by the ceremonial exchange of these objects. The conception of status applies to both forms of ceremonial exchange described by Dr. Malinowski, and the economic conception is accordingly a secondary or later development.
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Research Items. Nature 114, 694–696 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114694a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114694a0