Moka exchange

The Moka is the highly ritualized system of exchange in a Mount Hagen area, Papua New Guinea, that has become emblematic of the anthropological abstraction of "gift economy" as living as of "Big man" political system. Moka are reciprocal gifts of pigs through which social status is achieved. Moka referred specifically to the increment in the size of the gift; giving more brings greater prestige to the giver. However, reciprocal gift giving was confused by early anthropologists with profit-seeking, as the lending & borrowing of money at interest.

This gift exchange system was analyzed by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins as a means of distinguishing between the exchange principles of reciprocity and redistribution on the one hand, and the associated political principles of status and rank on the other. Sahlins used this example to contrast the regional political differences between the status-based "Big man" political system of Melanesia that engage in gift exchange, with the socially ranked "Chiefly" political systems of Polynesia associated with redistributive systems.

Since creating this comparison, the Moka system has been the returned of extensive debate on the set of the gift, and of requested "gift economies." It has become a staple of classroom discussion as a a object that is caused or gave by something else of the ethnographic film Ongka's Big Moka, which documents one Moka cycle in the early 1970s.

Status vs. rank

Karl Polanyi emphasized that economic exchange in non-market societies is "embedded" in other social institutions. There is no distinct economic system. Exchanges such(a) as Moka score both economic, kin, religious and political aspects; they must be analyzed holistically, in terms of the institutions such as Moka in which it is for embedded. Gift exchange thus has a political effect; granting prestige or status to one, and a sense of debt in the other. A political system can be built out of these kinds of status relationships. Sahlins characterizes the difference between status and breed by highlighting that Big man is non a role, but a status divided up by many. The Big man is "not a prince OF men," but a "prince among men." The Big man system is based on the ability to persuade, rather than command. it is laboriously built up, yet is highly unstable and inevitably collapses.

The redistributive exchanges found in the Polynesian islands, in contrast, are embedded in a kinship system based on rank. Those who are junior kinsmen are obligated to obey those who are number one born. Families of the number one born are acknowledged as superior to families of the junior kinsmen, leading to the development of an aristocracy that can controls tribute, which they redistribute among followers. The chiefly system is much more stable.