EXCHANGES OF GOODS AT TROBRIAND ISLANDERS

Exchanges of Goods That Trobriand Islanders Make in their Culture

Exchanges of Goods That Trobriand Islanders Make in their Culture

Introduction

The economic system of the Trobriand Islands, located on the Eastern Tip of New Guinea in the South Pacific, has been the subject of an anthropological study conducted celebrates half century by Bronislaw Malinowski (Mokyr, 2002). The company highlights the extent to which economic systems can not function with tradition, rather than the market, providing signs that the effort to organize and determine the relative proportion of the resulting production. It is also an example of a system that predates the incidence of transistor radios and other instruments of Western culture.

Discussion

One of the Trobriand Islands learns and respects the rules of the economy as a company almost as an American learns and respects the rules of language in his. An American born into a culture of English. In no sense does that "choose" to speak English because there is no real alternative is presented to him. Similarly, the Trobriand Islanders born in a yam in the economy. He did not "choose" to plant yams instead of broccoli. The question does not arise in this way but rather as the amount of each crop highly unconventional, plants or how to divide work on a given day for various tasks (Mokyr, 2002).

In the subsistence economy Trobriand, labor, land and other resources are not purchased, and the product is not intended for sale to others it is personal taste, within ecological limits set by. resource endowments, technological problems posed by known techniques of production, and social constraints determined by the requirement to provide yam sister husband dictate the amount of each crop to plant the Council (Chair of Bioethics, 2003).

Giving and receiving gifts Trobriand permeates society, each ...