... in his study of the Trobriand Islands in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. In this ethnography, Malinowski shows how gifts are exchanged amongst the 'Kula' system. Production of goods is exchanged from one island to the other where arm shells, for example is one utility that is exchanged as gifts amongst other islanders. They exchange what the other does not have. Yet this exchange has little to do with self provisioning, but more to do with status and prestige, as the islands and village communities are bounded in a web of obligation towards each other to constitute a kind of peace- treaty alliance. Thus when it comes to exchanging within groups in this society, gifts are reciprocated because it is obligatory, as Mauss says, but to not reciprocate would mean a sort of social death. Hence it is the prestige of the individual and group that is considered when exchanging. ...

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