10 - The moka system and the behaviour of big-men

Summary

Extractive devices for accumulating political funds are underdeveloped, and collection of goods for a climactic give-away would have to be gradual … The dilemma is resolvable by monetary manipulations: by converting wealth into tokens and by calculated deployment of money in loans and exchange so that a time will come when a massive call on goods can be made and the whole pile of stuff, given away, converted into status.

Sahlins 1965c: 186

EMERGENCE OF THE MOKA: MAUSSIAN THEORY

The moka has many parallels, both in Melanesia and elsewhere. Each of these systems of ceremonial exchange has its particular features; but all are crucial institutions by which relations of equality or inequality are established between groups and individuals. At the beginning of this book I suggested that to understand the moka we must constantly focus on processes of competition. The two main arenas of competition are relations between allied, ex-enemy groups and relations between individual big-men. Big-men struggle to obtain and increase their influence and eminence within their clan and outside it: the result is that a few men gain and preserve a superior status for several years of their life – these are the major big-men – while others gain lesser prestige and may or may not maintain it for long – the minor big-men and others. The whole system can thus be seen as a mechanism creating status-divisions within the society. But this mechanism (and the big-men who emerge through it) has to be placed into the context of group relations also.