Ceremonial Prestige, Social Status

What Hermès Quota Bags and a 1922 Ethnography of the Trobriand Islands Have in Common

Have you ever heard of Bronislaw Malinowski and his ethnography Argonautts of the Western Pacific? Malinowski was a cultural anthropologist whose primary fame rests on his study of the Trobriand Island culture, specifically the kula. The kula is a trading network throughout the Massim archipelago of Papua New Guinea, where men risk their lives and fortu…