Word: trobriand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Vacations may be pointless. The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia once found themselves with an embarrassment of leisure. Their yams came up so abundantly that they had no need to work for their food. To occupy their excesses of spare time, the islanders devised the Kula, a ceremonial maritime exchange of economically worthless objects- red shell necklaces and white shell bracelets. The Kula, in formal circuit around the islands, was the vacation and vocation of the people. They became their own quaintness, their own tourist trap. It is possible, in the end, that they even took American Express...
...gimmick is that anthropologists, after decades of following Margaret Mead to Samoa and Bronislaw Malinowski to the Trobriand Islands, have staked out new territory-the nonexotic cities and rural byways of the U.S. Indeed, scores of sessions at last month's American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in Mexico City were devoted to the problems and rewards of studying U.S. subcultures. These may range from Greek-Americans and company towns to female athletes and Appalachian snake cultists...