Note 7 — Chapter VI · Launching of a Canoe and Ceremonial Visiting—Tribal Economics in the Trobriands

2. Customary payments, re-paid irregularly, and without strict equivalence.—The most important of these are the annual payments received at harvest time by a man from his wife’s brothers (cf. Chapter II, Divisions IV and V). These regular and unfailing gifts are so substantial, that they form the bulk of a man’s income in food. Sociologically, they are perhaps the strongest strand in the fabric of the Trobriands tribal constitution. They entail a life-long obligation of every man to work for his kinswomen and their families. When a boy begins to garden, he does it for his mother. When his sisters grow up and marry, he works for them. If he has neither mother nor sisters, his nearest female blood relation will claim the proceeds of his labour.7