Esteeming goods for non‐accumulation, small realms with few people: Interpreting kula withLaozi

Abstract This article interprets the kula system through the lens of the Laozi , a Chinese classic of the 6th century BCE. Laozi's ideas regarding “esteeming goods,” “non‐accumulation,” and “small realms with few people” allow us to understand why kula shells and names are precious but impossible to accumulate and how kula serves to keep societies small and peaceful with its subtle practice of organizations, technologies, and calendars. Through exemplary “elders” who esteem goods hard to accumulate, the kula operates as a void system close to the spontaneous order idealized by Laozi, who promoted the ideal of the non‐accumulative Sage. Epistemologically, the article continues the anthropological tradition of perspectivist comparison by proposing a Sinic interpretation, a version of multi‐universalism that does not intend to invalidate the existing universalism but seeks to transcend the view of a singular western universalism and multiple non‐Western exceptionalisms.