Inalienable possessions

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Inalienable possessions (or immovable property) are things such as land or objects that are symbolically identified with the groups that own them and so cannot be permanently severed from them. Landed estates in the Middle Ages, for example, had to remain intact and even if sold, they could be reclaimed by blood kin. As a legal classification, inalienable possessions date back to Roman times. According to Barbara Mills, "Inalienable possessions are objects made to be kept (not exchanged), have symbolic and economic power that cannot be transferred, and are often used to authenticate the ritual authority of corporate groups".^[1]

Marcel Mauss first described inalienable possessions in The Gift, discussing potlatches, a kind of gift-giving feast held in communities of many indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest:

It is even incorrect to speak in these cases of transfer. They are loans rather than sales or true abandonment of possessions. Among the Kwakiutl a certain number of objects, although they appear at the potlatch, cannot be disposed of. In reality these pieces of "property" are sacra that a family divests itself of only with great reluctance and sometimes never.^[2]

Annette Weiner broadened the application of the category of property outside the European context with her book Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving, focussing on a range of Oceanic societies from Polynesia to Papua New Guinea and testing existing theories of reciprocity and marriage exchange.^[3] She also applies the concept to explain examples such as the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands, which was made famous by Bronisław Malinowski.^[4] She explores how such possessions enable hierarchy by establishing a source of lasting social difference. She also describes practices of loaning inalienable possessions as a way of either "temporarily making kin of non-kin" or garnering status.