Inalienable Possessions

Inalienable Possessions ('immovable property') refers to a fundamental classification of property law that Henry Maine stated dates back to Roman times. Immovable property is symbolically identified with the groups that own it, and hence cannot be permanently severed from them. Landed estates in the Middle Ages, for example, had to remain intact and even if sold, could be reclaimed by blood kin. Barbara Mills put it another way by saying, "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".

Marcel Mauss first described inalienable possessions in the classic anthropological text called The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.

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.

Annette Weiner broadened the application of this category of property outside the European context, referring to the category as "Inalienable possessions." Weiner acknowledges the idea originated in Mauss's classification of two categories of goods in Samoa: Oloa and le'tonga or immovable and movable goods exchanged through marriage. She applied this concept to explain, amongst other examples, the "Kula ring" in the Trobriand Islands made famous by the founder of anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski. Certain objects assume a subjective value that places them above ordinary exchange value.