Inalienable Properties

Inalienable Properties explores contrasting approaches to property rights by four Indigenous communities to illustrate how inalienability – restrictions on the ability to buy and sell land – is linked to community leadership and decision-making structures that have long-lasting consequences for communities. Drawing on new research about institutional change in organizational settings, Jamie Baxter explores when and how community leaders have sustained inalienable land rights without turning to either persuasion or coercive force – the two levers of power normally associated with political leadership. He also challenges the view that liberalized land markets are the inevitable result of legal and economic change.

"Weiner provides not only a new perspective on social and natural reproduction but also a framework through which to compare societies. This is an original point of view that will have real effects on the direction of future fieldwork and comparative analysis."—Ivan Karp, Smithsonian Institution

In the twenty years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, 800,000 Jews left their homes in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries. Although the causes of this exodus varied, restrictive governmental measures and an outburst of anti-Semitic feeling during and after the war were major factors. Some of these "Mizrahi" Jews, most of whom were not active Zionists, were forced to leave behind property of great financial and ancestral value-property that was sometimes seized by the governments of the countries they fled. In this book, Michael R. Fischbach, who has dedicated years to studying land and property ownership in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, reconstructs the circumstances in which Jewish communities left the Arab world. Conducting meticulous and exhaustive research in the archives of Washington D.C., Jerusalem, London, New York, and elsewhere, Fischbach offers the most authoritative estimates to date of the value of the property left behind. He also describes the process by which various actors, most importantly the State of Israel, linked the resolution of Jewish property claims to the fate of Palestinian refugee property claims following the 1948 war. Fischbach considers the implications of contemporary developments, such as America's invasion of Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and Libya's attempt to shed its international pariah status, which have impacted pending claims and will affect claims in the future. Overall, he finds that many international Jewish organizations have supported the link between the claims of Mizrahi Jews and those of Palestinian refugees, hindering serious efforts to obtain restitution or compensation.

Inalienable Properties explores contrasting approaches to property rights by four Indigenous communities to illustrate how inalienability - restrictions on the ability to buy and sell land - is linked to community leadership and decision-making structures that have long-lasting consequences for communities. Drawing on new research about institutional change in organizational settings, Jamie Baxter explores when and how community leaders have sustained inalienable land rights without turning to either persuasion or coercive force - the two levers of power normally associated with political leadership. He also challenges the view that liberalized land markets are the inevitable result of legal and economic change.

Use this form to litigate in court to defend your rights. Gives you standing without the need to quote federal statutes that you are not subject to anyway as a statutory "non-resident non-person".

Inalienable Possessions tests anthropology's traditional assumptions about kinship, economics, power, and gender in an exciting challenge to accepted theories of reciprocity and marriage exchange. Focusing on Oceania societies from Polynesia to Papua New Guinea and including Australian Aborigine groups, Annette Weiner investigates the category of possessions that must not be given or, if they are circulated, must return finally to the giver. Reciprocity, she says, is only the superficial aspect of exchange, which overlays much more politically powerful strategies of "keeping-while-giving." The idea of keeping-while-giving places women at the heart of the political process, however much that process may vary in different societies, for women possess a wealth of their own that gives them power. Power is intimately involved in cultural reproduction, and Weiner describes the location of power in each society, showing how the degree of control over the production and distribution of cloth wealth coincides with women's rank and the development of hierarchy in the community. Other inalienable possessions, whether material objects, landed property, ancestral myths, or sacred knowledge, bestow social identity and rank as well. Calling attention to their presence in Western history, Weiner points out that her formulations are not limited to Oceania. The paradox of keeping-while-giving is a concept certain to influence future developments in ethnography and the theoretical study of gender and exchange.

Aiming to redefine the concept of wealth, which has too often been reduced to merely ‘accumulated assets’, this book views wealth primarily as a question of reproduction, relational flows and life vitality. The authors therefore outline wealth as a triangular phenomenon between capital, the commons and power. Viewing wealth as firstly a product of relational capacities, the book explores the processes wherein it is constantly being pulled at from forces that demand appropriation, be that finance, community or state. The chapters tackle perceptions (and practices) of wealth in the commons, in mythical narrative, immaterial substance, aristocratic orders, antimafia, money real and imagined, and conspiracy theory, with contributions from Melanesia, Italy, Greece, India and Mongolia. The comparative perspective lies at the heart of the book, bringing together instances of commonwealth and the commons, as well as hierarchical, relational and substantial understandings of wealth. As the first collection in recent decades to address the anthropology of wealth openly in a comparative perspective, this book will spark discussions of the concept in anthropology, not least at the back of a renewed debate over it due to Piketty’s legacy. This book was originally published as a special issue of History & Anthropology.