Patrimony as inalienability

The "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series features short and stimulating presentations from fellows of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, marking the beginning of 1-month writing residencies.

This talk will focus on the concept of inalienable possessions, and will be presented by Jonathan Glasser, Professor of Anthropology at William & Mary University, USA.

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Presentation

What do two people create when they engage in reciprocal gift exchange? And what does a person or collectivity accomplish when they hold something back from exchange? These questions—the first by Marcel Mauss, the second by his late twentieth-century critic Annette Weiner—bookend nearly a century of vigorous debate in anthropology and the wider social sciences and humanities. This project revisits these questions and the relationship between them using examples drawn mainly from the modern Maghrib. 

Replay