Annette Barbara Weiner née Cohen (February 14, 1933 - 7 December 1997) was an American anthropologist, Kriser Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, chair of the Anthropology Department, dean of the social sciences, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University. She was known for her ethnographic work in the Trobriand Islands and her development of the concept of inalienable wealth in social anthropological theory. Her dissertation studied the contribution of women to the economy of Trobriand society, which had been the site of Bronislaw Malinowski's renowned studies of the

Kula exchange Kula, also known as the Kula exchange or Kula ring, is a ceremonial exchange system conducted in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The Kula ring was made famous by the father of modern anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski, who used this ...

. She demonstrated that women's contributions were highly significant but largely erased from record because the cultural focus was on the distribution and exchange of valuables rather than its production. The dissertation was published in 1976 by University of Texas Press under the title: ''Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange''. It received intense attention and became a highly influential piece of feminist anthropology. In 1992 she published the book ''Inalienable Possessions: The paradox of keeping-while-giving'' at the University of California Press, in which she built on work by Marcel Mauss and Malinowski to present a theory of value and exchange in which there is a basic distinction between alienable and inalienable forms of wealth. Inalienable wealth is a kind of possession that is inalienably tied to its original possessor and which if given away retains some part of them, such wealth has the power to create lasting social divisions.Regna Darnell, Frederic Wright Gleach (eds.) 2002. Celebrating a Century of the American Anthropological Association: Presidential Portraits. U of Nebraska Press, 2002. pp. 285–288. A Guggenheim Fellow, She was also a founding member and president of the

Society for Cultural Anthropology The Society for Cultural Anthropology (or SCA) is a professional organization for cultural anthropologists based in the United States. It was established in 1983, and is one of the largest sections of the American Anthropological Association. The o ...

and president of the

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

whose Distinguished Service Award she received in 1997. In her final presidential address to the AAA, "Culture and Our Discontents," Weiner argued that "a commitment to a global comparative perspective can provide an innovative postmodern frame" for the discipline.

Publications

* ''La richesse des femmes ou, Comment l'esprit vient aux hommes: Iles Trobriand'', 1983 * ''The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea'', 1987 * ''Cloth and human experience'', 1989 * ''Inalienable possessions : the paradox of keeping-while-giving'', 1992

References

External links

Anette Weiner Papers:
New York University Archives at New York University {{DEFAULTSORT:Weiner, Annette B. 1933 births 1997 deaths Jewish American social scientists Jewish anthropologists New York University faculty 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century American Jews