Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving is a book by anthropologist Annette Weiner. Weiner was a Professor of Anthropology and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts at New York University, and served as president of the American Anthropological Association. She died in 1997. Marcel Mauss first described inalienable possessions in the classic anthropological text called The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.