Land, labor, bodies, and objects: Comments on inalienability and Mesoamerican social life

The original use of the term "inalienable possessions" by Annette Weiner applied to movable objects. As the contributors to this volume bring out, the concept has much greater potential when discussed in the context of all material life. In this chapter, the advantages of a broader use of the term inalienability are discussed and the chapters compared based on three major themes: (1) the importance of eliminating dichotomies such as alienability-inalienability, prestige-nonprestige goods, and elites-commoners; (2) how inalienability extends interpretations of the materiality of social life; and (3) the varied ways in which inalienability was part of performative practices that created, reinforced, and transformed value, identity, and social distinctions in the Mesoamerican area.