Commonwealth, inalienable possessions, and the res publica: The anthropology of aristocratic order and the landed estate

ABSTRACT

Annette Weiner used the term ‘inalienable possessions’ to describe a category of property of fundamental importance in Oceania, and in Europe, from Roman times until the eighteenth century. The archetypal form of this inalienable wealth is the landed estate – the ‘immovable property’ of Romano-Germanic law. This type of wealth, inherently political and carrying functions we associate with the state, has been historically produced by aristocratic social orders. I argue that classical anthropology missed the opportunity to explore aristocracy as a comparative analytical category. A re-examination of classic ethnographies reveals the importance of both aristocracy and this inalienable power-wealth, even in iconic accounts of ‘egalitarian society’ such as Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Nuer. Further consideration of inalienable property shows it to be central to the early-modern state (Commonwealth) just as it was to the Roman republic (Res Publica), and suggests the possibility of a productive new comparative frame of analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropology
• wealth
• political economy
• aristocracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Malinowski (1922, 88–91) actually did compare kula valuables with crown jewels, in passing, as Weiner notes.

2 By post-Weberian I mean readings of power influenced by Foucault, whose notions of power, or more precisely ‘power-knowledge’ (pouvoir-savoir) effectively collapsed distinctions between Weber’s concept of macht, generally translated as ‘power’, and herrschaft, usually translated as ‘authority’. Foucault has no need of Weber’s separation between legitimate leadership relations on the one hand and those based on coercion on the other; his more inclusive treatment inspired anthropological interest in a broader field – ‘the manifold relations of power that constitute the social body’ (Foucault [1976] 1980, 93).

3 See also Seligman (1919, 696).

4 This catchphrase was popularized in William Goldman’s 1976 drama-documentary All The President’s Men.

5 As Niehaus (2017, 114) notes, ‘Malinowski’s commitment to the preservation of cultures aligned him with later apologists for apartheid.’

6 On rights to land see also Powell (1960, 121) and Weiner (1976, 43).

7 See also Weiner (1992, 138).

8 See also Dumont (1977, 52).

9 See Kevelson (1988, 171) on the revolution in legal thought that resulted in the assimilation of immovable property into the category of movable property.

10 Writing more than half a century later, Hutchinson’s ethnography describes a Nuerland that has been radically transformed by colonial and post-colonial administration and civil war. The supremacy of the diel aristocracy had declined since Evans-Pritchard’s day, partly as a result of colonial administration and in some passages Hutchinson touches upon these historical processes:

Eastern diel had good reasons to worry about a possible collapse of their dominant status and position vis-à-vis co-resident latecomers following colonial conquest. Among the early acts of the British colonial regime in that region was the elimination of the dil/non-dil distinction in the determination of bloodwealth payments. By the late 1940s the British administration had also begun to appoint assimilated ‘Dinka’ as high-ranking government chiefs … . (Hutchinson 1996, 267)

In general, Hutchinson describes diel as ‘members of locally “dominant/aristocratic” lines’ (1996, 119) but also as ‘first-comers’ and ‘assimilators’ (1996, 242) reflecting diel self-descriptions. Elsewhere she describes ‘the gaat diila system of aristocratic lineages’ (1996, 119).

11 At the time of Evans-Pritchard’s ethnography, the colonial administration had banned the lower compensation for non-aristocrats and were attempting to enforce a general 40-cow standard (Hutchinson 1996, 267). This undoubtedly influenced the responses given by Evans-Pritchard’s interlocutors.

12 So, for example, the radical Rainborough angrily denied that his call for universal male suffrage was a call for anarchy. ‘That there’s a property, the Law of God says it … I wish you would not make the world believe that we are for anarchy’ (Woodhouse 1951, 59).

13 See Lewis (1951, 79–83), Howell (1954, 30–33) and Johnson (1993, 198).