Annette Weiner

Annette Barbara Weiner, born Annette Cohen, was an American anthropologist who served as 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, the same setting as Bronislaw Malinowski's renowned studies of the Kula exchange, and her dissertation, published in 1976 as Women of Value, Men of Renown, showed that Trobriand women's economic contributions were highly significant but had been largely erased from the record because prior accounts focused on the exchange of valuables rather than their production; the work became highly influential in feminist anthropology. In her 1992 book Inalienable Possessions, she built on Marcel Mauss and Malinowski to develop a theory of value and exchange centered on a basic distinction between alienable and inalienable forms of wealth, arguing that inalienable wealth remains tied to its original possessor even when given away and carries the power to create lasting social divisions. A Guggenheim Fellow, she was a founding member and president of the Society for Cultural Anthropology and president of the American Anthropological Association, which gave her its Distinguished Service Award in 1997.