Gift-giving is a form of transfer of property rights over particular objects. The nature of those property rights varies from society to society, from culture to culture, and are not universal. The nature of gift-giving is thus altered by the type of property regime in place.
Property is not a thing, but a relationship amongst people about things.
According to Chris Hann, property is a social relationship that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use and disposition of things. Anthropologists analyze these relationships in terms of a variety of actors' (individual or corporate) "bundle of rights" over objects.
An example is the current debates around intellectual property rights.
Hann and Strangelove both give the example of a purchased book (an object that he owns), over which the author retains a "copyright". Although the book is a commodity, bought and sold, it has not been completely "alienated" from its creator who maintains a hold over it; the owner of the book is limited in what he can do with the book by the rights of the creator. Weiner has argued that the ability to give while retaining a right to the gift/commodity is a critical feature of the gifting cultures described by Malinowski and Mauss, and explains, for example, why some gifts such as Kula valuables return to their original owners after an incredible journey around the Trobriand islands. The gifts given in Kula exchange still remain, in some respects, the property of the giver.
In the example used above, "copyright" is one of those bundled rights that regulate the use and disposition of a book. Gift-giving in many societies is complicated because "private property" owned by an individual may be quite limited in scope (see ยง The commons below).
Productive resources, such as land, may be held by members of a corporate group (such as a lineage), but only some members of that group may have "use rights". When many people hold rights over the same objects gifting has very different implications than the gifting of private property; only some of the rights in that object may be transferred, leaving that object still tied to its corporate owners. Anthropologist Annette Weiner refers to these types of objects as "inalienable possessions" and to the process as "keeping while giving".