Movable goods and immovable property

Movable and immovable goods are in and of themselves complex entities that are historically related to a multitude of social, economic, cultural, legal, and gender-specific repertoires of actions, transactions, processes, and implications. With this in mind, the following chapter is organised into three central parts. First, with regard to historical reconstruction and analysis, movable and immovable goods not only can but in fact must be viewed in relation to the contexts and situations mentioned. Second, it is by no means always evident exactly what was considered movable or immovable in past centuries. Third, the matter becomes even more complex when we bring movable and immovable into a dialogue with each other, seeing the interrelation between them. One objective here is to develop a systematic approach for addressing such issues. Another will be to establish exactly what kinds of knowledge we gain from first contextualising movable and immovable goods and then conceiving of them as interrelated and intertwined, in particular with regard to specific legal and gendered contexts and practices. The emphasis here is on developing a broad panorama and framework of parameters for thinking about movable and immovable goods. The focus will be on Western Europe from the late Middle Ages to the end of early modernity. ¹