Experiencing Values in the Flow of Events: A Phenomenological Approach to Relational Values

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of ‘relational values’ from a phenomenological point of view. In the first place, it stresses that in order to make full sense of relational values, we need to approach them through a relational ontology that surpasses dualistic descriptions of the world structured around the subject and the object. With this aim, the paper turns to ecophenomenology’s attempt to apprehend values from a first-person perspective embedded in the lifeworld, where our entanglement with other beings is not a theoretical construction but a palpable reality. Overall, the article’s main purpose is to show that, in our direct and raw experience, values do not appear as subjective judgments or as objective properties but as events in which we participate alongside other human and non-human beings.

The Work that Work does: How intrinsic and instrumental values are transformed into relational values through active work participation in Swiss community supported agriculture

“…Human geography/philosophy (Gilliand, 2021;Schneider et al, 2010) Building relationships Specific (non-substitutable) relationships developed to the food, farm and farmer via the experience of workdays (see quotes 4 and 7)…”

“…The relational values concept presents an approach to analyse and understand the full diversity of environmental values. Its strength lies in acknowledgment of the importance of interactions, relationships to specific places and things, and of values as complex and dynamic (Darnhofer et al, 2016; Emirbayer, 1997; Flood et al, 2021; Gilliand, 2021; Peltola & Arpin, 2017). From this perspective, we can consider relationship formation as an additional mechanism by which values might change.…”

“…Third, disciplines such as anthropology, sociology or human geography tend to take a more embodied approach to values, considering the ways that values are socially constituted, constructed through practices and related to group identities (Burton, 2004; Kendal & Raymond, 2018; Peltola & Arpin, 2017). In some cases, these analysis can also be informed by philosophy or environmental ethics, such as considering the idea of life‐worlds and lived experiences (Gilliand, 2021; Schneider et al, 2010).…”

Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?

“…3.2.3 | Ensure that future scenarios include diverse values and worldviewsWe are unequivocally living through an environmental crisis, which appears symptomatic of a values crisis(Martin et al, 2022) and a crisis of meaning(Gilliand, 2021). One of the action points deemed essential across papers involved supporting a broader, societal values shift, through which future scenarios for people and planet may be more sustainable and more just.…”

Eudaimonia, Virtue Ethics and Moral Community

“…The third mode of valuing nature, relational value, unlike the first two, is neither present in the environmental entity nor created by us. Here, relationships become the ontological ground from which meaningfulness appears, and consequently, we discover values (Gilliand 2021). Both interpersonal and social relationships become the fertile ground that gives rise to preferences, principles and virtues, which are named relational values (Chan et al 2016).…”