Introduction to special issue: Value, values, and anthropology

Abstract

Anthropologists have spent tremendous effort developing value theory. We might generally understand value theory as a form of social theory concerned with what groups of people find important or worthwhile in life; how those groups of people, via their relationships, identify, seek, and create that which is valuable; how ideas of value and worth inhere in people and things; and how those people and things then circulate and meet other universes of value. This introduction specifically, and this special issue more generally, seeks to build on this bedrock conception of value theory to offer a series of implications and considerations one should take on board when thinking about value. We suggest that these considerations will allow social researchers to more ably understand the pressing issues that motivate their investigations.

Connecting human behaviour, meaning and nature

“…As Arrow [18, p. 357] put it ‘Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust… '. Second, social imaginaries play a key role in how we value objects [19] vis à vis our status in our imagined communities which, in turn, drives consumption choices. Third, imaginaries play a key role in political processes as tools for coalition building.…”