Value, (use) values, and the ecologies of capital : on social form, meaning, and the contested production of nature.
Abstract
This paper connects hitherto distant strands of literature to contribute to the ongoing turn to value theory in socio-ecological studies. Starting from Marx’s understanding of value as social form, I revisit Neil Smith’s contribution to the question of value and nature and argue for a reassessment of the internal relations between valorisation and the ‘vernacular’ dimensions of socio-ecological reproduction. I approach this problem through Bolívar Echeverría’s reconstruction of the category of use-value and his understanding of the pivotal role it plays in Marx’s critique, which allows for an open and non-reductive account of the subsumption of socio-ecologies under capitalism as contradictory entanglements of abstraction and meaning. The paper mobilises these insights alongside Marxian-inspired anthropological theories of value – the work of Terence Turner and David Graeber – in order to sketch elements for a symbolic-materialist framework to approach the question of value in its cultural-moral register, its relation to value as economic form, and issues of moral economy and ecology under capitalism.
Citation
Andueza , L 2020 , ' Value, (use) values, and the ecologies of capital : on social form, meaning, and the contested production of nature. ' , Progress in Human Geography , vol. Online First . https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520947473
Publication
Progress in Human Geography
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0309-1325Type
Journal article
Description
This research was funded by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile (CONICYT).Collections
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