Anthropologies of Value analyses the creation of value in a wide range of political and cultural contexts. This edited collection includes anthropological case studies from around the globe; from the commodification of a Venezuelan waterfall to the relative value of penguins in periods of imperialist expansion.
Questioning the validity of binary oppositions such as ‘north/south’, ‘core/periphery’ and ‘west/the rest’ as the basis of generalisations about culturally-mediated engagements with capitalism, this collection leaves no stone unturned in its search to understand and define anthropological value theory.
It provides much-needed, controversial new material for students of anthropology, and proposes an alternative, rarely discussed method of studying the world system which challenges mainstream existing work in the field.
Table of Content
List of Figures
Series Preface
Acknowledgements
The Value of Everything and the Price of Nothingness by Luis Fernando Angosto-Ferrández
Part I: Emerging Value in the ‘Global South’
1. On the Capacity to Change the Structural Parameters of Value: The Sale of One Particular Cook Island Tivaivai – Jane Horan
2. Value and the Art of Deception: Public Morality in a Papua New Guinean Ponzi Scheme – John Cox
3. Asbin: A ‘Has-Been’ of Papua New Guinea Highlands Gift Exchange? – Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh
4. The Value of the Vanua: The Nexus of People and Land in Fiji’s Market Economy – Geir Henning Presterudstuen
5. Natural Value: Rent-Capture and the Commodification of a Waterfall in Gran Sabana, Venezuela – Luis Fernando Angosto-Ferrández
6. Capitalist Ventures or Solidarity Networks? Self-Employment in Post-Soviet Cuba – Marina Gold
Part II: Tribulating Values in the ‘Global North’
7. The Relative Value of Penguins – Moira White
8. Quota Systems: Repositioning Value in New Zealand, Icelandic and Irish Fisheries – Fiona Mc Cormack
9. Distributions of Wealth, Distributions of Waste: Abject Capital and Accumulation by Disposal – David Boarder Giles
10. ‘The University is Kind of an Impossible Place’: Universities Towards and Against Capitalism – Fern Thompsett
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Geir Henning Presterudstuen is a lecturer in anthropology at Western Sydney University. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Fiji since 2009 and his main research interests, on which he has published widely, include the intersections between social categories such as gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality in context of the modern market economy. He is the co-editor of Monster Anthropology in Australasia and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
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