Value as Theory _Otto & Willerslev

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2013| HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory3 (1): 120

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | Ton Otto and Rane Willerslev.Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online)

Introduction: Value astheory

Comparison, cultural critique, and guerillaethnographic theory

Ton OTTO,James Cook University and Aarhus UniversityRane WILLERSLEV, University of Oslo and Aarhus University

The introduction addresses the question of whether it is useful or indeed possible to

develop an anthropological theory of value. By way of a Socratic debate, two ratherconflicting points of view emerge. On the one hand, it is argued that anthropology canmake a major and quite coherent contribution to the issue of value in social theory. On theother hand, it is argued that anthropology, as an ethnographically driven discipline,produces an anti-theory of value. The two perspectives derive from two different visions foranthropology, which differ radically on how they see the relationship of the discipline toother disciplines and to the history of ideas more generally. Where these views converge,however, is on the aim of exploring the potential of value as theory. In both perspectives,value is seen as a powerful concept that can generate new ethnographic questions andinsights and can provide a crucial dimension to cultural critique.

Keywords: value, cultural critique, ethnographic theory, comparison, anti-theory

This special issue brings together a set of remarkable papers on the topic of theanthropology of value. Our introduction to this issue, however, reached an impasse,and it failed in its initial versions. What failed? Stated starkly, we failed to reach aconsensus on exactly how to introduce the papers. As elusive as questions ofvalue are, approaching them in terms of anthropological theory became equally,if not more, difficult to pin down.

On the face of it, value can mean different things, depending on whether onedeals with economic, social, or religious phenomena. Anthropology, of course,deals with all of these, but anthropological questions of value have primarilyaddressed two major issues. One is the comparability and incomparability ofcultural worlds. Value, in this sense, is concerned with the issue of cultural diversity,

with questions of ethnic and religious incompatibilities, and with the problem ofcultural continuity and change (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961; Barth 1969;Dumont 1986; Robbins 2004; Kapferer 2010; Viveiros de Castro 2011). The otherpredominant issue refers to how value is created in processes of exchange. Not


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| Ton OTTO and Rane WILLERSLEV


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only does this question apply to the exchange and comparison of different kinds ofthings, but also, and in particular, it addresses how different forms of exchange arerelated to different forms of sociality (Sahlins 1972; Gregory 1982; Foster 1990;Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992; Pedersen 2008). The key question thatinterested us was whether it is meaningful to look at these different aspects of value

from a more comprehensive perspective. In other words, is it usefulindeed, at allpossibleto develop an anthropological theory of value?

To this end, we invited sixteen anthropologists from Australia, Denmark,France, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and the UnitedKingdom to James Cook University to participate in a roundtable discussion aboutthe anthropology of value from theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. Theparticipants virtually agreed that there is not yet a contemporary anthropologicaltheory of value. However, opinions differed starkly on the question of whethersuch a shared endeavor is even desirable at all. Not even we, as editors, couldreach an agreement on this basic question, and this became painfully evident as we

sat down to co-write the introduction. Ton Otto was in favor of bringing the paperstogether from a history of ideas perspective, tracing how the authors thinkingabout value advanced particular theoretical developments. Rane Willerslev, to thecontrary, argued against such a commitment to the history of ideas on the groundsthat anthropology denotes an anti-theory of value, and this is exactly where thestrength of the papers is situated. As with the debate in the workshop, our mutualdisagreements revealed an underlying tension that did not simply reflect divergentopinions about how to bring the papers of the volume together, but also appearedto reflect a fundamental predicament of the discipline itself. This predicamentconcerns disagreements about the place of anthropology in relation to other

disciplines and, in particular, whether anthropology is primarily theory driven orethnography driven.In our consternation, we decided to turn to one of the oldest methodologies

known to the sciences, the Socratic debatethe classical form of inquiry betweenindividuals with opposing viewpoints, which is based on asking and answeringquestions (see Latour 2004 for a recent use of this methodology). This is adialectical method of oppositional viewpoints. A participant may try to trick onesopponent to contradict himself so as to reinforce ones own viewpoint at the other'sexpense. In this way, Socrates left his victims ridiculed and ashamed. Our motivefor employing the Socratic debate form, however, is somewhat different from thisoriginal use. Instead of seeking to arrive at unambiguous answers throughconfrontation, we use the method primarily to question the models ofanthropology that we both hold in an attempt to go beyond the truisms each of ustake for granted. The goal, therefore, is not really for one to win the argument, butrather to mutually encourage our critical faculties, thereby elucidating newdirections for theory.1 As you will see from the debate, our preliminary conclusionis that while we strongly disagree about the possibility of an anthropological theoryof value, we appear to converge on the significance of looking at value as theory.

1. Errata: Changes to the paragraph, to correct the authors errors in citation, have beenmade on June 24, 2013 at 22:14 GMT. (Original release date: June 20, 2013 at 12:38GMT.) Ed.


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Thus, while the debate revealed our epistemological differences, it also broughtforward the force of cultural critique that a focus on value entails.2

The debateRANE: When you look at the sixteen papers, do you see the contours of an

anthropological theory of value? You tell me that you aspire toward such a generaland distinctively anthropological theory that can face up to and challenge the majortraditions of social theory. How does the diversity of these papers even come closeto accomplishing anything like this?

TON: I see several lines of reasoning rather than a coherent theory. In my view, avery strong line of anthropological thinking about value has to do with how value iscreated through exchange and what this means for our understanding of relationsof reciprocity and non-reciprocity, equality and inequality. Anthropologicalthinking about the gift, barter, and commodity exchange has generated important

theoretical contributions, which have had an impact outside of our discipline. Ifind that some of the contributions to this volume continue to advance thistradition. We have fascinating ethnographic analyses of supply-chain capitalism(Tsing), the valuation of brands (Foster), the (im)morality of financial markets(Ortiz), and the contemporary trade in carbon credits (Dalsgaard). Anotherimportant line of reasoning that can be detected in the papers is the use of valuesas shorthand for different worldviews or cultural systems, where the emphasis isnot on the exchange of things but on how people express their religious and social

values and how this informs their actions. Here, we have the great Dumontiantradition to make sense of how we can compare the apparently incomparable

namely, different value systems or ideologies (Dumont 1977, 1986). This line ofthinking also deals with the issue of relativism that keeps cropping up inanthropology and which emphasizes the difference between value systems and thelimits of comparison and translation. In part one of this special issue, quite a fewpapers (Robbins, Willerslev, Gregory, Iteanu) are inspired by Dumont and bringthe comparative project forward in innovative ways.

The third line of reasoning, which I can see the contours of, is the attempt toestablish a kind of synthesis between exchange-based theories and values-as-

worldviews by looking at how action is informed by values and simultaneouslycreates value. Michael Lambeks paper (in part two of this special issue), forexample, is part of this synthetic line of thinking. He aims to expand the Marxistunderstanding of labor as the source of exchange-value toward a more generaltheory of value that considers any form of human action from the perspective of

value creation. In my view, this rethinking of the connection between action andvalue provides the most promising direction for developing a contemporaryanthropological theory of value. David Graebers ambitious book Toward ananthropological theory of value(2001), which I find very inspirational, points in thesame direction. He sees Terence Turner and Nancy Munn as pioneers of this line

2. The following debate is an edited version of an actual recorded dialogue that took placein Aarhus on May 11, 2013.


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of thinking. I fully agree, and this also emerged during the workshop whereMunns influential ethnographyThe fame of Gawa(1986) was discussed frequently.

Munn shows how the Gawan people of Papua New Guinea share a paramountvalue, the realization of intersubjective spacetime, which drives their intentionalactions while simultaneously providing them with a means to assess their relative

success against this common standard. Munn talks about the expansion andcontraction of spacetime and about positive and negative value. Thus, theparamount value that defines the good life is also the standard by which Gawanpeople compare their relative success and status in society. A number of thecontributors in part two work along this line of theorizing in order to connect

various forms of action and value (Corsn Jimnez and Estalella; Henry, Otto, andWood; Marcus; Nielsen; Sykes). I think the focus on social values in relation to thecreation of value through action is an exciting development. It is true that we are along way from an integrated theory of value in anthropology, but we do haveimportant bodies of theorizing that provide highly relevant insights. These bodies

have emerged throughout the history of our discipline and are now beingdeveloped by way of further ethnographic discoveries and theoretical debate, asshown by the papers.

RANE: Although you might be right in finding these traces of promise in the papers,its quite telling that very few of the authors make explicit how they contribute to ageneral theory of value. Thats an inherent aspect of the anthropological project, Ithink. I really dont believe that there is, ever can be, and, perhaps, ever should bean anthropological theory of value. But we obviously disagree on this.

TON

: It is true that very few of the authors refer to a general theory of value, but allof them place themselves in relation to a theoretical argument and refer to existinganthropological theories of value. Therefore, if you dont take my point of viewand try to draw out the consequences of these theoretical arguments by comparingthem and grouping them around key themes, what is the alternative? And how can

we, as anthropologists, take part in the general debate about the place of value insocial theory?

RANE: Let me first address the question I posed to you. I am not surprised that thesixteen papers do not point to an anthropological theory of value. What theyprovide is a diversity of ethnographically driven interpretations of value, whichpoint in every possible direction. A few authors, most notably Michael Lambekand Marshall Sahlins, try to craft a general theory of value, which, perhaps, theymay claim is distinctively anthropological. Then there are authors such as JoelRobbins and Andr Iteanu who strongly defend Dumonts theory as the basis forsuch a general theory. All are highly inspiring papers, but I have to admit that I amoutright against the first attempts and a little skeptical about the latter ones. Let mebriefly draw attention to Lambek. He is one of the most influential anthropologistsof our time, and his work, particularly on sacrifice, has had an enormous impacton my own thinking as well. However, here he is up to something else. He makesthe point, which you find so enlightening, that value is created in action. No doubt

his piece is a serious theoretical attempt at creating a general anthropologicaltheory of value. Yet, in my view he fails. His argument becomes so general that it


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loses its punch. His essay turns into something akin to a Frazerian project, wherehe piles ethnographic example upon ethnographic example to show what isobvious, at least to anthropologistsnamely, that there are a multiplicity of values,

which are all connected to action.If we adopt the Dumontian (1986) idea of a paramount value as the

intrinsically ordering dynamic that structures the relations between all the othervalues it containsand hence the entire structure of a systemand relate this ideato our discipline, then the paramount value is exactly the diversity of perspectivesthat we see in the sixteen papers. This is the challenge that anthropology poses tothe major traditions of social theory, which are often conceived aside from what itis that human beings around the world actually do. It becomes difficult for ascholar within economics, for example, to generalize about the nature of value

when he or she is constantly bombarded with cases of odd peoples thatsupposedly think differently about the matters of ethics, economy, and the goodlife and act accordingly. In this sense, anthropology is a minor discipline. Yet, this

should not lead us to an inferiority complex. As Bruce Kapferer stated in aninterview in 2010: Anthropology was a discipline of the periphery that gained itsenergy in the periphery. Its in the periphery that you actually are able to place thecentre in some sort of critical relation (quoted in Bertelsen 2012: 195). In my

view, anthropologys relation to other disciplines that favor more generalizedaccounts of value becomes akin to warriors of the peripherythat is, guerrilla

warriors facing an organized army. Anthropology poses a form of irregularwarfare in which ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, extraordinarymobility, and other forms of petty warfare are used, to give deadly blows to thedominantly larger and less-mobile theoretical traditions. Its worth citing Maos

(2010: 7) small book on guerrilla warfare to get my point across: Avoid the solid,attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightningdecision. The analogy to anthropologys confrontation with the history ofEuropean ideas is not too farfetched, I think. Anthropologys theoretical capacityto attack is based on the unpredictable blows that it delivers through itscommitment to ethnography. As ethnographers, we enter into other realities andfind striking kinds of thought and practice that can potentially subvert thedominating theories by confronting them with new understandings of what humanlife entails. In this sense, anthropology denotes an anti-theory of value, and this isexactly where its strength is situated. To quote another revolutionary, Che Guevara(1997: 54), who used his place in the periphery to subvert an entire authoritarianregime: There is in all this [guerrilla warfare], it would appear, anegativequality,an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights (my emphasis). Negative quality,periphery, and anti-theory, yes! Anthropology gets its creative energy bymoving at the margins. The more conventionalized and centered it gets, the lessanthropological it will be.

TON: So, in your view, we should not aim at all at formulating an anthropologicaltheory of value?

RANE: This is my point. We can only have ethnographically driven concepts, and

yet they have the capacity to punch the dominant theories where it hurts the mostand from every possible angle.


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TON: I understand your point, and I must admit that I am attracted to it. But itdoes not go far enough in my view. If we wish to have an impact as a discipline, Ibelieve we also have to enter into open battle and not limit ourselves to guerrilla

warfare only. As Mao (2010: 14) himself pointed out: Guerrillas . . . may

gradually develop into regular units and, when operating as such, employ thetactics of orthodox war. In order to enter into open battle, we need to build onthose guerrilla attacks and see in what directions they point. It doesnt have to beonly in one direction, as I have just explained. Thats why I want to sketch thehistory of thinking about value, because there have clearly been different lines ofthinking that inform contemporary ethnography. A common thread in muchanthropological theorizing about value is a critical attitude toward central premisesof Western ideology. I strongly identify with this critical potential ofanthropological theory. In order to have an impact beyond our discipline, I thinkthat our guerrilla attacks are not going to do enough unless we join forces and

actually engage in open battle against central assumptions underlying neoliberalism,religious fundamentalism, and other ideologies that are shaping our era. I think wehave the opportunity to do that. Ethnography combined with a strong history oftheorizing will help us move forward.

RANE: It is interesting that in Giovanni da Col and David Graebers (2011)manifesto for HAU, they argue that our disciplines great contribution to socialtheory (at large) was to introduce ethnographically driven concepts. Freud andMarx, among others, had to confront anthropology, exactly because it providedodd conceptsconcepts that did not fit into their own theoretical worlds. It made

it difficult for them to generalize about human nature on the basis of the ancientGreeks as the sole representatives of humanity. Thus, the genuine value ofethnographythat which made anthropologys impact feltwas not grounded inour discipline adopting theoretical concepts from social theory, but rather in thefact that it introduced new and alien concepts from the field that had never beenheard of before. Anthropology, therefore, is not really a theory-driven discipline.The theoretical is derived from the ethnographic. And this brings me back to myguerrilla analogy: ethnographically driven concepts may perhaps neverfundamentally shape major social theories of value, but they do make themselvesfelt, and quite often in a painful way. All of this gets me to the question of how you

want to shape the introduction. I see the value of the historical outline you drafted,but more as an enlightening discourse about what different scholars have said andhow they are related: Marx, Weber, Dumont, and so on. But in my view, such ahistorical framework suffocates the papers. Their capacity to punch back at socialtheory is significantly weakened by this approach. The moment you prioritizeconcepts developed through the history of European ideas and read thecontributions accordingly, you force anthropology to face an open battle byexposing our ethnographic concepts to the standard tactics of regular theories. Inthis confrontation, our discipline can only fail miserably, because its based ontheir concepts, their standards of knowledge.

TON: I think that deep down we may not differ that much. I, too, think that theultimate force of anthropology lies in ethnography and not in sophisticated social


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theory as such. Where we appear to differ is how we go about using ethnographyto generate new ideas. In my opinion, good ethnography is always informed,

whether explicitly or implicitly, by already existing theory. Malinowski (1922: 9)formulated this very clearly in his foundational statement about the ethnographicmethod: Preconceived ideas are pernicious in any scientific work, but

foreshadowed problems are the main endowment of a scientific thinker, and theseproblems are first revealed to the observer by his theoretical studies. Thus,ethnography that merely seeks to confirm ethnographic concepts suggested byother ethnographers, often working in the same region, is not very productive; it islikely to reproduce preconceived ideas. But knowledge of the history of theory isnecessary to enable us to ask new and penetrating questions in ethnographicinquiries. It is in the tension between theoretically inspired questions and confusingethnographic encounters that new insights can emerge. This is the strength ofanthropology that allows us to reflect on fundamental theoretical premises in a waythat is much harder to achieve in other disciplines. I think you take away the

potency of ethnography by not acknowledging that there is a theoretical traditionthat serves as its inspiration. Knowing this tradition will make you a betterethnographer and not a less creative one. In my regional field of Melanesia, this isdemonstrated, for example, by the revolt against African descent models in theemerging Papua New Guinea Highlands ethnography of the 1960s and 1970s,

which led to a much better understanding of exchange as a principle of socialorganization; more recently, our creative understanding has benefited from theinnovative ethnographies that were inspired by Wagners (1991) and Stratherns(1988) theoretical ideas about composite persons. Theory allows you to seepotential questions and work with foreshadowed problems, which are then to be

put to the ethnography at hand and may lead to new theoretical discoveries.

RANE: In my view, for ethnographic theory to evolve, we need to liberate ourselvesfrom the history of ideas. At the end of the day, the kinds of concepts you bring

with you from the field are not necessarily shaped by Marx, Weber, and othergreat thinkers. In a way, these concepts are potentially unique. I guess it really boilsdown to a question of how you conceive of the human being. Do you allow for theradical otherness of the other, or do you subscribe to a view where you acceptthat there are cultural differences, but basically assume that we share a commonhumanity that in turn allows us to use our own concepts to talk about the other(Suhr and Willerslev 2012)? I support the idea that the other can only be talkedabout by means of the alien concepts that you as an ethnographer bring with youfrom the field and into the world of scholarship. We must allow for the radicalotherness to do its magic, because it is from here that anthropology takes its vitality.

TON: If your point of departure is the radical otherness of other people, I thinkthats a very strong theoretical assumption, but surely also a productive one. In asense, you are almost more theory driven than I am. The interesting thing is that

you argue for the value of guerrilla-type ethnographic interventions on the basis ofthe impact they have had on some major social theories produced by others; that is,

you seem to measure the success of ethnographic concepts by the extent to which

they get accepted by other disciplines. Yet, I would say that we should not leave itto others to build those theories! And I think that anthropology has demonstrated


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that it can generate some powerful and influential theories itself. Take MarcelMauss, for example. He was greatly involved in the social and political issues of histime, which saw a bitter struggle between capitalist and communist ideologies. Aspart of his theoretical reflections, Mauss ([1925] 1969) searched the ethnographicarchives for alternative ways of conceiving of values and forms of economic

exchange. From those studies, he developed a theory of the gift that has beenenormously influential and has inspired generations of anthropologists. My point isthat we can use ethnography to build theories that are more than footnotes in otherdisciplines. We can build theories that can engage in an open theoretical battle.Indeed, this was my motivation for suggesting that we write the introduction in ahistorical light. I saw it as our task to provide a historical and theoretical context forthe specific forays and advances made during the value workshop. But here youdisagreed. Now I think we are getting to the bottom of our disagreement. It has todo with our different views on what anthropology entails. In my view, one of thegreat things about theory is that one builds on previous thinkers; theory adds on.

Surely there are breakthroughs and even paradigm shifts, but somehow one alwaysbuilds on ones predecessors. What I wanted to show is how our contributors builton and qualified, and thus enriched, the value debate, in relation to existing linesof theorizing. In my view, this would bring out their originality rather than obscureor oppress it.

RANE: It is all a question of translation, really. You have these alien concepts thatpop up in ethnography. Do you try to explain them through already establishedconcepts, so that you make a one-to-one translation, or do you allow for their alien-ness to work on you, so that translation becomes a question of re-describing our

own established concepts in a way that allows us to imagine alien worlds? I believein the latter proposition, and I take it from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2004,2011; see also Holbraad 2007). In my view, you cannot carry out comparison inthe nave sense of collapsing concepts, which is what you do when you linkethnography directly to the theoretical concepts of Marx, Weber, and others. This,I believe, is also the key point of Dumont: One cannot take the Judeo-Christiansacrifice tradition, for example, and compare it to sacrifice in another tradition tothen conclude that there is some essence ofsacrifice. All you can do is to allow forthe different values in the two traditions to rub against each other and make thisdifference the focal point of the comparison. This is what I try to do in my ownpaper when comparing Abrahams near-sacrifice of Isaac with the Chukchisacrifices. And this has made me realize that anthropologys attempt to develop atheory of value is intimately connected to a theory of comparison. We have alwaysdefined anthropology as a comparative exercise. But very few serious attemptshave been made to develop such a theory. And I think thats where the problemlies. Although the sixteen papers have the potential for developing a general theory,as you suggest, most of them do not explicate this aspect, exactly because they arenot guided by a proper theory of comparison. Until anthropology has developed a

widely accepted theory of comparison, we can provide nothing but an anti-theoryof value; we can be nothing but guerrilla warriors.

TON: I think thats an important point. But you are not solving the issue byrefraining from comparison until a proper theory and method is found. In a way,


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such a theory and method already exist, as illustrated by your own example. Letsuse this idea of the potentially radical otherness of the concepts we find in the fieldas our theoretical starting point. This is also, in my view, one of the great vantagepoints of ethnography. But dont you agree that we construct this radical othernessat the same time as we rub those exotic concepts against our original theoretical

concepts? The construction of ethnographic concepts of the other (and ofourselves) is a result of these conceptual comparisons. The more friction it causes,the better the theoretical results. Your own paper, where you compare twosacrificial traditions, is a good example of this. Through the friction caused by

juxtaposing the radical otherness of these traditions, you end with a surprising andinnovative reinterpretation of the Judeo-Christian case. But in order to accomplishthis, you draw on existing anthropological theories of sacrifice and also on theDumontian notions of hierarchical encompassment and reversal of values. Thus,

you show that the terms of comparison emerge through the very act of theoreticallyinformed comparison.

In a similar way, we can compare different ethnographic cases, as werepresented at the workshop. I believe that terms of comparison emerge when we tryto apply theoretical conceptsfor example, sacrifice, gift exchange, or valuehierarchyto different ethnographic contexts and investigate whether they help usask penetrating questions. In this spirit, I have suggested some areas of comparisonbetween the contributions of this volumenamely, one around exchange theoryand value, one around Dumontian comparisons of value systems, and one aroundthe relation between value and action. So, I have identified three theoreticalquestions or aspects of comparison, and that is why I suggested that we order thepapers according to these three aspects. I agree that such grouping is always partial

and provisional, not only because the theory is always provisional, but also becausemost of the papers speak to more than one of the aspects. But by organizing thepapers in this way, we show how the contributions develop some original lines ofanthropological thinking about value that can inspire further ethnography and canchallenge key assumptions of dominant ideologies that are represented in othersocial disciplines. Would you agree with that?

RANE: Not reallyyet, I must also admit that I dont see a better alternative rightnow for grouping the papers. In this regard, I retreat from my guerrilla attack andsurrender. Lets give it a try along the lines you suggest. It could work.

The contributionsHere, we introduce the papers of part one of the special issue on value as theory;there are eight in all. We group the papers as suggested in the debate above anddeal here with the topics of exchange theory and value and Dumontiancomparisons of value systems. The papers of part two will be introduced in thenext issue of HAU, and they will be linked to the theme of the relation between

value and action.

E x c h a n g e t h e o r y a n d v a l u eAn important line of thinking about value in anthropology emerged from analyzingvarious forms of exchange, in relation to and in contrast with Western forms ofmarket exchange. In this regard, Marcel Mauss The gift ([1925] 1969) is


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undoubtedly the most influential essay. It theorizes the gift as a key concept for theanalysis of exchange in non-Western (archaic) societies. Yet, as Graeber (2001)in his re-analysis of The gift emphasizes, Mauss did not develop a simpledichotomy between the altruism of archaic societies and the unbridledindividualism of modern ones. Often, the gift functions in situations of competition

and inequality in non-Western societies, and exchange in Western societies is notgoverned purely by economic calculation (Mauss [1925] 1969: 74). Mauss wasinterested in the identification of moral principles that were potentially present inall societies and wanted to use the ethnographic record for developing viablealternatives for contemporary society (Graeber 2001: 15563). The analysis of thegift as a particular form of reciprocal exchange has been taken up and developedby a range of influential, agenda-setting anthropologists, including Claude Lvi-Strauss (1963), Marshall Sahlins (1972), Marilyn Strathern (1988), Annette Weiner(1992), and Maurice Godelier (1999).

For the present argument, we want to draw attention to the important

conceptual work of Chris Gregory (1982, 1997), who created a theoreticalsynthesis between the Maussian perspective on gift exchange and Marxs political-economic analysis of commodity exchange. Gregory defines gifts as relationsbetween non-aliens by means of inalienable things. The main purpose of gifts is theestablishment and maintenance of social relationships. Commodities, on the otherhand, represent relations between aliens by means of alienable things, with themain purpose of exchanging things. But of course we deal with logical categories orideal types here, and the reality is much more complex and shows many hybridforms. Take, for example, money, which is the central means of market exchangebut which can have more or less purely commoditized forms. According to

Gregory (1997: 1), however, the development of modern monetary forms has ledto a decline of the power of nations-states to control the market and its inherentindividualist tendencies. This in turn has caused a growing distrust among citizensin the moral capacity of nation-states. There is a rich anthropological literatureabout the relationship between money and morality in non-Western societies(Parry and Bloch 1989; Guyer 1995; Akin and Robbins 1999). These volumesshow, among other things, that many non-Western societies have been able toprotect their key reproductive social institutions from the disruptive influence ofcommodity exchangefor example, through the process of enclaving, whichmeans erecting cultural barriers around critical social institutions (Akin andRobbins 1999: 24). But the question remains whether these cases present onlytemporary adaptations and modifications of commodity exchange, which arebound to give way to other forms, or whether the situation in Western societiesreally has taken a different direction (Hart 2005).

Four contributions to this special issue take up this important question anddemonstrate the importance of ethnographic studies of concrete exchangeprocesses and valuations. Anna Tsing addresses the contrast between gifts andcommodities in a modern capitalist form of production and exchange, the so-called supply chain. Her ethnographic strategy is to follow a particular commodity,the matsutake mushroom, from its collection in the forest to its purchase on the(Japanese) market. It is clear from her analysis that the mushrooms start their

trajectory as gifts rather than commodities, because they still contain elements ofthe hunters personal values and social relations. In the hands of buyers, bulkers,


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and exporters, the mushrooms go through various stages of assessing and sorting(by size, grade, and weight), which removes the personal connections and turns theproducts into pure commodities. But curiously, on the market, this process isreversed again through personal relations between wholesale sellers, local buyers,and ultimately consumers, because matsutake, due to their value and perceived

exquisiteness, are prized gifts. This case shows that capitalist commodities mayinvolve strong personal investments and therefore wander in and out of gift status.The commodity status of matsutake is not self-evident but requires continuous

work, which in this case is that of assessment and sorting. Tsing concludes thatmarket relations always depend on and exploit non-market relations in order toaccomplish their goals of money-making, thus putting her analysis in line with aMarxist understanding of value extraction.

Robert Fosters contribution deals with a fascinating new development in thecommoditization of modern economiesnamely, the translation of a subjective

valuation, such as the reputation or brand of a company, into a commodity with

an exact price value. He shows how branding is the contingent outcome ofrelationships between various stakeholders in the brand; apart from the investors,this includes consumers, workers, and suppliers, but also media, governments, andNGOs. The consumers are active agents whose consumption work (Miller 1987)contributes substantially to the creation of a brand, and who are prepared to payfor the right to use the brand for their own identity projects. The development of astandard for calculating brand value by the International Organization forStandardization (ISO) has made it possible to put a dollar value on companyreputations, which companies can use to raise money by attracting investors. Thistranslation of the qualitative value of reputation into a commodity form, without

the need to actually sell the brand, eclipses the concrete consumption work doneby consumers and thus presents a new form of value extraction.The contribution by Horacio Ortiz takes us to one of the most advanced forms

of commodity exchange in modern societiesnamely, financial marketsandanalyzes the discourse of value that plays a major part in these milieus. Ortizconducted his ethnographic fieldwork among a team of professional investors in aFrench multinational company, buying so-called asset-backed securities (ABSs) fortheir clients. These professionals describe what they are doing as value creationin an efficiently working global market. The efficient market is effectivelycomposed of these professionals, who are given the right to make decisions forothers (who provide the capital) on the basis of their knowledge of certainprocedures of risk assessment. By focusing on the technicalities of the proceduresin these complex markets, the discourse on value creation is economized andtaken out of the sphere of ethical considerations. As Ortiz shows, this separationcannot always be maintained, and in times of crash and crisis, some of the financialactors are inclined to make critical ethical judgments. But most of the time, theyconsider themselves ethically constricted subjects, facilitating a system to runefficiently so that financial value can be generated. What is completely elided, asOrtiz points out, are the enormous political consequences of these financialmarkets that create great economic inequalities through their credit ratings, givinglow credit to some, high credit to others, and even making it impossible for others

to borrow. These decisions are presented as technical and driven by an efficientmarket; in this way, they largely escape moral judgment and political responsibility.


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Ortizs ethnography thus shows with rare clarity how economic value derives fromthe practice of organizing a market and how the consideration of other values,

which may be in conflict with this practice, can disappear into the background.Another fascinating development of Western commodity markets is analyzed

by Steffen Dalsgaard in his contribution on the practice and potential of the carbon

trade. Out of concern about climate change due to greenhouse effects, the KyotoProtocol introduced the possibility of putting a price on CO2 pollution. This isdone by a cap-and-trade mechanism, in which governments put a cap or limit onadmissible carbon emissions from industrial actors, with the opportunity for theseactors to buy carbon credits from others if they exceed their limit. In this way, amarket in carbon credits is created, which, it is anticipated, provides a financialincentive for carbon reduction. Dalsgaard discusses various problems andalternative mechanisms and points out how carbon trading has the potential tobring together different spheres of human action, in particular the economy andthe environment (but also development), within a singular system of

commensurability. He speculates about the potential of carbon to develop into anencompassing standard of equivalence or currency, in spite of obvious bureaucraticand administrative difficulties. Dalsgaard also critically shows how carbon tradeeffectively can create and maintain inequalities in wealth and developmentalpotential.

D u m o n t i a n c o m p a r i s o n s o f v a l u e s y s te m sLouis Dumont has played a crucial role in putting the analysis of values on theanthropological research agenda, and his work continues to inspire contemporaryanthropologists (Robbins 1994, 2004; Rio and Smedal 2009; Kapferer 2010).

Dumonts conception of holism (Bubandt and Otto 2010) became the cornerstoneof his analysis of value systems. In Dumonts view, values are linked to each otherin complex ranked and encompassing ways, and the identification of the central

values that encompass all others can only be done through a comparison betweensystems conceived as wholes, because these key values are not necessarilyexpressed as such in the systems they are part of (Dumont 1977: 19). Dumontslifes work has been the comparative study of value systems, or ideologies,especially between India and the West, in which the identification of thedetermining terms of one system has made visible the terms of the other, and vice

versa.In his comparative study of value, Dumont (1986: 233, 247 ff.) prefers to talk

about ideas-and-values (ides-valeurs in French) rather than simply values,because in his view, the explicit separation of is and oughtor fact andvalueis a particular feature of modern ideology. According to Dumont (1986:227), essentially, hierarchy is the encompassing of the contrary. Importantly, theconcept of hierarchy thus implies a notion of levels, and this is also how Dumontconceives of the way societies deal with value contradictions. The hierarchicalrelation can be reversed at other ideological levels applied to different socialcontexts. A good example of the reversal of values at different levels is therelationship between Brahmins (priests) and kings in the classical Indian system, arelationship that is characterized by the paramount encompassing value of purity.

At the highest (religious or cosmological) level, priests are of superior value tokings because they embody the greatest purity. But at the subordinate level of


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public order, priests actually have to obey the kings, who are entrusted withmaintaining political order itself (Dumont 1986: 25253).

With his ideas about comparison, holism, hierarchical encompassment, andreversal at different levels, Dumont created a number of important conceptual andmethodological tools for the empirical study of value systems. In this issue, four

chapters in particular deal with his intellectual heritage and show how it canadvance key anthropological questions.

Joel Robbins addresses the issue of the opposition between monism andpluralism. He remarks that while the anthropological study of values has witnesseda relative decline after Dumont, it has remained a central concern in otherdisciplines, including philosophy. Here, the key debate is between monists, whoassume that ultimately all values in a society can be harmoniously integrated, andpluralists, who deny that this is normally the case. Key representatives of the latterperspective are Max Weber and Isaiah Berlin, who emphasize that the humancondition is characterized by the existence of conflicting values and therefore the

necessity to make difficult, even tragic, decisions between incompatible ends.While recognizing that philosophical monism is currently out of fashion, Robbinsargues that most societies have both monist and pluralist tendencies and thatanthropology is in a position to study the relation between these tendenciesempirically. Here, the heritage of Dumont is particularly valuable, as his conceptsexplain both value encompassment, and thus a tendency towards monism, and

value differentiation, leading to pluralism through reversals at different levels andin different contexts. Robbins contribution explores how this perspective canenrich anthropological analysis by comparing four different cases across aspectrum, from a largely monist order among the Brooklyn Hasidic Jews, via two

mixed cases (the Sepych in the Russian Urals and the Avatip in Papua NewGuineas East Sepik Province), to the strongly pluralist society of the Urapmin inPapua New Guineas West Sepik Province.

Chris Gregorys contribution takes up a heated debate Dumont was involved inconcerning his Indian ethnographic analysis and shows how the application ofDumonts methodologythe holistic comparison of value systemsactually cantake this debate further. His point of departure is Dumonts contested claim that inSouthern India the value of affinal relations is equal to that of consanguineal kinrelations, in contrast to Europe, where consanguinity is considered more importantthan affinity. Gregory, who himself did ethnographic field research in Central India,deduces from Dumonts writings that the situation in North India is differentthatis, that affinal relations are actually valued more highly than consanguineal relations.Gregory shows that the terms in which this question was framed by Dumont haveconfused the debate and that it is better to use the expression fraternity as a valueinstead of affinity as a value. Through an impressively incisive analysis of kinshipterms (of reference as well as of address), emotive values, and marriage practices,Gregory is able to show a logic in the two Indian systems that reveals thedominance of the brother as the key valuer in the South Indian system and thedominant position of the husband in North India. How this has come aboutcannot be reconstructed from the existing material, but Gregory asserts that thestruggle between husbands and brothers persists to the present day and that the

major battleground can be located in the dazzling wedding rituals of the Indiansubcontinent.


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Dumonts method of radical holistic comparison is able to generate innovativeand even surprising ethnographic interpretations, as Rane Willerslev shows in hisanalysis of two different traditions of human sacrifice: the Judeo-Christian traditionas represented in the biblical story of Abrahams near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac,and the Chukchi tradition, which Willerslev studied through ethnographic

fieldwork. The Chukchi, a group of reindeer herders in northern Siberia, sacrificeto the spirits to obtain their blessing, but they do this through a chain of substitutesfor the most valuable sacrificea human being (the most valueless being a stone).

Willerslev argues that the Chukchidriven by a pragmatic attitudeaim to trick thespirits into accepting a rather valueless sacrifice. In contrast, Abrahams near-sacrifice is normally interpreted as a test of his faith by God. Through a radicalcomparison of these key values in the two sacrificial traditions, trickery versus faith,

Willerslev shows that each actually encompasses its opposite. Thus, the Chukchivalue of trickery also involves faith, as its shadow, so to speak, and Abrahams actof faith may actually cover up a more hidden attempt to trick God. This truly

surprising interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition is generated by applyingDumonts method of cross-cultural comparison, including a search for ahierarchical encompassment of opposites. Willerslev concludes that an evenhigher level of hierarchical encompassment exists in both traditions, which can beseen to be guided by the same paramount valuenamely, the maintenance of anecessary distance between humanity and divinity.

The final example of how Dumonts heritage informs present-day ethnographicanalysis, as well as ideological critique, is from Andr Iteanu, a former student ofDumont. In particular, Iteanu addresses the way in which a Western societycharacterized by the central value of equality deals with hierarchy. Following

Dumont (1986: 227), Iteanu states that the notion of value is inseparablyconnected to hierarchy, but this poses a problem for societies that see themselvesas egalitarian. The case is that of young Muslim girls who wear headscarves inschool, which has been a major political issue in France since 1989, culminating inthe French parliament passing a law that forbids wearing visible religious signs inschools and other public institutions. Why did these girls cause such a publicoutcry, and why did the French state, supported by public opinion, react in thisradical way?

Typically, these young girls are third-generation immigrants, often bright, andwell performing in school (unlike the boys). In contrast to their parents andgrandparents, they reconvert to Islam as their own individual choice. It is here thatthe real problem lies: as people who are well on their way to becoming Frenchcitizens embodying values of equality and freedom, these girls challenge the Frenchunderstanding of these values and thus deny the success of their integration intoFrench society. Instead of being secular and sexually liberated, values that theFrench would predominantly connect with the paramount values of equality andfreedom, these girls emphasize religious values, often connected with sexualrepression. Ironically, they challenge important values of French societyalbeit atan encompassed levelby exercising their individual freedom, which is one of thethree key values of the French Revolution. The political and economic result ofthis clash of values is that they are expelled from schools, do not get the careers

they would be fit to pursue, and remain in the limbo of the banlieue, the suburbanneighborhoods that are places of transition, where they, in fact, remain unequal


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and not free. Thus, instead of encompassing religious choice, the Frenchegalitarian ideology leads to a rejection of the girls religious values and to theirpolitical removal from public space; it becomes a political contest betweenincompatible values.

ConclusionIteanus case raises the question: Are such different worldviews incompatible, andthus do they reflect, as Weber argues, an eternal struggle of gods to be fought outin the political sphere (quoted in Behnegar 2003: 127)? What Iteanu shows is howa Dumontian analysis of the French value system can help us clarify what kind of

value conflict is actually at stake, the specifics of which are characteristic of theFrench situation; this sheds light on the ideological basis of the perceived valueincompatibilities. Further comparison with other Western societies, then, willprovide the foundation for a wider perspective on how the values of freedom andequality, potentially at least, can encompass the expression of religious choice. In

this way, the comparative analysis of value systems becomes a form of ideologycritique that can feed back, quite relevantly, into political debates. Dumont thusdefended a non-relativist stance on the study of ideologies. In principle, different

value systems are comparable and translatable into each other, and theircomparative analysis reveals their internal structures of hierarchicalencompassment.

The detailed analyses of modern exchange practices by Tsing, Foster, Ortiz,and Dalsgaard show us how, in practice, the market is not fully commoditized: freemarket exchange is a value rather than a fully realized practice. But they also makeus realize how the expansion of the market can lead to a growing dominance of

economic values and to the gradual obviation of alternative values with seriouspolitical implications. Accordingly, we can see a monist tendency in modernWestern ideology (see Robbins in this issue), driven by the practical andideological success of a system that seeks to make as many things as possiblecomparable against a single standard of equivalence. Exchange-value drives theexpansion of the values of economic ideology. Against this background, therelevance of the comparative study of values stands out splendidly.

All questions of value are also questions of morality and ethics. In this sense,looking atvalue as theory cannot avoid questions of value as morality. Althoughthe market and its agents, as Ortiz shows, try to keep financial value creationoutside the sphere of ethical consideration, they, too, are forced to make somecritical ethical judgments in times of financial crises. Willerslev shows how thestory of Abrahams near-sacrifice of Isaac, which provides the very foundation ofthe Judeo-Christian understanding of faith in God, carries with it a shadow value oftrickery, which allows us to reinterpret the canonical story in quite opposite terms.These points and many others in the papers reveal the relevance of theanthropology of value for considering moral issues.

Thus, the contributions to the first part of this special issue, in spite of theirethnographic and theoretical diversity, clearly converge on the importance of acomparative approach to the study of value, where dominant Western values arethe implicit ideological background against which the explicit comparisons takeplace. In this way, the papers contribute to the important anthropological projectof cultural critique (Marcus and Fisher 1988), whether as guerrilla fighters or as


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troops in a more standard army. Ultimately, the purpose of dealing with value astheory is to assess where todays anthropology is situated in relation to the historyof social theory. Can it still be considered the comparative discipline parexcellence, and above all, to what extent does it remain a critical discipline thatunerringly provides challenges to central premises of Western ideology? We are

confident that the present collection of papers does all of these things inabundance. Enjoy reading!

AcknowledgementsThe workshop that led to this publication was held at the Cairns Institute, JamesCook University, Australia, and we thank this institution for its generous financialand administrative support. In particular, we wish to mention the invaluableassistance of Elena Rhind, who took care of the participants and workshop

activities far beyond the call of duty. We also thank the Danish Council forIndependent Researchs Sapere Aude program, which also provided considerablefinancial support for this project.

For several reasons, this is perhaps the most difficult introduction we have evercrafted, and many people have participated in its development and completion.Our greatest thanks go to Morten Nielsen from the University of Aarhus, whotirelessly read draft after draft and provided much-needed comments on how tomost effectively bring out our conflicting viewpoints. We also would like tomention Joel Robbins, Chris Gregory, Michael Wood, and Michael Lambek, allparticipants in the project, and the anonymous reviewers of HAU, who offered

welcome critique and useful suggestions. Finally, we send our deepest respect tothe editors of HAU, who continued to insist that the introduction could and shouldbe developed further. A major thank-you is due to the editor-in-chief, Giovanni daCol, who among many good suggestions came up with the title of the volume. Andthanks to Stphane Gros for keeping everything on track and to Sean Dowdy andColleen Coyne for their brilliant proofreading.

ReferencesAkin, David, and Joel Robbins, eds. 1999. Money and modernity: State and local

currencies in Melanesia. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic groups and boundaries. London: Allen and Unwin.

Behnegar, Nasser. 2003. Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the scientific study ofpolitics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bertelsen, Bjrn E. 2012. Moving at the margins to re-centre anthropology:Interview with Bruce Kapferer. Norsk Antropologisk Tidskrift23 (2): 18297.

Bubandt, Nils, and Ton Otto. 2010. Anthropology and the predicaments of

holism. In Experiments in holism, edited by Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt, 115. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.


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Da Col, Giovanni, and David Graeber. 2011. Foreword: The return ofethnographic theory. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory1 (1): vixxxv.

Dumont, Louis. 1977. From Mandeville to Marx: The genesis and triumph ofeconomic ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

. 1986. Essays on individualism: Modern ideology in anthropologicalperspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foster, Robert. 1990. Value without equivalence: Exchange and replacement in aMelanesian society. Man(N.S.) 25: 5469.

Godelier, Maurice. 1999. The enigma of the gift. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gregory, C. A. 1982. Gifts and commodities. London: Academic Press.

. 1997. Savage money: The anthropology and politics of commodity exchange.Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an anthropological theory of value: The false coinof our own dreams. New York: Palgrave.

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Guyer, Jane I., ed. 1995. Money matters: Instability, values and social payments inthe modern history of West African communities. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

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Holbraad, Martin. 2007. The power of powder: Multiplicity and motion in thedivinatory cosmology of Cuban If (or mana, again). In Thinking throughthings: Theorizing artefacts ethnographically, edited byAmiria Henare, MartinHolbraad, and Sari Wastell, 189225. London: Routledge.

Humphrey, Caroline and Stephen Hugh-Jones, eds. 1992. Barter, exchange andvalue: an anthropological approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kapferer, Bruce. 2010. Louis Dumont and a holist anthropology. InExperiments in holism, edited by Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt, 187208.

Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Kluckhohn, Florence, and Fred Strodtbeck. 1961. Varieties in value orientations.

Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. On using ANT for studying information systems: A(somewhat) Socratic dialogue. In The social study of information andcommunication technology!: Innovation, actors and contexts, edited byChrisanthi Avgerou, Claudio U. Ciborra, and Frank Land, 6276. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Lvi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural anthropology. New York: Basic Books.

Malinowski, Bronisaw. 1922.Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: GeorgeRoutledge & Sons.


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Mao, Zedong. 2010. The red book of guerrilla warfare. Translated by Samuel B.Griffith. El Paso, TX: El Paso Norte Press.

Marcus, George E., and Michael J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as culturalcritique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1969. The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaicsocieties. Translated by Ian Cunnison. London: Cohen & West.

Miller, Daniel. 1987. Material culture and mass consumption. New York: BasilBlackwell.

Munn, Nancy D. 1986. The fame of Gawa: A symbolic study of valuetransformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Parry, Jonathan, and Maurice Bloch, eds. 1989. Money and the morality ofexchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rio, Knut M., and Olaf H. Smedal, eds. 2009. Hierarchy: Persistence andtransformation in social formations. New York: Berghahn Books.

Robbins, Joel. 1994. Equality as a value: Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia, and theWest. Social Analysis36: 2170.

. 2004. Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua NewGuinea society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The gender of the gift: Problems with women andproblems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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2 (1): 118.. 2011. Zeno and the art of anthropology: Of lies, beliefs, paradoxes, and

other truths. Common Knowledge17 (1): 12845.

Wagner, Roy. 1991. The fractal person. In Great men and big men:Personifications of power in Melanesia, edited by Maurice Godelier andMarilyn Strathern, 15973. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Introduction : La valeur commethorie. Comparaison, critiqueculturelle, et thorie ethnographique de gurilla.

Rsum : Cette introduction aborde la question de lutilit, voire de la simplepossibilit, de dvelopper une thorie anthropologique de la valeur. Sous la formedun dbat socratique, deux points de vue contradictoires mergent. Lun fait

valoir que lanthropologie peut apporter une contribution importante et tout faitcohrente la question de la valeur dans la thorie sociale. Lautre soutien quelanthropologie, en tant que discipline guide par lethnographie, produit une anti-thorie de la valeur. Les deux perspectives dcoulent de deux visions diffrentesde lanthropologie, qui envisagent chacune de manire divergente la relation de ladiscipline dautres disciplines et lhistoire des ides en gnral. Un point deconvergence se dgage cependant, concernant lintrt dexplorer le potentiel de la

valeur comme thorie. Pour les deux perspectives, la valeur est considre commeun concept puissant mme de gnrer de nouvelles questions ethnographiques et

de nouvelles rflexions, et dapporter une dimension cruciale la critiqueculturelle.

Ton OTTO is Professor and Research Leader at James Cook University, Australia,and Professor of Anthropology and Ethnography at Aarhus University, Denmark.Currently, he is directing the Ethnographic Collections at Moesgaard Museum,

Aarhus. He is the editor (with Nils Bubandt) of Experiments in holism: Theoryand practice in contemporary anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and (with

Wendy Gunn and Rachel Smith) of Design anthropology: Theory and practice

(Berg 2013). He also co-directed the films Ngat is dead: Studying mortuarytraditions (DER, 2009, with Christian Suhr Nielsen and Steffen Dalsgaard) andUnity through culture(DER, 2012, with Christian Suhr).

Department of Culture and Society

Aarhus University

Moesgaard, 8270 Hojbjerg

Denmark

[email protected]

Rane WILLERSLEVis Professor of Anthropology, Aarhus University, and Directorof the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. He is the author ofSoulhunters: Hunting, animism and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs

(University of California Press, 2007) and On the run in Siberia (University ofMinnesota Press, 2012). He is also the editor (with Christian Suhr) ofTranscultural montage (Berghahn Books 2013) and (with Dorthe RefslundChristensen) ofTaming time, timing death: Social technologies and ritual(Ashgate,2013).

Museum of Cultural History

University of OsloSt Olavs gate 29


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Postboks 6762, St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo

Norway

[email protected]


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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | Ton Otto and Rane Willerslev.Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online)

Prologue: Value astheory

Value, action, and critique

Ton OTTO,Aarhus University and James Cook UniversityRane WILLERSLEV,Aarhus University

In the introduction to part one of this special issue we addressed the thornyquestion of whether an anthropological theory of value is needed or indeedpossible at all. By way of a Socratic debate, we argued respectively for one of twoopposite positions. Ton Otto suggested that anthropology can make a major andquite coherent contribution to the issue of value in social theory and he was infavor of bringing the papers together from a history of ideas perspective, therebytracing how the authors varied perspectives and approaches to questions of valueadvanced particularand easily specifiedtrends in social theory. Rane Willerslev,

to the contrary, proposed that anthropology is an ethnographically driven disci-pline, which can only produce idiosyncratic antitheories of value. In Willerslevs

view, anthropologists are and should be, primarily, warriors of the peripherythatis, guerrilla warriors, using indigenous conceptual productions as tactics to fightdominant theoretical traditions. The debate reflects an underlying disagreement,

which runs through the collection of articles themselves, about the place of anthro-pology in relation to other disciplines and, in particular, whether anthropology isprimarily theory-driven or ethnography-driven, and whether or not these two ab-stractions (theory and ethnography) can be reconciled.

This debate continues in part two of this special issue, but with new fields of

inquiry and objects of analysis. The contributions of part one were largely con-cerned with aspects of value in exchange theory and with the radical comparison ofdiverse cultural structures. Part two addresses the relationship between value andaction, including actions deemed to occur outside the sphere of reciprocal ex-changes. Additionally, part two raises questions about what value means for anthro-pological practice by considering how anthropologists engage with their field sitesand projects via critique and collaboration.

Developing the value quest ionAs outlined earlier, both Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss employed concepts of value

for a critique of the capitalist system of commodity production and exchange.Interestingly, their critical apparatuses were based on the same premise of an


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expected return for something parted with: whether this was in the form of a giftgiven or labor time expended. Yet, as the contributions to this volume show, thereare many types of relationships that are not guided by a premise of reciprocity andshould thus be taken into account in order to theorize value formation morecapaciously.

Consider, for example, the rubric of sharing, which is especially salient in theethnographic literature on hunter-gatherer societies. Sharing is, perhaps, one of themost archaic modes of exchange (Gell 1999), but it also has a much widerapplication in the postindustrial world of city-dwellers (see for example Rasmussen2011). Moreover, sharing continues to pose a challenge within anthropology: is it aform of reciprocity or a different phenomenon? In a seminal argument in Stoneage economics(1988), Marshall Sahlins conceptualized sharing as a generalizedform of reciprocity. Engaging with this argument, James Woodburn (1998)reflected that among hunter-gatherers with immediate return-systems, sharing is aspecific transactional mode, marked by little or no expectation of a return. Earlier,

Nicholas Peterson (1993) denoted this type of sharing as demand sharing, thusreducing the previous emphasis on generosity, and instead stressed the role ofthe receiver, who can make claims on other peoples possessions. Recently, a starkseparation of sharing from other transactional modes has been criticized by

Alberto Corsn Jimnez and Rane Willerslev (2007), who argue that not only doessharing among hunter-gatherers coexist with other transactional modes but whenstretched to its conceptual limit, sharing may transform into reciprocity or eveninto theft. Likewise, Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (2000: 345) has suggested that in trans-actional modes like sharing or reciprocity, multiple exchange logics are always at

work, and it would be misleading to fuse them into one privileged modethat is, as

sharing plain and simplewhich, ultimately, smooths over rough edges and editsout contradictions.However, in part two of this special issue, Thomas Widlok maintains that

sharing is not reciprocity and muses on the reasons why people share what theyvalue even if they cannot expect a return. On the basis of the hunter-gathererliterature and his own field research among the San of northern Namibia, Widlokcharacterizes sharing as a complex rather than a primordial cultural phenomenonthat requires specific social conditions for its execution. Taking demand-sharingas a prototype, Widlok describes sharing as tolerated scrounging rather than asreciprocity or altruism. In Widloks view, sharing offers an incentive to rethink andrevise existing value theories on a number of counts: first, sharing entails a shift inperspective away from the utility of specific goods and toward what the humanenvironment can afford (and how it can be accessed). In sharing there is nodeliberate economic calculation of the value of a particular item that is given up bya person. Instead, sharing involves an acute awarenessand possibly calculationofthe value of maintaining good relations in a group. What Widlok ultimately showsis that a fuller recognition of the importance of sharing as a widespread humanmode of transaction in its own right, different from gift or commodity exchange,might have a major impact on how we understand value as transcendental field ofrelationships of exchange.

The contribution by Rosita Henry, Ton Otto, and Michael Wood broadens the

empirical field of the value debate by analyzing the transformations of value thatoccur in the production, collection, categorization, and exchange of ethnographic


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artifacts. The authors define an artifact as a complex phenomenon, consisting of amaterial thing, its specific documentation, and the stories and theories that give it ahistory (2013: 35). They find that artifacts, in their social biographies, assumequalities of gifts as well as commodities and become established both as publicgoods and as private property, often coterminously. To account for this ontological

multiplicity, the authors turn to Tim Ingolds (2012) rendering of material culturestudies and ecological anthropology as a useful point of departure. In this account,things are distinguished from objects. Whereas a thing refers to the flow andmovement of artifacts through social life (of which they are part), an objectdenotes the singling out of the thing as existing apart from the perceiver throughprocesses of inscription and categorization. The authors argue that value is ascrib-ed in these processes of objectification, which reflect human cultural projects, butthe material existence of artifacts as things allows for their involvement in differentcultural projects, both simultaneously and consecutively, leading to contrasting andeven conflicting valuations.

Part two also engages with the linguistic dimensions of value creation. Whereasvalues, as cultural representations, can be expressed in numerous means, media,and methodse.g., through ritual objects and ordinary actslanguage is theubiquitous means of expressing what Louis Dumont (1986: 233) termed ideas-and-values. In this issue, the ethno-linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald analyzes how aparticular language, Tariana, in north-western Brazilian Amazonia, expresses andcongeals modes of valuation in use and utterance. In Tariana, the indigenousnotion of good is phenomenologically related with actions such as proper,correct, and straight, whereas not good is encompassed by idioms expressingotherness and difference. Foreignness is thus often associated with danger, but

the desire for white peoples goods has also opened up new semantic fields thataddress the economic domain and its inherent value concepts. Aikhenvald thuscontinues and enriches the linguistic approach to value by focusing not only onsemiotic valence, but on the (meta)pragmatics of language use. For example, inTariana, fluency and competency in a specific language is highly respected as amark of trustworthiness and genuine moral personhood, whereas code-switching isa mark of incompetence and low status.

Action and (re)valuationThe three contributions discussed above respond to questions of value fromdiverse empirical terrains and do so by expanding on conceptual toolkits fromexisting theoretical domains. However, they also reveal an increasing focus on therelation between value and action (in sharing, categorization, and language use),and a turn away from more formal models of reciprocal exchange and holisticcomparison. A focus on the relation between action and value, and in particular on

value as a way to deal with the significance of social action, is even more poignantin the next contributions we discuss. These papers can be linked to a line ofreasoning that was initially developed in the works of Terence Turner, NancyMunn, and David Graeber. The specific novelty of this approach is to focus on theproduction of value in action and to expand the notion of value productionbeyond its more constrained meaning used by early political economists; namely,the production of value through labor. Terence Turner (2008), who places himselfdirectly in the tradition of Marxian value theory, argues that this approach to value,


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when properly calibrated, has wide applicability, even in societies that do notengage in commodity production. Graeber (2001), using Turners ethnographicmaterial on the Kayapo of central Brazil, shows how this can be done by analyzingthe chanting of Kayapo chiefs as a medium and measure of value.

Morten Nielsens contribution to this issue is directly inspired by this line of

reasoning. He is particularly indebted to Munns (1986) working out of Gawanvalue creation in terms of its transformative capacity to expand or contract thespacetime of self-other relationships. His case study concerns young road workersin southern Mozambique who are not happy with the pay they receive from theirChinese employers. The workers consider this pay as a handout, which, in turn,suggests a failureon the part of the Chinese employersto recognize them asproper social persons. At one level, this situation could be read as a passiveresistance to market relations, where labor is turned into a commodity with apricean exchange valuethat the workers cannot control. But Nielsen takes hisanalysis much further. He observes that an interesting value transformation occurs

in the perception of the workers to their work when they have earned sufficientmoney to buy a bag of cement. Their image of the unsatisfactory employee-employer relationship is transformed into a relationship between their work on theroad and the construction of their own houses. Thus, the former social relation,marked by its negative value transformation, is obviated (here used in Roy

Wagners sense of the term) by a positive relationship that implies an expandedvision of the past and the future. The bag of cement is both a positive memorylinked to the road work and the anticipation of a future housereplete with itsimplications for kinship and marriagethat also may facilitate the acquisition ofcitizen status. This is, of course, an uncertain future, but it affects the valuation of

the present, materialized in a bag of cement.Karen Sykes contribution to this volume also deals with the relation betweenactions and values by investigating how changing economic and kin-centricpractices entail new kinds of choices and the need for revaluations. Exploring theconsequences of recent Papua New Guinean migration to Australia, Sykesexaminesfrom the perspectives of womenshifting relations between sisters (whomigrated) and their brothers (who stayed behind). Traditionally, in this Papua NewGuinean context, the payment of bridewealth established a bond between the clanof the husband and the clan of the brother, of which the sister is a part. In the twocases Sykes describes, a mortgage (taken to build a house) became a central part ofbridewealth negotiations, wherein the house was given to the parents to live in, butit remained the property of the mortgage taker. Sykes argues that, in both cases,the expression of respect for brothers was the traditional value that bound the newand old practices together. In this way, market relations were integrated with kinrelations, but at the same time, new monetary possibilities appeared to affect the

valuation of brothers by their sisters as the latter aimed to balance their risks andinterests between transnational households and obligations to natal clans.

In another contribution, Alberto Corsn Jimnez and Adolfo Estalella focus onthe emergence of new values in political action. Their particular case is the OccupyMovement in Spain, known as the 15M Movement, having been inaugurated onMay 15, 2011. This grassroots movement created a space for intensive social

experimentation in a modern urban environment, leading to the design of newsocial forms and values for a specifically urban setting. Through a form of


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participatory ethnography, Corsn Jimnez and Estalella were able to follow thisurban social experiment as it evolved through popular assembliesmore thanone hundred in Madrid alone. What they show is how the work of organizingthese assemblies was constitutive of a new experience of relationality in the city,referred to as making neighbors. This new relationality was quite different from

existing urban relations based on personas such as the stranger, the cosmopolitan,and the consumer. It was also fundamentally distinct from the temporal and dur-able qualities of social forms like kinship and friendship, as the neighbor became

what they refer to as an atmospheric person, created in and through the politicalambience and experimentation of the assemblies themselves. Their case studyreveals how social and political value emerges through the design of the neighboras a new social relation, an idea-and-value in the Dumontian sense, but simul-taneously a social value that is produced in and through experimental politicalaction.

Value as theory and crit ical practiceMichael Lambeks contribution is, perhaps, the most ambitious attempt in thecollection to provide a general anthropological theory of value. What makes itparticularly anthropological, in our view, is its holistic scope (cf. Otto andBubandt 2010). Lambek engages in a thought experiment where he conceives allaction from the viewpoint of value. By making this holistic move, he extends thetraditionally Marxist understanding of productive activity as the paramount sourceof value to include all forms of human activity, even those actions that are deemedto lie outside the sphere of material production and exchange. Although Lambekdoes not explicitly deal with Munn, Turner, or Graeber in this contribution (but

see Lambek 2008), his attempt to theorize the connection between value andaction is very much in line with their intellectual agendas. Following Aristotle andHannah Arendt, among others, Lambek distinguishes two types of activities,namelyaction and productionor doing and making. He argues that ethical

value is to action as material value is to production, thus relating this establisheddichotomy to the question of value. Lambek further links ethical value withincommensurability and material value with commensurability. This leads to twodifferent kinds of valuation, namely choice in the case of market value, and

judgment in the case of ethics, where a balance between noncommensurablevalues has to be established. The most innovative part of Lambeks contributionafter he set up this useful conceptual frameworkis to be found in his detailedreflections on how acts, performative ones in particular, can objectify value andhow this objectified value then circulates in society. The value of these acts is notonly objectified by the execution of the acts themselves, but also retrospectively bythe way the acts are narrated. Value can also be stored in sacred postulates or

verbal formulas, which, in turn, assume authority through their narrative iteration.In Lambeks analysis, objectified value is circulated and sustained by humanactivity and, therefore, can rapidly disappear in its absence. Extending the storageof objectified value to things, Lambek argues that the gift can also be broughtunder this paradigm, since the gift is an objectification of the value generated inacts of giving, accepting, and returning. Thus, he reasons, a gift is the objectificationof acts, just as a commodity is the objectification of labor. Within this all-encompassing theory, however, older theoretical oppositions persist. For Lambek,


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there is still a difference between commodity and noncommodity spheres, betweenlabor and other kinds of action, and, as he explicitly points out, between ritual andlegal-bureaucratic spheres of performative action.

Marshall Sahlins essay in this issue also makes a strong claim about anthro-pologys contribution to value theory and, rather than using guerrilla tactics, he

engages in a full-blown attack on the way value has been theorized in modern,neoclassical economics. His strategic approach is organized along several lines ofassault. First, he demonstrates how the general claim by economists that theeconomy should be treated as a separate system is, in fact, impossible to sustain, asthe impact of so-called exogenous factors is a necessary part of any economicexplanation. Far from being a self-regulating system, the market is only one way ofobjectifying the cultural-historical order. Thus, by banishing culture as exogenousto the market, economists also banish a conceptual apparatus, which would actual-ly be able to explain economic practices. Furthermore, Sahlins effectively demo-lishes the much-beloved figure of economic thinkingHomo economicusthe

rational, calculating, and maximizing individual, stripped of all actual human char-acteristics. Sahlins ventures to claim that Homo economicus, as a matter ofhistorical fact, is a fiction, poignantly asserting that the self is not the sole end ofan individuals existence any more than it is the exclusive means. (2013: 168).Sahlins then gives ethnographic substance to his claim by giving examples ofparents love for their children as other selves of themselves and a wealth ofother ethnographic examples concerning kinship relations across the globe. Hispoint is to show that material interest and agency, quite evidently, are inherent inrelationships rather than in individuals. After destroying economics blind beliefsin the market, rational choice, and the cult of the individual, Sahlins proceeds to

build up an all-inclusive anthropological approach to value, which he calls thepolitical economy of alterity. Central to his approach is the ethnographic observ-ation that, cross-culturally, material goods of the highest values originate from theoutside, culturally defined, and in particular from transcendent cosmic realms. Ascause for this alterity of the supreme values, Sahlins points to the universal humancondition of finitude: key factors of human lifehealth, prosperity, and deatharebeyond the powers of human agency; therefore, human societies need to be linkedto suprahuman powers outside themselves. The valuethat originates from beyondis subsequently appropriated in material goodsthus linking the creation of so-called material value to the cosmological imagination.

Whereas Lambeks and Sahlins contributions are exercises in theoreticalsynthesis (as well as modes of critique), many chapters in this volume show howethnography can generate challenging questions and criticize theoretical assump-tions through unexpected findings. This is what we denoted in part one as theguerrilla ethnographic method. These findings are brought about by radical com-parisonas discussed in relation to Dumonts value project and also by detailedobservations, where ethnographers follow their subject across transnational spacesand through various transformations in time. Think of the way Anna Tsing (partone of this special issue) followed the Matsutake mushroom along its international

journey of manifesting as different types of transactions. Or, Henry, Otto, andWood (part two of this special issue), who traced the various value transformations

of artifacts across places, times, and institutional contexts. In their detailed trackingof concrete connections, ethnographers discover that all systems and institutions,


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however seamless in their self-representations, have rough edges, which, as Tsing(2013: 39) remarks, are a purchase point for intellectual and political work. Thatis to say, they have valuefor both theoretical elaboration and cultural critique.

Here we use the term cultural critique broadly, in the sense articulated byMarcus and Fischer ([1986] 1999), who see it as one of the two central promises of

the discipline of anthropology in its twentieth-century guise (the other being thestudy of the diversity of cultural worlds). The aim of cultural critique is to disruptthe common-sense experience of our own cultural worlds and to reexamine ourtaken-for-granted assumptionsespecially those that inform our social theories. As

we have already stated in our introduction to part one (Otto and Willerslev 2013),an anth

Documents

Value as Theory _Otto & Willerslev