Universität Wien

400023 SE Value: A Radical Approach (2024S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 40 - Doktoratsstudium Sozialwissenschaften
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 15 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Achtung!
Die Termine am 13.06., 14.06. und 27.06. sind als "individual feedback/tutoring" gedacht. Nähre Informationen werden in der 1. Einheit bekanntgegeben.

  • Thursday 06.06. 13:15 - 16:30 Seminarraum 9, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Wednesday 12.06. 13:00 - 17:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 13.06. 15:00 - 16:30 Digital
  • Friday 14.06. 15:00 - 16:30 Digital
  • Wednesday 26.06. 13:15 - 17:00 Seminarraum 9, Kolingasse 14-16, OG01
  • Thursday 27.06. 13:15 - 16:30 Digital
  • Friday 28.06. 13:00 - 17:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

The course will introduce students into current conversations on value in anthropology, geography, and political economy (but not only), and work out a critical and dialectical ethnographic engagement with value struggles in multiple social fields and within varied spatiotemporal scales. We will then focus our gaze on concrete contemporary fields of value contention such as labor (cognitive, surplus), politics (value and the rise of the populist Right), urban transformations in the North and South (property and rentierism), money and finance, and green transitions. In this we will draw from worldwide case studies.

Value is possibly the key concept of the social and human sciences. This immediately registers in its deeply contested character, philosophically and politically. Since at least the 19th century two basic and opposing varieties have been in circulation: a singular and a plural concept of value(s). The singular concept of value is universalist and deployed by economics and political economy. It is generally expressed as a quantitative abstraction about costs, prices, and revenues, and focuses on production, distribution, and exchange. In its speculative and moral aspects it has also permeated everyday language, for instance in phrases such as unlocking value or about people and activities who add no value and appear as a cost. The concept of values in the plural is allocated to the human and social sciences where it refers to particularistic values held high by (categories/groups/classes of) humans and societies. The single concept is often understood as material, the plural as expressive.

Liberal capitalism is the condition of possibility of this split epistemological heritage. It allocates the single meaning to the realm of capital accumulation, and the plural one to the realm of pluralist politics. The often perceived contemporary ‘crisis of liberalism’ signals that the always already problematic connection between these forms of value might be at breaking point. Value struggles are a core task for the social sciences.

A radical ethnographic approach sets the two in a dialectical, dynamic, and open relationship that allows for empirical discovery and processual description of multi-scalar value struggles within the uneven and combined spaces of contemporary global capitalism. This course introduces the problematic and offers a set of concrete ethnographic illustrations.

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

- Presence and active participation in class
- Either an oral exam (45 minutes, in the last week of June) or a short paper (max 2000 words, reflecting on the literature and the class discussions, relating the class to your Phd project, submission date 1 july)

Examination topics

Reading list

Fraser, Nancy. 2022. Cannibal Capitalism. London: Verso.
Harvey, David. 2019. Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. London: Profile Books (chapters 3,4, and appendix).
Kalb, Don. Ed. 2024. Insidious Capital: Frontlines of Value at the End of a Global Cycle. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Kalb, Don. In print (2025). Value and Worthlessness: The Rise of the Populist Right and other Disruptions in the Anthropology of Capitalism. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Patel, Raj; and Jason Moore. 2020. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. London: Verso.

Additional Reading:
Graeber, David. 2004. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our Own Dreams. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Huber, Mathew. 2022. Climate Change as Class War. London: Verso.
McElroy, Erin. 2024. Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Schedule:
Class 1: Value and Values: A Possible Introduction (Thursday 6 June 2024, 1.15-4.30pm)
Don Kalb 2024:
Introduction: Value at the End of the Cycle: On Frontlines and Regimes (pp. 1-39)
Don Kalb, In Print (2025):
Introduction: Webs of Life versus Webs of Meaning: Or How I became a Marxist Anthropologis
Chapter 12, The Labor Theory of Value and the Value Theory of Labor
Epiloque: Why I Will Not Make It as a Moral Anthropologist
David Harvey 2019:
Chapter 3, Money as the Representation of Value (pp. pp. 51-71)
Chapter 4: Anti-Value: The Theory of Devaluation (pp. 72-93)
Appendix: Marx’s Distinctive Value Theory (pp. 211-221)

Optional (throughout the course):
Chapter 1, Patrick Neveling, Special Economic Zones: The Global Frontlines of Neoliberalism’s Value Regime;
Chapter 2, Stephen Campbell, On Difference and Devaluation in Contemporary Capitalism: Notes on Exploitation in a Myanmar Squatter Settlement;
Chapter 4, Tom Cowan, Enclosing Gurugram: Vernacular Valorization on India’s Urban Frontline;
Chapter 8, Sarah Winkler-Reid, As much value as Possible: Construction, Universities, Finance, and the Greater Good in the Northeast of England

Further background reading: David Graeber 2004.
Class 2: Anthropologies of Value and Devaluation (Wednesday 13 June 2024, 1.15-4.30pm)
Don Kalb, In Print (2025)

Part one: Living Labor, Value, and Worthlessness (chapters 2,3,4)
Part two: The Non-Surprise of the Populist Right (chapters 5,6)

Charlotte Bruckermann, Carbon as Value: Four Short Stories of Ecological Civilization in China.
In: Kalb 2024, pp. 96-122.

Further background reading for those interested: Matt Huber. 2022. Climate Change as Class War. Pp. 1-178

Class 3: On Middle Classness and Money (Wednesday 26 June 2024, 1.15 4.30pm)
Don Kalb, In Print (2025)
Part 3: Global Middle Classness: Living and Dreaming (chapters 7,8)
Part 4: Finance and Hegemonic Decline (chapters 9, 10)

Optional: Erin McElroy. 2024. Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Class 4: Capitalism, Value, and Cheapness (Friday 28 June 2024, 1.15 4.30pm)
Nancy Fraser. 2022. Cannibal Capitalism. (pp. 1-158)
Raj Patel and Jason Moore. 2020. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. (212pp)

(see also Optional under class 1)

Association in the course directory

Last modified: We 31.07.2024 12:06