Value and value-practices

“Value, anthropologists tell us, is the way people represent the importance of their own actions to themselves (Graeber 2001). By representing this importance they have a guide to their action. Value however does not spring out of individuals isolated from the rest of society.

While the general term ‘value’ is something that we consider important, desirable, a priority, or valuable (and that in our economic life we measure in terms of money), when values are joined together into an overall structure of thinking, they give rise to value systems. A value system thus is a conceptual grid through which we see the world; it defines (even unconsciously) what is good and what is bad, what is normal and what is abnormal, what we must resign ourselves to, and what it is possible to change.”

De Angelis, M., 2007. The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital. Pluto Press, London, p.24-26.