DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2026.2630029">
 

Questions of value: How key insights from anthropological theory and heterodox economics can help sociologists imagine a better world

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Department/School

Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology

Publication Title

International Review of Sociology

Abstract

This paper introduces value theory from two different intellectual vantage points in order to expand our imaginative capacities for thinking about practical ways to address the limits, failures, and destructive features of capitalism today. It represents an important step in the process of countersystem analysis, which can lead the way to the construction of alternative futures. This begins with David Graeber’s radically imaginative efforts to advance an anthropological theory of value, drawing on a broad historical and comparative lens that moves beyond the categories of our current political-economic system. The other vantage point comes from the more practical reformist work of heterodox economist Mariana Mazzucato, an important and influential public intellectual and leading proponent in the movement to revive public debates about the nature of economic value. The larger aim of this paper is to broaden our sociological understanding about, and capacities to help convey, the oftentimes elusive and, as I argue, obvious-not-so-obvious nature of value, as an important step for helping to recognize and organize productive activity to better serve human needs.

Comments

R. M. Orrange is a faculty member in EMU's Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology.

Link to Published Version

DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2026.2630029

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