IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecanth/v10y2023i2p177-185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future

Author

Listed:
  • Sean Field

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in Houston, Texas, I contribute novel ethnographic insights into how oil and gas experts understand notions of value. I show that prevailing notions of value are normatively defined in economic terms and closely tied to understandings of an American “way of life.” Questions of value, I suggest, reveal our idiosyncratic and shared ethical orientations toward what we think is important and the futures we are fighting to create. The climate crisis, as such, is not a crisis of emissions or hydrocarbons but a crisis of how value is assigned to worldly things. I conclude by arguing that until we address questions of value, we are unlikely to address the existential crisis of anthropogenic climate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Sean Field, 2023. "Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 177-185, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:10:y:2023:i:2:p:177-185
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12286
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12286
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sea2.12286?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leins, Stefan, 2018. "Stories of Capitalism," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226523422, October.
    2. Yves Balasko, 2016. "Foundations of the Theory of General Equilibrium," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 9480, August.
    3. Leins, Stefan, 2018. "Stories of Capitalism," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226523392, Febrero.
    4. Sean Field, 2022. "Risk and responsibility: Private equity financiers and the US shale revolution," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 47-59, January.
    5. Horacio Ortiz, 2013. "Financial value: economic, moral, political, global," Post-Print hal-00869852, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Scott Souleles & Matthew Archer & Morten Sørensen Thaning, 2023. "Introduction to special issue: Value, values, and anthropology," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 162-168, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bear, Laura, 2020. "Speculations on infrastructure: from colonial public works to a postcolonial global asset class on the Indian Railways 1840-2017," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103445, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Lee, Kenneth & Manochin, Melina, 2021. "Sell-side equity analysts and equity sales: a study of interaction," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108953, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Bear, Laura, 2020. "Speculation: a political economy of technologies of imagination," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103433, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Tuckett, David & Holmes, Douglas & Pearson, Alice & Chaplin, Graeme, 2020. "Monetary policy and the management of uncertainty: a narrative approach," Bank of England working papers 870, Bank of England.
    5. Stolowy, Hervé & Paugam, Luc & Gendron, Yves, 2022. "Competing for narrative authority in capital markets: Activist short sellers vs. financial analysts," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    6. Beckert, Jens & Ergen, Timur, 2020. "Transcending history's heavy hand: The future in economic action," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    7. Lee, Kenneth & Manochin, Melina, 2021. "Sell-side equity analysts and equity sales: A study of interaction," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    8. Lee, Kenneth & Aleksanyan, Mark & Harris, Elaine & Manochin, Melina, 2023. "Throwing in the towel: what happens when analysts' recommendations go wrong?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121412, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Pinzur, David, 2021. "Infrastructure, ontology and meaning: the endogenous development of economic ideas," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110932, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Horacio Ortiz, 2022. "Political Imaginaries of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital: A Conceptual Analysis," Post-Print halshs-03513082, HAL.
    11. Stefan Ouma, 2020. "This can(’t) be an asset class: The world of money management, “society†, and the contested morality of farmland investments," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(1), pages 66-87, February.
    12. Charron Jacques-Olivier, 2017. "Inefficient Debate. The EMH, the “Remarkable Error” and a Question of Point of View," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-24, December.
    13. Tariq Rahman, 2022. "Landscapes of rizq: Mediating worldly and otherworldly in Lahore's speculative real estate market," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 297-308, June.
    14. Sarah Ruth Sippel, 2018. "Financialising farming as a moral imperative? Renegotiating the legitimacy of land investments in Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(3), pages 549-568, May.
    15. Michael Barrett & Eivor Oborn & Wanda Orlikowski, 2016. "Creating Value in Online Communities: The Sociomaterial Configuring of Strategy, Platform, and Stakeholder Engagement," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 704-723, December.
    16. Sean Field, 2022. "Risk and responsibility: Private equity financiers and the US shale revolution," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 47-59, January.
    17. Gorbunov, Vladimir, 2021. "Market demand: a holistic theory and its verification," MPRA Paper 109154, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Ipshita Ghosh, 2020. "Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 190-202, June.
    19. Ryan B. Anderson, 2022. "The taboo of retreat: The politics of sea level rise, managed retreat, and coastal property values in California," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 284-296, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:10:y:2023:i:2:p:177-185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=2330-4847 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.