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

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  • 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.

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  • 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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Leins, Stefan, 2018. "Stories of Capitalism," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226523422, December.
    2. Yves Balasko, 2016. "Foundations of the Theory of General Equilibrium," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 9480, September.
    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.
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    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.

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