Unifying by multiplying

It could be said that the concept of value is central to all the critical social sciences. Why we do what we do and how we organize societies are in no small part shaped by what we decide ought to be valued and the struggle inherent to all valuations, recognizing that what is valued is not objectively given or equally decided among all. For these reasons, I can appreciate the authors’ desire to make value, as noted in their abstract, ‘a unifying analytical framework for the sub-field’ in what they call ‘nature–society geography’. Though as someone agnostic about disciplinary labels, I think the dialogue they are looking to effect, and affect, need not apply to only geographers working in this space. It seems to me, however, that before we can think about ‘value as an organizing framework’, to quote the authors one more time, we first need greater clarity about the word—or keyword—value, recognizing also that nature–society geography (or whatever ‘our’ public is called) is as much a community of practice as any group residing outside the walls of the academy.

The book Keywords, written by the iconoclastic, tweed-wearing Welsh academic and literary critic Raymond Williams (1985), offers a unique inquiry that is particularly fitting when talking about a concept like ‘value’—a keyword if there ever was one. (Though it does not appear on his list, he mentions the term 35 times throughout the book.) Like eyes are to the soul, words, according to Williams, are a portal into the very assumptions that underlie our ideas about the world. When we adopt meanings to a term, we, often unknowingly, adopt ideas about how the world ought to be, which makes this inquiry into our shared vocabulary of immense practical consequence. As critical social scientists, I hope we take Williams’ insights to heart as we define, operationalize, and theorize this phenomenon we call ‘value’, especially if we hope to make it a central keyword of our respective (sub-) disciplines.

For illustration, I conducted research that involved exploring how different social groups grasped this concept. I do not have the space to elaborate on the details, methodological and otherwise—those can be found elsewhere (Carolan, 2018). I will simply say that the two cases involved (1) all White and mostly male North Dakotan conventional corn producers and agriculture professionals from the US state and (2) ethnically diverse participants in an urban agriculture cooperative in an anonymized US city. One instrument utilized in both cases involved asking respondents what they thought of when asked to define value. They were then given a list of predefined words to draw from when answering (the same list was used for both groups). Reponses with frequencies of three or greater where then fed into word cloud generating software and the following figures (Figures 1 and 2) were created. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the word clouds differed greatly between groups. (Note: the admittedly clunky term ‘optimizing all capitals’ was defined as, ‘Ensuring that the generation of economic capital does not come at the expense of social, cultural, political, human, and ecological capital’.)

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Figure 1.

Word cloud of keyword ‘value’ among urban cooperative members.

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Figure 2.

Word cloud of keyword ‘value’ among conventional farmers.

I support critical scholars seeking a theory of value, if what that really means is a theory of how value is contested and made real. This point, I do not think, rubs against what Kelly Kay and Miles Kenney-Lazar are arguing, thought there are so many competing voices in their paper that I could be mistaken. I also worry, and this point I do not think is appreciated enough, about the enactive, or performative, risk that comes with ascribing to positions where ‘value is X’—for instance, value seemed to be reduced to money in some of the comments reproduced by Kay and Kenney-Lazar. Do people value money? Of course: exhibit A, Figure 2. But they also value other things, as evidenced in Figure 1—an under-appreciated source of hope I would also like to point out. We ought to make sure our scholarship leaves space for those imaginaries of value based on alterity and difference, versus unintentionally reproducing the very status quo we are criticizing.

I would like to conclude saying a few words about the nature–society geographies discussed in the piece. I cannot help read some of these arguments—not by Kay and Kenney-Lazar but by some of the people whose comments they reproduce—as imitating that division by grasping value through a narrowly cognitive, disembodied lens. In some of those reproduced quotes, value was being reduced to something we know, ignoring we have to feel it too. Early on, Kay and Kenney-Lazar give a nod to some of this literature, what Antonio Negri (1999) refers to as ‘affective labor’: those practices that result in particular knowledge, understandings, and images, as well as feelings, from well-being and excitement to anxiety. In short, value propositions are visceral, which is precisely what makes them so powerful (Carolan, 2016a, 2016b).

By calling them ‘visceral’, I mean to say they are not only more-than-representational but also more-than-human. I see this especially when theorizing food: for example, what we eat also feeds gut microbiota, which are as much a part of our bodies—perhaps even shaping our abilities to be affected (Latour, 2004)—as we are of theirs. (Gut microbiota, for instance, have been linked to brain activity and emotional behavior in humans (Tillisch et al., 2013).) To really talk about value, then, means engaging with this struggle between a diverse array of species, companion (Haraway, 2003) and otherwise.

Like some of the voices quoted by Kay and Kenney-Lazar, I too believe we need new theories for the realities (plural—as evidenced, again, by the word clouds) we inhabit. This is greatly facilitated by an openness to experimentation, (sub-) disciplinary transgressions, and cosmopolitical critiques. The goal is to help ensure any ‘unified theory of value’ devised not only speak to the concept’s inherent multiplicity but is also capable of appreciating its disabling as well as affording capabilities.