Values and Revaluations

The Transformation and Genesis of 'Values in Things' from Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives

Hans Peter Hahn, Anja Klöckner, Dirk Wicke

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781789258141
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

Why are some things valuable while others are not? How much effort does it take to produce valuable objects? How can one explain the different appraisal of certain things in different temporal horizons and in different cultures? Cultural processes on how value is attached to things, and how value is re-established, are still little understood. The case studies in this volume, originating from anthropology and archaeology, provide innovative and differentiated answers to these questions. However, for all contributions there are some common basic assumptions. One of these concerns the understanding that it is rarely the value of the material itself that matters for high valuation, but rather the appreciation of the (assumed or constructed) origin of certain objects or their connection with certain social structures. A second of these shared insights addresses the ubiquity of phenomena of 'value in things'. There is no society without valued objects. As a rule, valuation is something negotiated or even disputed. Value arises through social action, whereby it is always necessary to ask anew which actors are interested in the value of certain objects (or in their appreciation). This also works the other way round: Who are those actors who question corresponding objective values and why?

Part I

Values and value

Chapter 1

Introduction to Part I: Values and value: some approaches to the concept of ‘values in things’

Hans Peter Hahn¹

Value is a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means and ends of action.²

Introduction

The task of understanding the value of material objects and to describe it in an objectifying way is a problematic and at times contradictory one. This statement is true despite everyone’s everyday experience that many things of our personal property receive appreciation and valuation to different degrees. One factor for this might be the financial expenditure of its acquisition, i.e., its price. Despite the obviousness of such everyday value assignments to material things, a cultural science analysis should go further and deal with the question of which forms of generating value-in-things are effective.

From an analytical point of view, it is difficult to separate in a categorial manner value-in-things and values of a society in general. As will be shown more thoroughly throughout this introduction, socially and culturally defined values are often inextricably linked to material objects. Furthermore, every statement about the value of an item is a relational statement. It is equally a matter of the characteristics of an item and of the person who makes such a statement.³ The value sort of floats between the person and the object, i.e. the mind and the material, the abstract and the concrete. Thus it is impossible to define exclusive realms of values like the ‘immaterial values’ or the ‘material values’.

Various models are used to illustrate the connection between value and material thing. A much-quoted metaphor is the one of the ‘Semiophore’.⁴ It suggests that meaning could be filled into things and kept in it like in a vessel. Thereby, objects would first be sign vehicles (semaphores), whereby these ‘signs’ are an indicator for the value. Another model refers back to the onion model and describes different ‘layers’ of meanings for which – depending on the relative position – different contexts are relevant, respectively. Societal meaning, discussed in the public sphere, would, according to this, be the ‘outer layer’. In contrast, subjective and mostly rather personal meanings are situated closer to the imagined ‘core’. Even if it is not always clear if such ‘layers’ can be clearly differentiated, the input of such an image no doubt helps in raising awareness for the complexity of value assignments. Many things are considered to be valuable for more than one reason!

A third group of metaphors foregrounds the emblematic function: things ‘crystallise’ meanings, they function – similar to national flags – as recognisable emblems which mirror complex and often even highly emotional meanings in a condensed form. The talk of ‘crystallising’⁵ implies such a form of condensation of meaning in an object. Different connotations are closely related to each other and are no longer discerned in everyday life. Meaning and appreciation are felt but cannot be explained in detail.

It is not the aim of this introduction to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these and similar metaphors, although several contributions in this volume draw on such images and thereby offer graphic examples of the connection of value, meaning and object. The centre of the following considerations shall, rather, be examinations of the processes of value assignment and at the same time moments of culturally conceivable ‘evaluation’ of things. In a first approach, we can establish with David Graeber: values are discernible and describable only insofar as they are connected with certain actions or certain practices in the pertaining society.⁶ The pivotal question of this volume is therefore: how is it possible to recognise the valuein-things connected with material objects within a society? And, subsequently, which actions or contexts allow to draw conclusions about the fact that things are seen as being connected with value? At the same time, the reversed question is also of importance: what do values do to people? Basically, it should be considered that values can be seen as powerful agents which massively influence opportunities for action of individuals or groups.⁷ The tension between the opportunities for action of individuals or groups with reference to the formation of values on the one hand and value as a pre-defined, seemingly objective, norm on the other hand describes the essential dualism in the definition of the term ‘value’. It will be the focus of the present introduction.

This text cannot deal with testing the credibility of the correlation of values and things nor with presenting the plausibility of certain connections in contrast to others. According to Nathalie Heinich,⁸ it should, rather, be emphasised that objectivity in the description of value-in-things is only achievable by refraining from a further evaluation of the assignment in a first step of approximation.⁹ All chapters in this book deal with empiric evidence for such generally acknowledged and accepted links between things and different forms of value. The contributions gathered here examine how such links between value and material thing are generated and turned into an accepted fact by agents of a society. However, it is not about the question whether the values which are described are plausible, legitimate or in any other manner objectifiable.

Against the background of the general indivisibility of material versus immaterial value, it seems sensible to first go into some selected approaches in the development of value theories.

Theoretical approaches to ‘value’

Without exaggeration, it is possible to state that humanities today are unthinkable without taking a position concerning the question of what counts as ‘value’ or ‘system of values’ within a society and what does not.¹⁰ At the same time, however, it can be determined that the concept of value in a broader sense is far more recent than the thinking about the appropriate price of an item. Whereas Aristotle already wrote on price and value of artisanal products,¹¹ the notion of an abstract social and cultural value only emerged in the late 18th century, according to Jürgen Gebhardt.¹² At the same time, Gebhardt warns about the tendency inherent to the concept of value to absolutise the values of a particular culture or society. Therefore, talk about a ‘system of values’ often implies a historical amnesia and a problematic equation of intentions and normative demands.¹³ As Gebhardt explains – with reference to Herman Lotze – the term ‘value’ in humanities has developed in consequence of Immanuel Kant’s distinction between a priori and a posteriori.¹⁴ ‘Values’ are at the same time a justification of the subjective ‘I’ and absolute, unquestionable issues of a society. Thus, the distinction essential for this introduction between subjective, actor-centred conceptions of value in contrast to objectifiable concepts has become a key argument once more. As shall be shown, this basic dualism influences the discussion on the concept of value to the present day.

Studies of culture and society are based on the perception that certain aspects have a higher cultural or social value, whereas others have a rather low one. Already in the 19th century, during the phase of the formation of many relevant disciplines, the thinking about the basis of a society was deeply influenced by the insight that certain valuable perceptions, ideologies and also objects should be defended and their value emphasised.¹⁵ The discussion on ‘values’ concerns the core of humanities.

Starting with Aristotle and via Karl Marx and Max Weber, it would be possible to quote a long list of thinkers whose position can be understood as a justification or, also, a rejection of certain values. Alongside Marx’ distinction between use value and commodity value, many other, often derivated or secondary values emerged within the decades after the publication of his works. Each was respectively useful or necessary for the explanation of certain cultural criteria. The so-called ‘marginalists’ underlined the relevance of subjective elements into economic thinking and lead, in the long run, to the belief in mathematical models, so much cherished by many economists. Only if a certain good has become scarce, its value rises, which can be deduced by the price it is able to achieve.¹⁶ However, within studies of society, the abstract description of such a relation was soon found insufficient.

Whereas, in economy, the concept of value is usually substantiated in price, scholars of humanities insist on a concept of values that is different and clearly distinguishable from ‘economic value’.¹⁷ In so doing, their hypotheses about the value of things usually refer to social conventions and norms, as e.g., the value of tradition, of authenticity, of locality and many more. Therefore, economic value and cultural values emphasised by humanities become more and more separated.¹⁸

The problematic process of the multiplication of values implies that, from the point of view of humanities, there is usually no effort to try to interrelate with economic processes, market models or value concepts.¹⁹ ‘Values in society’ thereby becomes a separated area whose claim to describe a shared perception is not always accepted by supporters of different positions. A cultural value is often also to be understood as a political value.

Thus, whereas cultural values are not consistently drawing back on an economically defined concept of value anymore, it is also evident on the part of the economists that the values discussed in humanities are observed as being rather marginal.²⁰ From the economists’ point of view, the culturally defined value is missing important characteristics like objectivity and predictability.²¹ Social negotiations about the economic value of an appreciated material object or a desirable trait or institution are at best categorised as ‘institutional economics’.²² This approach investigates the effects of dominant taste or appreciation, and the social pressure within a society to fulfil the expectations of class and milieu. Quite early, Thorstein Veblen critically reported the distortions of o...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Part I: Values and value
• Part II: Re-evaluations