Description
Taylor and Francis Ltd Claiming Value 1st Edition 2022 Hardbound by Wolflink, Alena
Value is typically theorized from the frameworks of economic theory or of moral/ethical theory, but we need to instead think about value foremost as political. Alena Wolflink uncovers a tension in value discourses between material and aspirational life. As she shows, erasing this tension, as has been the historical tendency, can entrench existing configurations of power and privilege, while acknowledging the tension is a vital part of democratic practice. Using genealogical, conceptual-historical, and interpretive approaches, and drawing from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Anna Julia Cooper, Michael Warner, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Wolflink argues that abstractions of value discourse in both economic theory and moral philosophy have been complicit in devaluing the lives of women, queer people, and people of color. Yet she further argues that value claims nonetheless hold democratic potential as a means of asserting and defining priorities that center the role of political economy in the making of political communities. With many real-world examples vividly portrayed, Claiming Value is an unusually accessible work of political theory accessible to students in courses on political theory, moral philosophy, social theory, economic theory, democracy, social inequality, and more. Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Recovering Our Political Values 2. Revaluing Need: Aristotle, Commercial Exchange, and Necessity 3. The Just Price or "Just the Price?" Conceptual History, Community Valuation, and Liberal Sovereignty4. What's the Matter with Value? Anna Julia Cooper's Political-Economic Thought5. Michael Warner and the Values of Public Sexual Culture 6. Black Lives Matter and the Politics of Value 7. Conclusion: Centering Value in Political Praxis Bibliography