8.2
A Global Sociology of Value and Values: How to Move beyond the Analytic of Capital?

Wednesday, July 16, 2014: 2:15 PM
Room: 503
Oral Presentation
Beverly SKEGGS , University of London, United Kingdom
Many theories adopt the metaphors of capital to explore power (e.g. Bourdieu), and/or to analyse personhood (e.g. via human capital), or action (via rational action theories), leading some sociologists to suggest that not just capital but the capital analytic has subsumed all areas of life. The relationship between quantification and qualification has been complicated further by the incursion of calculation (via algorythms) into many aspects of our daily life.

Whilst, no doubt, capital behaves according to its own logic, finding new lines of flight, converting affects such as sentiment and suffering into value, making multi-culturalism marketable, generating new forms of bio-capital, and making many of our actions subject to the logic of calculation (academic writing for instance), why should sociologists do likewise?

If we only understand the world from the perspective of capital relations what do we miss seeing? Are there any values remaining or remaindered?  How do we understand the relationship between value and values?