Short Abstract:

This round table considers the question of 'value' as process of progressive undermining of core 'values' that have been key to claims about the universality of Western discourse. We ask who and what is 'de-valued', and what conditions enable, direct and constrain the 'lessening of value'.

Long Abstract:

This roundtable considers the question of 'value' as the process of progressive undermining of core 'values' that have been key to claims about the universality of Western discourse. For instance, is the apparent de-valuing of 'truth' enough justification for certain political conduct? The verb devalue speaks to the dynamic interplay of 'value' and 'values' both of which have sustained our ideas about an idealised, normative vision of society.

Such values also informed anthropology as discipline and praxis, bound to modernity and the 'other' - from colonial times to present day. To this end, we ask who and what is 'de-valued', and what conditions enable, direct and constrain the 'lessening of value' as process, practice and ideological framework. We consider too, the notion of de-value as it pertains people and environments that have seen a marked devaluation of their social and political 'currency', and are increasingly cast as marginalised, located at the lower-end of a 'set of values' in a hierarchy determined by rational-actors.