Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how changing patterns of sociality and values reflect changing patterns of production and appropriation of nature in the context of environmental change. It argues that value production is indivisible from the production of social relations and the material means of livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how shifting patterns of sociality and related value orientations reflect changing conditions and patterns of production and appropriation of nature in the context of rapid environmental change and commodification of nature. The paper is based on research in a Ngaju Dayak village in the province of Central Kalimantan in Indonesia. In Central Kalimantan, extensive environmental degradation due to large scale-projects of natural resource extraction and associated forest fires have brought about a severely disturbed environment and conditions under which the local population are finding it difficult to maintain traditional forms of production. Historically, a range of different forms of production - subsistence-based shifting cultivation, forest product collection, hunting - provided the basis for a pattern of sociality based on a collective orientation. New forms of value orientation and sociality have emerged following decreased possibilities and legal restrictions for practising subsistence-based modes of production. I examine how the new forms of production and appropriation of nature promote economic value and instrumental social relationships, which have an uneasy relationship with historically developed Ngaju ethical values and the collective forms of sociality that they inform. Understanding value as the reflection of the investment of energy through action into what is considered meaningful or important, the paper suggests a close connection between modes of production, sociality, and values. It is argued that value production is indivisible from the production of social relations and the material means of livelihood.