Conception of Value in Community Economies

• Article: Eskelinen, Teppo (2020). The conception of value in community economies. In Eskelinen, Teppo;

Hirvilammi, Tuuli; Venäläinen, Juhana (Eds.) Enacting Community Economies Within a Welfare State. MayFly, 23-45.

URL = http://mayflybooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ECEWAWS_final_ebook.pdf self-archived copy

Description

Teppo Eskelinen:

"Conceptions of value state the purpose of economic practices and ultimately steer economic activity, as any social system has a tendency to generate what is seen as having value. Further, a dominant value conception is both performative and ontological. Performativity means that the associated ideas not only describe, but also shape social reality. Any given dominant conception of value changes social reality so that more of the valuable will be produced. Further, descriptions of value become treated as really existing aspects of social reality and further the only possible descriptions of value – thus ‘ontologisation‘. Alternatives then appear to counter ‘what exists‘.

Yet such conceptions are not necessarily conscious but can be implicit. Therefore, an explication of hegemonic value conceptions is needed in order to support alternatives. As stated in the introduction, it is necessary for the purposes of social justice and ecological survival to create more localised, egalitarian and sustainable economic forms. Community economies not only entail non-capitalist practices, but also a unique idea of what is valuable, and thereby worth doing. Community economies insist on seeing value in social interaction, community, selforganisation and empowerment. This chapter sets out to describe the dominant capitalist value conception, a community economy alternative, and analyse how the welfare state ethos could move in the direction of the latter." (https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/68219/1/ECEWAWS_The-conception-of-value.pdf)