Evaluative Practices and the Problem of "Value"

1 Course Unit

The problem of “value” has long beguiled and bedeviled scholars across the humanities and social sciences. In this seminar, we unravel this problematic by exploring the way “value” has been variably characterized as both that which agents strive for and that which signs stand for. Ultimately, our focus will not be on “value” per se, but on “evaluation” as a discursive and semiotic process that reflects and shapes the ways we humans navigate and negotiate our worlds. Drawing from wide-ranging ethnographic examples, and informed by classical and contemporary theoretical issues in the humanities and social sciences, we will re- evaluate value as a matter of anthropological concern. Spring, even numbered years only 1 Course Unit