About the project
The hypotheses of Value threads is (1) that there is an ongoing shift towards a new form of economic modality which may encapsulate the qualitiative and the quantiative in novel and as of yet underexplored ways. (2) That this is a shift which is coming from the business-sector and sustainability discourses in novel re-combinations and entanglements. (3) That the notion of value creation is vital to this new discourse, and are intimately linked to new ways of approaching and practicing the economy. Unless we understand this ´value economy´, we cannot answer the sustainability and responsibility challenge of a post-carbon bioeconomy and the tensions and conflict-lines that are integral to it.
Outcomes
The greatest scientific impact of Value threads will be its ways of analyzing the economy as culture thus opening the economy up for close empirical content-oriented analysis and move cultural and humanists studies to include economics as a more common research object.
Value threads will work upon key challenges in the field (The nature-economy relation, the normative-quantitative relation, the case study-narration relation). Scientific impact here will be achieved through the composition of the Value threads team that is set up with the competence, network and publishing experience to move the academic discussions in these directions by way of sessions at core conferences in the field, followed up by publication schemes and dissemination.
Value threads will enable key stakeholders to identify and engage with not only their own valuation practices, but also with how these play out when working across different sites and sectors.
Background
The primary objective of Value threads is to provide a better understanding of the valuation practices and technologies that underpin efforts to transform our economy into a sustainable post-carbon bioeconomy.
The secondary objectives are to:
1. Provide a comprehensive analysis of the knowledge regimes, tensions and modalities of the ´value economy´, by investigating the hypothesis of a new emerging value-economy building from three distinct cases.
2. Build a strong international interdisciplinary team of scholars equipped to analyse the economy as culture while taking into account how economic practices are performative but also conditioned upon historical and institutional practices.
3. Reopen the value issue of the economy and in economics by approaching it not as driven by a closed or predetermined inner logic, but as key cultural practices which can be studied empirically and become subjected to societal questioning and scrutiny.
Financing
The project is financed by The Research Council of Norway's FRIPRO program.
Organization
Value threads is coordinated by TIK Centre for technology, innovation and culture, and led by Kristin Asdal. The project is carried out in collaboration with Liliana Doganova from Centre de sociologie d l'innovation (CSI) - MINES Paris Tech.