Workshop on: "Re-evaluating Value...", Marseille June 17-18th 2013

Workshop on:
Re-evaluating Value – non-market value models for changing times

Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Research, Aix-Marseille University,
Marseille, France, http://www.imera.fr, June 17-18th 2013

The Topic

Value is a major aspect of any economic theory: what it is, how it is produced, measured, stored and transferred between agents. Indeed, historically, these aspects characterise different schools of political economy.  Some approaches focus on an objective basis for value such as labour or physical resources. Others place emphasis on subjective judgments by individual agents and free exchange between them.

Recent, often ICT mediated, developments such as “commons based peer production”, “crowd funding”, “freecycling” and new virtual currencies do not fit easily into existing economic models of value.   On the other hand “complexity science” tools and approaches allow for a widening of traditional models of value.

Traditional models have focused on agents using either object or subjective notions of value and equilibrium points. Agent-based modelling allows for experimentation with new and hybrid notions of value in non-equilibrium conditions.  In these, value might be an emergent phenomena where agents construct notions of value through the interplay of subjective and objective factors supporting novel forms of exchange and cooperation.

In this workshop we aim to bring together researchers from different disciplines such as economics, philosophy, anthropology, law and computer science, who are working towards new conceptions of value, models that embody them and real world systems that depend on them.

Day 1 - Grand Challenges

The first day of this workshop is devoted to opening up the key issues to do with theories and approaches to understanding value at the present time.  It is open to all who are interested. The day will start at 9.30 and end at 4.30pm with an hour for lunch and two 30 min coffee breaks.  Talks will be 30 mins long plus 15 mins for discussion.

Day 2 – Developing Agent-Based Models to Meet the Challenges

The second day of the workshop is devoted to informal discussions about developing simulation models that start to address some of the different conceptions of value.  It is not expected that everyone will stay for day 2, or all of day 2, but is open to all who want to seriously discuss the development of relevant simulation models. The day will start at 10am and continue for the rest of the day, or until everyone is tired.

Speakers and Discussants

The following people are either invited speakers or will be leading a discussion session (in alphabetical order), followed by their talk title if available.

• Bruno Vetel, “Who benefits from the value? Virtual currencies design for a massively multiplayer online role playing game.”
• Jean Magnan de Bornier. “Value in economics: datum, construct or instrument?”
• Jean-Benoit Zimmerman, “Jamendo: the heartbeat of free music!”
• Jeremy Pitt, “The Reinvention of Social Capital for Self-Organising Electronic Institutions”
•  Jeff Johnson, “Value from first principles”
• Bruce Edmonds, “Towards modelling mundane value”
• Paul Omerod, TBA
• Andrzej Nowak, TBA
•  Juliette Rouchier, TBA
• Mario Paolucci, TBA
• Olivier Chanel, TBA
• David Hales, TBA

Hotels and food

Others at the workshop are staying at the hotel Lutetia (http://www.lutetia-marseille.com). You will need to book yourself into this, or at another hotel (e.g. via http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotels-g187253-Marseille_Bouches_du_Rhone_Provence-Hotels.html).  On monday night, a dinner is planned at Les Panisses, please let Juliette (juliette.rouchier@univ-amu.fr) know if you you plan to join us for this before 9^th June (we think we can cover this and lunch for participants, assuming we do not get too many).

Directions

The Hotel

Hotel Lutetia, 38 Allée Gambetta, is easy to attain from the train station: go down the stairs, cross the street and walk down the street facing you (Boulevard d'Athènes). “Allée Gambetta” where the hotel is, is the second or third street on the left.

·        To go from the airport to the train station, the best solution is to take the shuttle from/to airport/gare Saint Charles (cheaper and nicer than taxis who are unpleasant thieves in their majority in Marseille) - buy a return ticket while going out of the terminal and get on the bus – in 25 minutes you can get to the train station at any time of the day.

The Meeting Venue

·        To go from the hotel to the meeting place you can walk (15-20 minutes) or take the tram for a part of the journey. The address to get in is 2 place Le Verrier and maps can be found on: http://www.imera.fr/index.php/fr/informations-pratiques/plan-dacces.html

·        Walking: Walk up the Allée Gambetta to the top, turn left/right and carry more or less on in the same direction on Boulevard Longchamps. Go up to the end of the boulevard and when facing the palais (huge museum) turn left and carry on going up on a street with serious traffic, walking on the right side. carry on until the Place Le Verrier. On your right you will find a large black grid which will be open. Get in and find the building of the institute.

·        Tram: take the tram at Canebière Garibaldi and get down at Longchamps, then you will see the Palais Longchamps and turn around the palais on the left, as for the walking instructions.

·         

      From the station, it is also possible to take the subway, and cross the Jardin du Palais Longchamps (a very nice park) and a maps can be found at: http://www.imera.fr/index.php/fr/informations-pratiques/plan-dacces.html

In you get lost: beware : locals do not know the place so well – you have to refer to “Maison des Astronomes”, which is its old name, but is known to something like 10% of the population.

Contact

For information about the local arrangements contact Juliette Rouchier <juliette.rouchier@univ-amu.fr>, for queries about the programme Bruce Edmonds <bruce@edmonds.name>, and for possible connection with/funding from NESS David Hales <dave@davidehales.com>.

A review of David Graeber's "Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value"

Graeber, D. (2001) Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. Palgrave Macmillan.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Anthropological-Theory-Value-Dreams/dp/0312240457

This is a meandering book that covers a lot more ground than simply what value might be.  Indeed, it reads more like a collection of separate essays each of which has *some* relevance to value rather than a coherent thesis.  A more accurate title might have been "Mauss and an alternative to the Neoliberal view", being at heart concerned with combating the individualistic, "economically rational", market-centric, consumer focussed set of assumptions that pervades much thinking in economics.  On his side is ranged anthropologists and Marx (his view of society rather than his class politics), against him economists and the anthropologists that were influenced by them.  It does succeed in giving a vivid alternative view of how modern society might be, but flounders in its (pre-agent-based-simulation) formulation of a dynamic and co-emergent alternative.  However, it does give many interesting insights into what different societies consider their most valuable aspects/artefacts/rituals/persona. 

His basic position (as far as I can disentangle it) is that:

• The most important 'product' of most societies are the people it produces
• Individuals' important actions mostly aim at producing their social structures
• It is the actions of individuals that are the key rather than any products
• Value is a socially developed way of comparing important actions
• Sometimes action is fetishised into objects
• Each society achieves this in different ways which change over time

It thus implies, but does not say outright, that the 'value' given to things in a market is not truly relevant to what society is (or should be) about. Basically that modern liberal capitalist societies are an aberration - the idea is simply a mistake.  Of course he has an advantage in that what he is criticising is well-worked-put and described, whilst his alternative is only implied: numinous and indistinct.  He (wisely) neither criticises nor praises the other societies he examines, but merely describes and analyses.

Those looking for an alternative, anthropologically-grounded, theory of value will be disappointed.  Beyond what I have just sketched one gets little in the way of conclusions.  What one does get is well-discussed examples of what some other societies consider of greatest value, which is interesting.  However (as in his later book on debt) he passes over the trading/gifting/sharing of more mundane and useful items very quickly with little discussion, concentrating on that with crucial prestige.  The problem with this is that these are most removed from the contingencies and constraints of life, they are the surplus value put into ways of gaining/adjusting reputation or power.  They are the things that are the most culturally specific being constrained by nothing but what its participants accept as normal and right.

Thus the view of value that this book provides ignores (or does not account for) key issues, including:

• The difference in value when an action does and does not succeed, since in each of these cases the value attributed is its importance and hence is the same according to Graeber's vague formulation
• That some actions/production of artefacts act to facilitate other actions/production of artefacts (apart from that all significant actions act to produce society and hence the individuals with it - but no distinction between in terms of efficacy or importance in these are made) whilst others are an end in themselves or even are destructive of other actions and artefacts
• How the production of individuals and society and their survival and prospering relate (and whether this has any leverage upon the meaning of value in that society)

Early warning of upcoming workshop on "Non-market conceptions of value"

17&18 June in Marseilles.  More details when we have them!

A paper from the European Central Bank on virtual currencies

(pointed out by Dave).

Looks at the cases of Bitcoin and the SecondLife currency the Linden in detail.  Does take a slightly "we are a Central Bank and know how to do these things properly" sort of attitude but is interesting.

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf

Brief Review of: Graeber, D. (2011) Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Although (over) long and somewhat rambling, this is an adsorbing and interesting read.  David Graeber is an anthropologist - so the book is a combination of fascinating case studies of how different civilisations and communities have thought about and managed debt, combined with a narrative that seeks to bring out some common themes.  As with all the best anthropology, it calls into question many assumptions one might have about what debt is and how regulated exchange might have come about, as well as throwing our current situation with regard to debt in historical and comparative relief.

It starts with an analysis of different modes of exchange, starting from the bottom up, and then briefly considers the nature of value (but this is a topic left mainly to a previous Graeber book).  It then starts on its main theses, questioning some long held assumptions about exchange, notably that before monetary systems there was barter.  It argues (using anthropological cases) that informal systems of mutual obligation preceded money and barter, if it occurs, does so in significant amounts, only in cases where there was a monetary system that has collapsed.  Rather it contrasts these social systems, which are primarily to organise human relations (marriage, honour, reparation, status etc.), with that of accounting and debt which it sees as coming out of military power and its needs.  The former case is made with much greater persuasiveness than the later contrast, which seems ideologically driven and not clearly illustrated by the examples given.

Although it finally shies away from definite conclusions, it implies that formally accountable debt always ends in collapse and (effectively or actually) slavery, and hence has to be wiped clean every now and then.  It is somewhat utopian in that paints the informal systems of social obligation in a rosey light and taints formal systems by association with slavery and militarism without proving a causal connection.  The causation is somewhat naive, in the sense that grand macroscale narratives are drawn, and systemic advantages of accounting systems ignored.  Indeed it tends to ignore the more mundane processes of the everyday market for these grander concerns, implying that insisting on debts being repaid is socially arbitrary, without the effects upon a system of exchange of this really being considered.  This reveals the weakness of the purely anthropological approach, in contrast to its effective undermining of "received" assumptions of how things have to work.

The books strengths are undoubtedly the fresh and different viewpoint, informed by numerous anthropological examples.  However the weaknesses of the anarchist narrative that emerges are slowly revealed as the book slowly unravels as it progresses.  Grand narratives of coordinated epochs across the whole world, including civilisations that barely communicated stretch credulity to the limit.  However the shaking up of thought and the freeing from a tired monetary vision of exchange is very refreshing and hence welcome.

A more systematic synopis of the book can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years, and his academic home page is at: http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/d-graeber/

David Hales talking about P2P exchange systems on the "Keiser Report" on RT

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ClNCOSS4nGs

David comes in about 15mins into the program.  David starts by reviewing what Bitcoin and Ripple systems do.  Then the discussion moves to the central importance on trust in markets and how an ecology of competing distributed systems like these P2P-type sytems could replace (or complement) top down Central Bank imposed financial and economic systems.  The resulting ecology could be more robust than centralised entities facilitating exchange.

Debt the first 5,000 years (an interview with the author David Graeber)

An interesting interview (the second half of the programme) where David Graeber describes his anthropological study of 5,000 years of Debt which shows that dispensing credit precedes even the invention of money.

Hear the interview at:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0196rp1

See the book:
   http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GYhajCQU8XIC