Guest Editorial: Alternative Valuations

Abstract

[Extract] This issue of Valuation Studies presents an anthropological take on 'alternative valuations'. The three articles in this issue stem from a workshop held in August 2012 at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. The workshop was organized by the authors of this commentary along with Bruce Kapferer, and the focus was on Values of Dominance and Difference.\ud \ud The contributions came from anthropologists, sociologists and economists especially, and there was a strong focus on affairs that were relevant to an Australian audience at the time. One collection of contributions was later published in the Australian interdisciplinary journal eTropic with a focus on transvaluation and globalization (Dalsgaard and Otto 2014). The present contributions are all anthropological and were collected because they bring three distinct approaches to the theme of alternative valuations. On first sight the articles go in divergent directions but collectively and in relation to each other they illustrate present limitations as well as potential future directions of anthropological theorizing on value