Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially

Abstract: Most charitable organizations depend on private contributions, in the form of monetary gifts, volunteer efforts, or other tangible contributions, such as blood donations. The magnitude of private contributions is impressive?in the United States 89 percent of households donate, aver? aging $1,620 per year, and 44 percent of US adults volunteer the equivalent of 9 million full time jobs (Independent Sector 2001). This level of prosocial behavior is striking in light of the economic incentive to free-ride in the provision of public goods. In order to elicit contributions, charitable organizations use many creative efforts to incentivize voluntary giving: wrist bands, thank-you gifts, organized walks, concerts, and advertised donors lists. The government also helps promote charitable giving by offering tax breaks for donations. The various types of charitable contributions and the many real-life ways of soliciting such donations suggest that there may be different motives for individuals to behave prosocially. These motives are roughly divisible into three broad categories: intrinsic, extrinsic, and image motiva? tion. Intrinsic motivation is the value of giving per se, represented by private preferences for others' well-being, such as pure altruism or other forms of prosocial preferences (for surveys, see Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt 2003; Meier 2007). Extrinsic motivation is any material reward or benefit associated with giving, such as thank-you gestures and tax breaks. Image motivation, or signaling motivation, refers to an individual's tendency to be motivated partly by others' percep? tions. Image motivation therefore captures the rule of opinion in utility, i.e., the desire to be liked and respected by others and by one's self. If individuals are looking to gain social approval of their behavior, they should try to signal traits defined as "good" based on the community's norms

Materialism and Well-Being: A Conflicting Values Perspective

Abstract: Over the past decade, materialism has emerged as an important research topic Materialism is generally viewed as the value placed on the acquisition of material objects Previous research finds that high levels of material values are negatively associated with subjective well-being However, relatively little is known about the relationship between materialism and well-being within the broader context of an individual's value system In this article, we examine the relationship between material values and other important life values In addition, we draw on values theory to examine a novel conceptualization of why materialism is antithetical to well-being Specifically, our theory proposes that the individual orientation of material values conflicts with collective-oriented values, such as family values and religious values This state of values conflict creates psychological tension, and this tension is associated with a reduced sense of well-being Using both a survey sample of 373 adults from across the United States and an experimental study of 120 college students, we find considerable support for this conflicting values perspective

Class, Self, Culture

Abstract: Class, Self, Culture puts class back on the map in a novel way by taking a new look at how class is made and given value through culture. It shows how different classes become attributed with value, enabling culture to be deployed as a resource and as a form of property, which has both use-value to the person and exchange-value in systems of symbolic and economic exchange.The book shows how class has not disappeared, but is known and spoken in a myriad of different ways, always working through other categorisations of nation, race, gender and sexuality and across different sites: through popular culture, political rhetoric and academic theory. In particular attention is given to how new forms of personhood are being generated through mechanisms of giving value to culture, and how what we come to know and assume to be a 'self' is always a classed formation. Analysing four processes: of inscription, institutionalisation, perspective-taking and exchange relationships, it challenges recent debates on reflexivity, risk, rational-action theory, individualisation and mobility, by showing how these are all reliant on fixing some people in place so that others can move.

Legal foundations of capitalism

Abstract: In what has universally been recognized as a classic of institutional economics, John R. Commons combined the skills of a professional economist, the sensibilities of an American historian, and the passion of an active participant in the conflicts of individuals, self-interest of groups, and function of voluntary associations. The aim of this volume is to work out an evolutionary and behavioral theory of value. In order to do so thoroughly, Commons examines the decisions of the courts. Doing so compelled an examination of what the courts mean by reasonable value. Commons found that the answer was tied up with a notion of reasonable conduct. It was Commons who carried the study of the habits and customs of social life to the next stage: the decisions of the courts that are based on custom and that profoundly impact the nature and function of the economic system as such. Reviewing Legal Foundations of Capitalism, Wesley Mitchell declared that Commons carried this "analysis further along his chosen line than any of his predecessors. Into our knowledge of capitalism he has incorporated a great body of new materials which no one else has used adequately." And writing in the same American Economic Review twenty-one years later, Selig Perlman noted that "To Commons the workingmen were not abstract building blocks out of which a favored deity called History was to shape the architecture of the new society, but concrete beings with legitimate ambitions for a higher standard of living and for more dignity in their lives." This edition is graced with a special introduction that places Commons in proper academic as well as intellectual context.

Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

Abstract: This volume is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.