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In this paper I pursue arguments concerning the relation between economic and ethical value. I consider the relationship of activities to objects and (following Aristotle and Arendt) distinguish between the activities of action (doing) and production (making). Marx founded his theory of value on labor and the way it is congealed and occluded in commodities and most anthropology, whether Marxist or non-Marxist, has followed suit in the attention to objects (or objectifications). What are the consequences of adding the value of acts (especially performative acts) to the value of labor and what are the “objects” into which acts congeal? What would be a ritual theory of value?
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Michael Lambek (2013) studied this question.
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