Valuing nature within and beyond capitalism

Abstract

This paper is a response to commentaries on our article entitled ‘Value in capitalist natures: an emerging framework’ (Kay and Kenney-Lazar, 2017). We argue that the responses to our initial paper served to broaden our proposed framework and to underscore the need for a unified, but diverse, approach to nature–society studies with value at its center. Extending the argument from the initial article, we continue to see potential for value to act as a bridge that can bring together diverse scholarship in nature–society geography and political ecology. After briefly addressing both the tensions and possibilities for value as a bridging concept, we focus our response primarily around three major threads that emerged across the commentaries. First, we address points raised by the respondents concerning the bounding of capitalism and its permeation into socionatures. Second, we engage with value’s inverse and its absence, captured through the concepts of ‘devaluation’ (Collard and Dempsey) and ‘disvalues’ (Sullivan). Finally, we close by engaging the possibility of a ‘liberatory valuing of nature’—one which recognizes a multiplicity of social and ecological values as a means of working toward more just and emancipatory nature–society relations beyond capitalism.