Value-free Analysis Research Articles

Value-Free Analysis of Values: A Culture-Based Development Approach

Recent literature in the fields of Political Economy, New Institutional Economics and New Cultural Economics has converged in the use of empirical methods, offering a series of consistent quantitative analysis of values. However, an overarching positive methodology for the value-free study of values has not yet precipitated. Building on a mixed systematic-integrative literature review of a pluralistic variety of perspectives from Adam Smith’s ‘Impartial’ Spectator to modern moral philosophy, the current study suggests the Culture-Based Development (CBD) approach for analyzing the economic impact of values on socio-economic development. The CBD approach suggests that the value-free analysis needs: (i) to use positive methods to classify a value as local or universal; (ii) to examine the existence of what is termed the Aristotelian Kuznets curve of values (i.e., to test for the presence of an inflection point in the economic impact from the particular value) and (iii) to account for Platonian cultural relativity (i.e., the cultural embeddedness expressed in the geographic nestedness of the empirical data about values). The paper details the theoretical and methodological cornerstones underpinning the proposed CBD approach for value-free analysis of values.

Is IPE just 'boring',1 or committed to problematic meta-theoretic|al assumptions? A critical engagement with the politics of method

In my contribution to this forum on IPE, my aim is to add further to the critical interventions in the debate ignited by Benjamin Cohen. The call to discuss the state of IPE has been timely, though not only because (some) IPE journals have indeed become uninteresting; much more is at stake. Intellectual debate in the field has now not only narrowed, but has also shifted away from engaging the underlying premises of (global) development, inequalities, and relations of domination. As such, the mainstream framing of IPE is arguably also implicated in a project of 'gate-keeping'. This is not to say that the intellectual richness and creativity that Cohen has called for in the study of IPE does not exist; such work is pursued by scholars of IR, more broadly conceived, and not just by those in other disciplines. Such richer scholarship has for instance, been advanced by historical sociologists, postcolonial theorists, and critical scholars of global development/global political economy including many working from feminist political-economic perspectives. The absence of an engagement with such perspectives in the mainstream of IPE can perhaps be explained to some extent by reference to ideological dispositions and attempts to maintain a hold on the disciplinary core along epistemological and methodological premises committed to ostensibly power-free and value-free analysis. The consequences are felt, as Cohen notes, also in the context of training and preparing future generations of IPE scholars, where current practices tend to reproduce students unable to 'ask and respond to the big questions', and who have instead come to be satisfied with applying 'accepted' methods. Critical scholars, on the other hand, have continuously pushed beyond the analytical and theoretical boundaries, engaging for example, with questions of power, domination and resistance, and more often than not such analyses are grounded in empirical research. In this contribution, I aim to demonstrate, through a critical reconstructive sketch, how mainstream IPE falls short, and what the value is of alternative, relationally conceived, analytical approaches.

Culture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology. Elvin Hatch

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews and NotesCulture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology. Elvin Hatch R. A. LittlewoodR. A. Littlewood Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Anthropological Research Volume 40, Number 2Summer, 1984 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jar.40.2.3629583 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1984 The University of New MexicoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Annie Tubadji Value-Free Analysis of Values: A Culture-Based Development Approach, Sustainability 12, no.2222 (Nov 2020): 9492.https://doi.org/10.3390/su12229492

Market Morality: Robert Nozick and the Question of Economic Justice

Abstract. The study of markets and market prices has been a central feature of economic inquiry since the 18th Century. There have always been lingering questions on the meaning of market prices. Most moderneconomists argue that there are no normative implications to price analysis. The disclaimers of some economists about normative judgments ring hollow in the light of their vigorous advocacy of free market solutions to economic and other problems. Either free market solutions are superior alternatives or they are not; one cannot have a value free analysis and an ideological advocacy at the same time. The philosopher, Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, clearly finds meaning in the market place. His entitlement theory is predicated upon free exchange of goods and productive services. The normative use of free markets in general and of Robert Nozick's formulation in particular, it is contended, are inconsistent, illogical, and unscientific.

Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations: VIII. Distribution of Income by Size

Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations: VIII. Distribution of Income by Size