Global hierarchy of value

Michael Herzfeld

Chapter 1 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 137-141 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The global hierarchy of value (note: not “values”) reduces all value to an economic metric and thereby ranks cultural phenomena at various concentric, scalar levels, from the interpersonal to the geopolitical. For example, the interpersonal model of artisan–apprentice relations parallels, reproduces, and reinforces the status differential between the artisans’ local environment and the national capital, and between the encompassing nation-state and a superordinate structure (e.g., the European Union). International agencies (e.g., UNESCO) set standards for the recognition of “universal value,” a concept derived from Western colonialism and Cartesian logic, while neoliberal restructuring appears in the economic revalorization (“gentrification”) of working-class quarters as “historic” houses and zones. Similar dynamics have provoked the post- or crypto-colonial defensive modeling of national cultures on European prototypes and the hierarchy separating art from craft and artists operating in powerful (especially Western) countries from those of the Global South.

Keywords: Global hierarchy of value; Art vs; Craft; Artisans and apprentices; Colonialism; Standards; Aesthetics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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