A Question of Worth: Economy, Society and the Quantification of Human Value

We live in a world that has become a resource, a world conditioned by the progressive domination of a monetary scale applied across the board. Our value and worth are contingent upon what we earn, on what we own. Amidst the increasing financialisation that characterises much of the globe, the prevailing ethos is that the only values we can usefully measure are those that can be quantified and expressed in terms of economics. Yet economic value and the value of the human are closely connected: erode the economic and you erode the personal. In the global economic crash of recent years it has been people who have been under assault not just financial value. The vulnerability of a society shaped solely by economic and monetised transactions is exposed when the economy and the monetisation of everything fails. When the economic machine seizes up, it is people who are devalued and dumped. Drawing upon his experience in government, education and the Church, the author asks: Must we be a market society as well as a market economy? Can we devise a non-economic account of describing human value and worth? Christopher Steed argues that the really important issues that frame the contemporary human situation are those that cannot be measured. Quality is also vital to human flourishing: what, after all, is wealth for? In this timely and important work, the author calls for a wider concept of value – one that encompasses both economic value and human value - and for a society that cultivates the importance of the human.

Table of Contents:
Contents Introduction Chapter 1 From field to factory: quantification as a way of life Part I The social transmission of value Chapter 2 The differentiation of worth - life in layers Chapter 3 The distribution of worth – you are what you earn Chapter 4 The demonstration of worth – you are what you own Part II Capitalism on the couch Chapter 5 Performance anxiety Chapter 6 Power imbalance Chapter 7 Poverty Chapter 8 The emotional cost of recession Chapter 9 Pathology in the City Chapter 10 Performativity: education Chapter 11 Performativity: workplace and wards Chapter 12 Predatory behaviour Part III Marching to a different drum Chapter 13 Environments of value Chapter 14 Re-booting capitalism Chapter 15 High value society and the goal of politics Postscript Index

About the Author :
Christopher Steed is a Research Fellow at Southampton University. He spent twelve years in Whitehall, where he worked on trade policy towards South Africa during the Thatcher years and deindustrialisation. He has twenty years experience as a parish priest and currently works for the Diocese of Winchester, is a qualified psychotherapist and counsellor and holds doctorates in sociology and education from the University of Exeter, and in theology and history from Trinity College. He has also worked in education and in senior management roles in not-for-profit organisations.