Abstract
Through a discussion of the articles of this issue, this introduction explores the ways in which the social landscape of post-liberalisation India can be seen through the question of value. We are particularly interested in elucidating how heterogeneous kinds of value—be they economic, ritual, aesthetic, ethical or otherwise—have come to be articulated to and thus constitutive of various forms of cultural practice in contemporary India. We suggest that one way to understand the question of value is through in-depth ethnographic analysis of ‘social value projects’: reflexive and purposive attempts by social actors to produce, negotiate, transform, maintain and sometimes abjure various types of value. We suggest that such value projects can be ethnographically approached through the interactional events that comprise them and that these, in turn, require attention to the emergent and contingent nature of value, its multiplicities and excesses and the ways in which value is articulated to, and through, the performing and ratifying of social identities.
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