From value as theoretical object to rent as political project

Abstract

Directing attention to ‘value’ and ‘valuing’ as objects of scholarly research offers a promising platform for building a new politics of geography and of livelihoods in relation to economic activities involving the commons, nonhuman species, and environmental resources. This paper responds to Kay and Kenny-Lazar’s survey of recent debates in this regard. It makes the claim that while refocusing scholarship on the materiality of value is a welcome intervention, the challenge is to covert this attention to a new politics in the world by escaping the narrow theoretical language and framings they deploy. I refer to my own work in Aotearoa New Zealand to suggest that this may be achieved in part by extending ‘value thinking’ to ‘rent thinking’ and mobilizing both sets of ideas in enactive, applied research.