Recursive Fluidity and the Problem of Scale

Why the same structural pattern appears at every scale of social life, and what this means for analysis.

Symbolic Overreach and Its Discontents

When symbolic systems claim more than they can deliver, and the social costs of that overreach.

Kitsch as Diagnostic Category

Kitsch is not bad taste but a specific failure mode in which aesthetic value collapses into mere sentiment.

Chronic Illness and the Disruption of Value Trajectories

How chronic illness interrupts not just bodily function but the temporal structure of a valued life.

Symbiosis as a Model for Value Exchange

What symbiotic relationships in nature reveal about the deep structure of value exchange.

The Gift Revisited: Mauss in the Age of Financialisation

What Mauss's theory of the gift can still teach us about value in an era of financialised social relations.

Sacred and Profane as Value Distinction

Durkheim's sacred/profane distinction reread as a theory of value boundaries and their maintenance.

Legitimation Crises and Value Collapse

When the value asymmetries that sustain power can no longer be justified, the result is a legitimation crisis.

The Commons as Alternative Value Form

The commons is not a failed market but a distinct value form with its own logic of production and distribution.