Values in Crisis: Open seminar organised by students from Economic Anthropology

The corona crisis has turned the world upside down and opened up new discussions of and perspectives on value in our society.
While nurses and care workers ihave emerged from the shadows and become celebrated for their heroic contributions to society, business owners have had to get used to and legitimize being subsidized by the state. And while all of this is going on, the climate crisis has more or less disappeared out of sight.
The crisis has spurred public discussions about what has value and why. What is the price of a life? How much must other people suffer in order to save a few? And for what life, if they end up dying of boredom or depression in their isolation? How about the promised improvements in the hospitals and kindergartens, not to mention the climate crisis? Can we still afford to save the welfare state and the planet? Where did all the money suddenly come from, and does it have to be repaid? What happens to democratic rights and values if mother state has turned into a totalitarian biopolitical power? Who or what is being exploited, and what can we do to create a sustainable future?
The questions are many, but in this seminar, students from Economic Anthropology at University of Copenhagen invite different scholars and practitioners to share their perspectives on how the crisis has affected our value(s), how our values are in crisis, or how crises create, reduce or redistribute value for different people.
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The seminar will take place in room 18.01.11 in the morning and then we will move to room 35.0.12 after lunch. Here’s a link that will help you find your way around CSS: https://samf.ku.dk/kontakt/findvej/
IMPORTANT: Due to COVID restrictions, participants will need to sign up for the open seminar. Please send an email to asta-marie@live.dk with your name and whether you will attend in the morning, in the afternoon or both.
If you are not able to attend physically, you can join via Zoom as the seminar will be live-streamed: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/64161618957…
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PROGRAMME

09:00 – 09:15 Welcome: Introducing the theme and the programme

09:15 – 10:00 Emilie Haug Rasch, nurse and candidate for Enhedslisten

10:00 – 11:00 Jesper Jespersen, Professor Emeritus, Economics, RUC: Economics in crisis – a divided and challenged science

11:00 – 11:15 Break

11:15 – 12:00 Susanne Ekman, Associate Professor, RUC: Mechanisms of toxic debt in the public sector

12:00 – 12:45 Lunch (bring your own)

12:45 – 13:30 Niels Thyge Thygesen, Associate Professor, CBS: Crises can alter our understandings of value – but also co-produce blindness

13:30 – 13:35 Short break

13:35 – 14:30 Ayo Wahlberg, Associate Professor, Anthropology, UCPH:
Living and dying – what counts in a pandemic?

14:30 – 15:15 Interactive excercise & relevant takeaways