Common Concerns Hidden Histories: Use Value and Theories from the East
Mar 19, 2026
Don Kalb, an anthropologist and author of Value and Worthlessness, explores hidden histories and relational use values. He discusses how use, exchange, and surplus values shape housing, education, and indebtedness. He traces post‑socialist transformations and the emotional effects of devaluation. He also considers why rightward politics can arise where left structures collapse.
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Threefold Value Framework Reveals Everyday Capitalism
- Don Kalb frames value as three interconnected registers: relational use value, exchange value, and surplus value that shape everyday life and politics.
- He uses housing, education, indebtedness and welfare-state fiscal limits to show how exchange value penetrates intimate use-value worlds.
Theory As A Vantage House Not A Single Model
- Xiang Biao presents 'theory as vision' as a rounded house that offers vantage points rather than a single causal model.
- The house metaphor stresses opening theory to interlocutors so they can test, critique, and add windows to it.
Former Workers' Life Stories Uncover Hidden Histories
- Don Kalb describes interviewing older former industrial workers whose life narratives reveal surprising turns and layered hidden histories.
- He foregrounds micro-interactions and remembered social relations to reconstruct the shape of those lives.
