In Living Worth Stefan Ecks draws on ethnographic research on depression and antidepressant usage in India to develop a new theory of value. Framing depressive disorder as a problem of value, Ecks traces the myriad ways antidepressants come to have value, from their ability to help make one's life worth living to the wealth they generate in the multibillion-dollar global pharmaceutical market. Through case studies that include analyses of the different valuation of generic and brand-name drugs, the origins of rising worldwide depression rates, and the marketing, prescription, and circulation of antidepressants, Ecks theorizes value as a process of biocommensuration. Biocommensurations-transactions that aim or claim to make life better-are those forms of social, medical, and corporate actions that allow value to be measured, exchanged, substituted, and redistributed. Ecks's theory expands value beyond both a Marxist labor theory of value and a free market subjective theory, thereby offering new insights into how the value of lives and things become entangled under neoliberal capitalism.

About the Author
Stefan Ecks is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh and author of Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India.

Reviews
"In this fascinating, timely, and provocative new book, Stefan Ecks uses ethnographic examples of depression and the use of antidepressants in India to rethink anthropological and economic theory. Conceptually bold and empirically grounded, Living Worth upends capitalist assumptions that underpin global mental health and offers a new and vital way to think about how embodiment comes to matter." -- Julie Livingston, author of * Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa *
"Stefan Ecks shows us, yet again, why he is the leading theorist of globalizing minds and their pharmaceutical anodynes. In Living Worth, he takes readers on a tour de force through case studies of depression and of global psychopharmaceuticals to show how the values of brains and feelings become enmeshed with the larger values that capitalism places on currencies and commodities. The result is an absolute work of genius, and a must-read for anyone concerned about how we think and feel and the social practices and economies through which our thoughts and feelings come to matter." -- Jonathan M. Metzl, author of * Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478017677
Author Stefan Ecks
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 408g