Valuing Uncertainty: Money, Value, and Imagined Futures among “Preppers”

• In Event: 50602 - Culture, Value(s), and Relationships in Economic Life

Abstract

What makes money valuable? While Social Scientists typically point to use, exchange, labor, and signs, I find that each of these explanations in fact relies on the same underlying social process. In all instances, value is generated in the relationship between a relatively certain present context and a relatively uncertain, and therefore imagined, future or past context. To illustrate this, I draw on over five years of ethnographic fieldwork with self-described “preppers.” Members of this lifestyle movement dedicate their lives to preparing for major disasters including the total collapse of the economy and society. Preppers’ profound sense of social uncertainty, obsessive focus on the future, and deep disagreements about value make them a uniquely strategic case for unpacking this imaginative value-creating social process. Analyzing fieldnote evidence from preppers in Southern California and on YouTube, I find that their claims about the value of various forms of money directly correspond to the “fictional expectations” (Beckert, 2016) they hold about various imagined future disasters. These imaginaries, moreover, appear to be contingent on social forces including group culture and social interactions.

Author

• Jonathan Nathaniel Redman, California State Polytechnic Univ-Pomona