Rubbish Theory

📖 The Scoop

This study contains Michael Thompson's groundbreaking theoretical idea--that value is not a fixed characteristic of things, but changeable. Thompson divides everything from Bakelite ashtrays to houses into three categories: transient ("here today, gone tomorrow"), durable ("a joy forever"), and rubbish. After you buy something, its value declines until it reaches zero: rubbish. But then, through a mysterious cultural alchemy, some things move from being worthless to valuable. Thanks to "some creative, upwardly mobile individual" they are lifted out of the bin and designated "components of Our Glorious Heritage". Rubbish is transformed into gold. Drawing examples from such diverse fields as Stevengraphs (Victorian woven silk pictures), ceremonial pig-giving in New Guinea and his experiences as a carpenter in Islington during the early years of gentrification for "the frontier middle class", Thompson's witty and wide-ranging scholarly study is a fascinating contribution to cultural theory.

Genre: Business & Economics / Economics / Theory (fancy, right?)