16 May
Luc Boltanski  & Arnaud Esquerre
How to make profit with enriched objects
Simultaneous translation French – Catalan
Espai 4. 7pm
Free entry. Limited places

Objects exchanged for prices that are high or very high in relation to the most common prices, the luxury industry, the contemporary art market, heritage creation, tourism: all these activities constitute what we call an “enrichment economy”. One might raise the objection that the existence of a sphere of exclusivity and luxury is really nothing new. However, viewed in terms of the development of riches, the sphere we need to outline is distinguished from the industrial world by many traits and has significant economic and social consequences, to the point that we can create a schematic table of two ideal types of economy. An economy centred on industrial production can be opposed to an economy centred on processes of “thing-enrichment”. These processes are based on the “#collection form#”. One of the original features of this “collection form” is that it makes room in the capitalist cosmos for increasing the value of things from the past (which may have undergone a period of decline) and things that are recent but are treated as if they were destined to become immortal.

Luc Boltanski is head of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of numerous books, of which the most recently translated into English are Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Societies, On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation and The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion.

With Arnaud Esquerre, Luc Boltanski has co-authored Enrichissement. Une critique de la marchandise (2017) and a volume on the expansion of ‘rightism’ [right-wing politics] in French politics and thought: Vers l’extrême: Extension des domaines de la droite (2014).

Arnaud Esquerre is a researcher at the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He has written two books, one on the sociology of contemporary astrology (Prédire: L’astrologie en France au XXIe siècle) and one on the sociology of “cults” in France (La manipulation mentale: Sociologie des sectes en France). He has also written a work on the disposal of dead bodies and has published most recently a book on testimonies of encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials, under the title Théorie des événements extraterrestres: Essai sur le récit fantastique (2016).