Drawing on the “Economies of Worth” approach (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Dodier 1995; Breviglieri et al. 2009), the proposed research seeks to investigate the “politics of values”, that is the struggle for the institutional definition and maintenance of ‘value’, or ‘worth’.

The empirical case is the struggle for gold as an institution, in particular, with regards to “conflict gold” emanating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The case illustrates the unfolding struggle among state, civil society actors and the market for the definition of ‘what value is’ in the context of a humanitarian crisis. Here, the question of value becomes interlaced with ethical and political questions. It almost is paradoxically that now that gold is traded at historically highest prices, and seen as the ‘last’ safe form of investment, its “worth” is equally challenged from alternative economies of worth put forward by both state and civil society actors. Not least in response to new legislative requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S., the global gold industry is waking up to this threat. In order to protect and preserve the status of “gold is gold is gold”, it is beginning to establish new norms, conventions and procedures to protect the uniformity of gold as purely defined by economic worth.