ABSTRACT
What counts and what does not count as representing social value is under a period of concerted change in the UK. This is in large part driven by a privileging of an economic and individualistic understanding of value. For example, in terms of higher education the idea that individual students (as end user consumers) are the key beneficiaries of a university education has triumphed over the counter view that the UK, as a whole, will benefit from increased numbers of students attending university. In this context, social value is construed in terms of generating surplus (i.e. profit), such that the “terrain of social reproduction can be harnessed for profit” (Dowling & Harvie, 2014). When the dominant mode of public service provision, in education, health care, social care and so forth becomes dominated by the need to post a profit, then significant questions are posed about the relation between cost of provision and return on that provision. It is for these reasons that we need to challenge these conceptions of social value and try to find more collectivist understandings of how value might and indeed can work in a social context.
