What matters? The role of values in transformations toward sustainability: a case study of coffee production in Burundi

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the role of values in transformations toward sustainability. Values, generally defined as what people deem to matter, are increasingly gaining interest in and outside of academia. For example, sustainability aligns with specific values such as dignity, equality, safety, and harmony for people and nature. However, current approaches to values are mind-matter dualistic, and therefore failing to honor the inherently dynamic relations of socio-ecological systems. Drawing on new materialism, I explore values as part of the relations that make this world and propose to consider values as material-discursive practices. Ethnographic fieldwork was done in 2017 with coffee producers in Burundi who aimed to transform production by caring for the coffee and people that grow it. Based on interviews and participatory observation, I present how values were integral to transforming the relational aspects of coffee production. In this study, values of togetherness, care, dignity, and faith were dominant and were found to reconfigure the socio-ecological system of coffee production. I argue that values are inseparable from, and hence co-productive of, the material world that we experience and play a vital role in sustainability transformations.