The National Institute of the Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) in Ecuador was created to promote an alternative form of economy—the Popular Solidarity Economy (PSE). As a precarious institute with limited funding, IEPS staff worked hard to find alternative ways to support the PSE. In this article, I examine their work through the lens of valor agregado (added value), a commonly used local term for how economic value is created. Government bureaucrats intervened primarily by creating an audience that was interested in the social aspects of the alternative economy. Because valor agregado ambiguously refers to both monetary and social value, it helped the PSE better integrate with the wider economy. With this approach, I offer a potential new path for analyzing government support for alternative economies. By refocusing our attention on key actors' understandings of value creation, anthropologists can sidestep questions of whether alternative economies have been “co‐opted” by capitalism and instead examine the necessary interfaces between these alternatives and the mainstream.

中文翻译：

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团结经济的附加值：厄瓜多尔替代经济政策的官僚价值构建

厄瓜多尔国家大众团结经济研究所 (IEPS) 的成立是为了促进另一种经济形式——大众团结经济 (PSE)。作为一个资金有限且不稳定的机构，IEPS 工作人员努力寻找替代方法来支持 PSE。在这篇文章中，我通过以下视角审视了他们的工作：勇猛（附加值），一个常用的当地术语，表示如何创造经济价值。政府官僚主要通过创造对另类经济的社会方面感兴趣的受众来进行干预。因为勇猛模糊地指货币和社会价值，它帮助 PSE 更好地融入更广泛的经济。通过这种方法，我为分析政府对替代经济的支持提供了一条潜在的新途径。通过将我们的注意力重新集中在关键参与者对价值创造的理解上，人类学家可以回避另类经济是否已被资本主义“拉拢”的问题，转而研究这些另类经济与主流之间的必要接口。