The book is at once a testament to the academic context and debates in which David studied and a powerful invitation to place creative action at the root of social theory. By defining human beings as intentionally creative and continuously engaged in the project of mutual fashioning, David provides a solid theoretical foundation for analysing any human projects in terms of their materiality and wider social effects. In conversations with Marx and Mauss, he argues that it is the pursuit of value which renders human societies as real and imagined totalities and so the very essence of politics is the struggle to define value.