Operatoric Research Corpus
Studies in World-Formation
Section V
Work and Emergence Economy
Volume 10
Value, Thresholds, and the Ontology of Emergent Economies
This volume forms the starting point of Section V – Work and Emergence Economy, which examines work not primarily as an economic category, but as a structural condition of world-formation. The contributions assembled here investigate the relation between the emergence of new realities and the conditions under which these realities become socially stabilised as value. In doing so, they shift the analytical focus from questions of distribution and productivity toward the deeper mechanisms that determine which forms of work are able to appear, persist, and shape the world.
The present volume brings together five contributions that pursue a shared theoretical question: under what conditions do new forms of reality emerge, and under what conditions can these forms become stabilised as socially recognised value. The point of departure is the observation that modern societies, despite high levels of productivity, innovation, and complexity, increasingly confront phenomena of structural invisibility. Forms of work, knowledge, care, ecological regeneration, and social stabilisation exert real and system-sustaining effects, yet often fail to appear as economic value.
To analyse this problem, the contributions develop a threshold model of social reality. At the centre of this model stand two interrelated concepts: the Diversity Threshold (D) as the threshold of forced emergence and the Value Threshold (T) as the threshold of societal stabilisation and visibility. While the Diversity Threshold designates the point at which systems must generate new forms due to increasing incommensurability, the Value Threshold describes the conditions under which these emergent forms can appear as durable and socially stabilised realities.
The difference between these two thresholds leads to a structural diagnosis of contemporary societies. Many forms of real and effective work—such as care work, ecological regeneration, cultural practice, artistic research, or neurodivergent modes of problem-processing—frequently operate above the threshold of emergence, yet remain below the threshold of societal stabilisation. The result is a condition in which reality is continuously produced without becoming durably recognised as value.
On this basis, the contributions develop an alternative perspective on economy and social value formation. Economy appears not primarily as a system of resource allocation, but as a threshold regime that determines which forms of emergent reality are stabilised and which remain invisible. The distinction between primary economy (world-sustaining work) and secondary economy (value-extractive organisation), together with the concept of the Unfolding Gap, describes concrete mechanisms through which this structural asymmetry manifests itself in everyday social life.
The volume therefore does not present a programme of economic reform, but contributes to an ontologically grounded theory of work, value, and social reality. It proposes a research programme in which emergence, stabilisation, and visibility are not treated as separate phenomena, but as interrelated transitions within complex social systems.
Download PDF: https://zenodo.org/records/18999321
