What do youth and mom, both in urban and rural areas, spend (in terms of money and time) most on? - In Search for Theoretical Framework

When I was asked to do a literature research to find out what youth and mom, both in urban and rural areas, spend (in terms of money and time) most on; with value as the framework of all the findings, following is what I did on the first week.

 DEFINITIONS 

 A. VALUE

1. The Indonesian Founding Father of Anthropology, Koentjaraningrat, explains that cultural value system is a series of abstract concepts that live in the minds of most of the citizens of a society, about what should be considered important and valuable in life. Thus a system of cultural values, that is usually a part of the culture that serves as a director and driving force of human behavior. Because the system of cultural values, it is only the abstract concepts, without formulating a clear, then the concepts that usually can only be felt, but often cannot be expressed explicitly by concerned citizens. (Koentjaraningrat, 1995: 387) (as written on http://fardly.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/rampak-bedug-international-youth-camp-2010/)

Cultural value system, which lives in the minds of most people of community and acts as the driving force of human behavior, is in the form of norms, laws, and regulations (Koentjaraningrat, 2010: 387-388).

2. Indonesian Structuralist, Heddy Shri Ahimsa-Putra, further clarifies that cultural value is an ideational aspect of a culture which further defined as world views, opinions held by people of a community or society to assess its good side and bad side, its usefulness of many elements in their life (2007: 6-7).

There are 3 (three) key words out of cultural value definitions by Koentjaraningrat and Ahimsa-Putra above, namely:
(1) It is in the mind of the people
(2) It is the people themselves who do the assessment
(3) It is in the form of norms, laws, and regulations

Thus, the definition of value, which in the end frames of all findings, is written on Graeber book called Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value – The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. He presented a definition of value in the economic sense: “The degree to which objects are desired, particularly, as measured by how much others are willing to give up to get them” (p. 1) or “… value simply the measure of individual desire … “ (p. 46) that then this value acts as the importance of actions (p. 49)

If it is simply the measure of the individual desire, what is the definition of desire then?

B. DESIRE

Desire was mentioned by D'Andrade in his writing on Human Motives and Cultural Models (D'Andrade and Strauss, 1992: 23) when he was explaining 'motivation'.

“Motivation is experienced as a desire or wish followed by a feeling of satisfaction if the desire is fulfilled or a sense of frustration if it is not.”

In brief, to find out about the value of youth and mom, as the subjects of this literature research, it is recommended by Graber (p. 257) to "extracting all the most fundamental questions of desire from society, so that it is possible to conceive of happiness largely as one's relations with objects (or at best, people are treats like objects)."

Definitions of value and desire have been presented and clearly I have presented to what's called cognitive Anthropology and cognitive Psychology as Kronenfeld, Bennardo and Munck clearly states that “Cognitive Anthropology and Cognitive Psychology: One builds on the other and the line between the two can be subtle” (2011: 1), which means "Emotion plays a role in cognition" (2011: 3).

D'Andrade, furthermore, strongly suggests to "investigate the types of experiences that lead people to feel (often without thinking much about it) that a certain course of action is their only reasonable alternative" (p. 13).

THUS 

The definition of value suggested for this literature research refers to those of Graeber's in which definition of value is in the economic sense, that was learned from experiences, which produces motivations or goals in the decision making process (see further on decision making on A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology edited by Kronenfeld, Bennardo, and de Munck) that leads to actions. It Is strongly suggested to take note that motivation is closely related to emotion.