Making Things Valuable

What if value is neither an intrinsic quality of an object nor a reflection of a subject's preferences - but rather something that is organized and brought into existence through mechanisms, technologies and practices of valuation?

This edited book addresses the question of valuation theoretically and through empirical analyses of diverse objects of valuations, such as university ranking lists, ice skating scoring, wind power, insurances, gold and big data. The theoretical inspiration is interdisciplinary and the volume brings together scholars from economic sociology, accounting, organization studies, and science and technology studies with the aim of understanding through which practices and processes things are made valuable.

Valuing is understood as a plural activity where 'pricing' things is just one way of signifying value. Socio-economic reality is constituted through different 'orders of worth' that are grounded in the way people 'praise' and 'prize' things.

The book is arranged around five concerns that underpin the debate about making things valuable. These concerns are: calculating/economizing; commensurating/switching; visualizing/hiding; modelling/tracing; and knowing/disciplining.