Most contemporary policy fields are deeply intertwined with tools of ordering that also act as tools of valuation. Such procedures often involve the translation of qualities into quantities, concomitantly with the ascription of economic value. Think only of the quantification of polluting emissions and their pricing on carbon markets, the infection numbers that detect the distribution of Covid-19 across and within countries and the calculation of the cost of life years saved, measures of scientific output through the number of publications, patents or start-ups created, cost-benefit analyses that balance risks and benefits. Such numbering techniques do not only quantify, they also do valuations: they take part in producing the worth of the objects they detect and measure. We invite papers that address such tools of valuation, their emergence and ways of operating. What are the relations between the tools involved and the entities they work upon? How to interrogate the complex relations between the ‘quantifiable’ and the ‘valuable’, the promises such tools of valuation live by and the good and the, sometimes, troubling relations they produce? What are the relations between the material and the semiotic elements such tools are very often composed by and the complex interplay between the tools of valuation and the larger valuation machineries of which they are very often part? Which modes of governing are these tools part of, and how do they relate to their specific politics?
The six sessions on the relations and troubles of tools of valuation were organized by Value threads project members Kristin Asdal and Liliana Doganova together with Maximilian Fochler from the University Of Vienna.