Practices of valuation
Is it good, bad, valuable, fair? Professors, student essays, market goods, projects, agreements, and nature itself are among the diverse entities that are, sometimes repeatedly, subject to practices of valuation. By what means and procedures are values established, by whom, to what ends, and to what consequence?
Full-day open panel
These were the guiding questions for the full-day open panel on "valuation studies" during the 4S conference in Denver, November 2015.
Kristin Asdal from the Little Tools project co-organized the panel together with Claes-Fredrik Helgesson (University of Linköping) Francis Lee (Uppsala University) and Freyja Knapp (University of California, Berkeley).
During the panel, Kristin chaired session 1 and gave a paper in session 2.
Panel abstract
The panel examined diverse social practices where the value or values of something is established, assessed, negotiated, provoked, maintained, constructed and/or contested.
While the emerging interest in valuation studies can be related to the increased focus within STS on “the economy” and economic practices, it also allows for examining the enactment, ordering, and displacement of values in a variety of settings. The study of market devices has illustrated the sociotechnical devices or “dispositives” through which actions are made to be economic in nature. As well, the notion “judgment devices” has been suggested as a framework for grasping processes of singularisation, enabling particular goods to stand out among others.
Valuation studies re-engages with sites well-known to traditional STS, such as the laboratory, now seen as immersed in practices of valuation along with producing facts. This new focus further opens inquiry into how distinctions, such as the one between economic and non-economic, are established as part of a valuation practice: It brings into light the politics embedded within the practices of ascribing and modifying value. For example, expertise and technical knowledge are a critical input not only into particular valuations, but also in regimes of valuation at different scales of governance, raising familiar concerns about deficits of democracy and due process.
Four sessions
The panel included a total of 23 individual papers (you may browse the full conference program and find abstracts for all papers here).
Session 1: Machineries
Chair: Kristin Asdal, University of Oslo
Devices of objectual valuation: detecting 'happening' relations between fields - Noortje S Marres, Goldsmiths, University of London
How to Become a Judgment Device? The Singularization of Food Critics - Sidonie Naulin, Sciences Po Grenoble
What is a patient worth? Registers of value in human gene therapy - Courtney Addison, University of Copenhagen
The judgement devices of urban development projects in Paris - Rachel Mullon, Lab'Urba, Université Paris Est Marne La Vallée
Assessing adaptive design drug trials - Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Linköping University
Lost in commensuration: decision uselessness of structuring information for comparability in search for the singular - Andreas Sundström, Stockholm University
Session 2: Fluid materialities
Chair: Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Linköping University
Swimmability: Values and Measures in Ithaca's Cayuga Lake - Ellen Abrams, Cornell University
The Politics of Valuing Hazardous Materials, Recycling, & Global Trade: Constructing The Best of 2 Worlds in Bangalore - Freyja Knapp, UC Berkeley
Valuing oil for socialism - Carlos Eduardo Morreo, School of Politics & International Relations, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University
Repertories of the Market: Market Exchanges as a Socio-Economic Device in the Valuation of Carbon Credits - Jonghwa Kwon, Binghamton Univ. SUNY
Performing natural capital - Eric Nost, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Re-timing the Atlantic cod: Biocapitalization and the little tools of valuation and timing in aquaculture - Kristin Asdal, University of Oslo
Session 3: Arriving at Good
Chair: Freyja Knapp, UC Berkeley
University admissions work as valuation - Vikki Boliver, Durham University; Tiago Moreira, Durham University
Accountability in practice: a study of evaluation research in Afghanistan - Tjitske Holtrop, University of Amsterdam/Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research
Marking, branding and re-keying: the consumptive uses of visual rankings - Neil Pollock, University of Edinburgh; Gian Marco Campagnolo, University of Edinburgh
‘Good bugs’: scientific practices of valuing microorganisms in the Netherlands - Justine Laurent, University of Amsterdam
What is a good drug? Valuation practices in a drug regulatory agency - Anne Kveim Lie, University of Oslo
Vices and de-vicing: conflicts on value in biomedical research - Francis Lee, Linköping University
Session 4: Publics
Chair: Francis Lee, Linköping University
“Unregulated opinions” or “(e)valuation culture”? The reviewing of restaurants by ordinary customers - Kevin Mellet, Orange Labs - Sense & CSI (Ecole des Mines); Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Orange Labs - Sense; Marie Trespeuch, Orange Labs - Sense
Valuing research and care—how rankings affect organizational valuation practices - Roland Bal, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Sarah de Rijcke, Leiden University; Alex Rushforth, Centre for Science, Technology & Society, Leiden University; Iris Wallenburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Paul Wouters, Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University
Dragons' Den style contests as market devices: Constructing entrepreneurial markets for e-commerce in Southern England - Péter Erdélyi, Bournemouth University; Edgar A. Whitley, London School of Economics and Political Science
Making ‘news value’: Valuation practices in algorithmic journalism - Taina Bucher, University of Copenhagen
Reality Disjunctures in Rating Schemes - Malte Ziewitz, Cornell University