1st Edition
The Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society
The Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society builds on the growing research interest in practices of valuation throughout contemporary society, providing an up-to-date overview of the different facets of research in the sociology of valuation.
The handbook is divided into five major sections with attention to the treatment of valuation in major areas of sociological theory, as well as its key concepts, discourses, and approaches:
Part I: Theoretical perspectives
Part II: Central valuation practices in societal spheres
Part III: Cross-cutting valuation practices
Part IV: Valuation and societal change
Part V: Reflections
Together, the chapters in this book characterize distinctive practices of valuation across different societal spheres, such as education and science, arts and culture, economic life, the environment or digital culture and social media. They also examine the role of valuation in contemporary society and consider the ways it effects social change.
This seminal handbook aims at taking stock of the development of the study of valuation with a selection of topics that are important for understanding core perspectives and developments as well as anticipating its future orientation. It will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interest in the ubiquity of the valuation practices and its effects on social life.
Introduction, Anne K. Krüger and Thorsten Peetz
Part I: Theoretical perspectives
1. Classifications, the sacred, and moral individualism. Durkheimian perspectives on valuation, Frithjof Nungesser
2. Anthropological perspectives on value and valuation, Ton Otto
3. The rise of a French pragmatic sociology of values, Nathalie Heinich
4. On STS and valuation, Malte Ziewitz
5. Relinquishing value: Aristotle and the substances of institutional practice, Roger Friedland
6. Value(s) and (e)valuation in sociological systems theories, Bettina Mahlert
7. The ‘new’ sociology of knowledge and the sociology of valuation, Stefan Nicolae
Part II: Central valuation practices in societal spheres
II.a. Economic Valuation
8. Economic valuation, Patrik Aspers and Alexander Dobeson
9. Where the value is: Accounting and the spatialization of worth, Hendrik Vollmer, Per Ahblom, and Emilia Cederberg
10. Rethinking value through waste: About devaluation and society, Stefan Laser
II.b. Valuation in education and science
11. The panopticon of evaluation in educational organizations, Herbert Kalthoff and Kornelia Engert
12. Research on research evaluation: From particularism to synthesis, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner
13. Competition and valuation in science and higher education, Frank Meier
14. How evaluations fail: Investigating scientific misconduct, Felicitas Hesselmann
II.c. Valuation in arts and culture
15. Valuation practices in the visual arts, Michael Hutter
16. What is good music? Distinction and valuation in music worlds, Oliver Berli
17. What makes a book “good”? New perspectives on literary evaluation, Phillipa K. Chong and Gillian Gualtieri
Part III: Cross-cutting valuation practices
III.a. Valuation of human beings
18. Self-optimization, Anja Röcke
19. (A) Being worth it? Self-worth and self-(e)valuation within Valuation Studies, Sandra Matthäus
20. Social inequality – A neglected topic in studies of valuation and evaluation? Stefan Beljean and Julian Hamann
III.b. Digital valuation
21. Algorithms and valuation: In search of a means to get beyond opacity, Daniel Neyland and Sveta Milyaeva
22. Digital surveillance and valuation in datafied societies, Sachil Singh
23. Valuation and digital platforms, Jonathan Kropf and Thomas Frisch
24. The social logics of platform units: A brief history of valuation practices online, Johannes Paßmann
Part IV: Valuation and societal change
25. Economization: Valuation and the boundaries of valuation games, Thorsten Peetz
26. Risky values: Seeing risk through the lens of Valuation Studies, Natalia Besedovsky
27. Valuation and sustainability, Lisa Knoll
28. Datafied and (e)valuated – Datafication as driver of contingent (e)valuation, Karoline Krenn and Anne K. Krüger
29. The amateurization of valuation in the digital age, Désirée Waibel
30. Worlds of rankings research, Jelena Brankovic
Part V: Reflections
31. Reflections on the emergence of a research field: An interview with Michèle Lamont, Anne K. Krüger and Thorsten Peetz
Index
Biography
Anne Krüger is head of the research group “Reorganization of knowledge practices” at Weizenbaum Institute Berlin, Germany.
Thorsten Peetz is Interim Professor of Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg, Germany.
Hilmar Schäfer was Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
