Languages of Valuation

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Abstract In this essay-style chapter, I focus on the analytical concept of languages of valuation and look at the work of the Barcelona School of Social Environmental Science in using it to study environmental conflicts and other issues related to environmental governance. The genealogy of the concept goes back to the claim advanced by Joan Martínez-Alier that many environmental conflicts are conflicts over different languages used to place a value on the environment, which are regularly expressed in the context of unequal distributions of costs and benefits from environmental transformation. I follow the concept as it passes through the Barcelona School in the roughly 30-year period to 2020. I trace this trajectory in the published work of researchers connected with the School and their collaborations with scholars outside it. The starting point of that work is the ecological economics criticism of monetary valuation of the environment for its reductionism and exclusion of certain sets of environmental values, and its espousal of value diversity, incommensurability and plurality in environmental decision-making. I look at how Barcelona School contributions have advanced understanding of environmental conflicts, justice and movements, as well as environmental policy and politics, and deliberative decision-making. I conclude by taking stock of that literature’s contributions and present my reflections concerning promising research avenues. I suggest that future research should expand links between languages of valuation and the pluriverse project in an effort to both advance knowledge about decoloniality and contribute to much-needed radical socio-ecological transformations in the face of the climate crisis.