Sociology Of Valuation Research Articles

From Evaluation to Valorising: Three Moments in the Making of Social Impact Value

Value creation is central to entrepreneurship. Within social entrepreneurship research, value is discussed in relation to impact assessment as either pertaining to the thing assessed or dependent on the assessor. These are two perspectives that are blind to the value creation effects of the impact assessment process itself. Following pragmatist developments in the sociology of valuation, the article examines social impact evaluation activities and their performative effects. Findings, based on an analysis of a nascent social venture’s efforts to assess impact, suggest that the very acts of evaluating value are implicated in enacting social and organisational value. As a result, the article calls for a shift in focus from merely social value metrics and perspectives to social valuation processes and practices. This analytical shift helps uncover the social and political dimensions inherent in social impact assessment processes.

Hollow law and utilitarian law: The devaluing of deportation hearings in New York City and Paris

AbstractHow is law made worthless to the marginalized? Drawing on ethnographic observations in Paris and New York City, I establish a typology of devaluation practices in deportation hearings. I analyze how informal court practices devalue court actors, the hearing, and the law itself. Despite different levels of formal protections for migrants, deportation adjudication is pared down and devalued in both cities. This devaluation, however, followed distinct logics. New York hearings were characterized by a utilitarian law logic, where process and ritualistic elements deemed inessential were shed, leaving a stripped-down core focused on case processing. The minimal protections available to migrants were weakened further. By contrast, hollow law emerged in Parisian hearings, where everyday court practices eroded the more generous protections granted to migrants through formal law. While analyses of immigration adjudication have focused on decision-making, determinants of legal outcomes, and the interpretation of formal criteria, I instead conceptualize the courtroom as a space where value is actively unmade through informal practices, drawing on insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation.

Exploring valuation practices in diagnosis-as-category: The rising dominance of clinical practice in the categorisation of Sepsis, 1991-2016.

This article contributes to the sociology of diagnosis by exploring how an acute medical condition, sepsis, was categorised over a 25-year period. We focus on publications reporting the outcomes of three consensus conferences that were convened to stabilise definitions of sepsis and on the failure of a controversial drug. We also focus on the category of severe sepsis by exploring why it was considered useful when introduced in 1991 but redundant by 2016. Drawing on insights from the sociology of valuation, our analysis of pivotal events within this period involving actors from clinical practice, biomedical science, regulation and industry identifies numerous and often contesting evaluative frameworks that came to bear on the categorisation of sepsis. Our analysis further reveals that the evaluative framework of clinical practice, mobilised by the professional specialty of intensive and critical care, became dominant in this categorisation, and that this did not reflect a dominance of biomedicine despite concerning an acute medical condition. Our contributions are to posit the ontological purpose of diagnostic categories and the role of valuation practices and strategic agency in diagnosis-as-category.

Prison break from financialization: the case of the PRI reporting and assessment framework

PurposeThis article seeks to unravel the mechanisms through which financial actors agreed upon a sustainability accounting standard without financializing social and environmental issues, i.e. assigning a monetary value to sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThe article examines the Reporting and Assessment Framework created by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN-PRI), the leading reporting sustainability framework in the asset management industry. It relies on a longitudinal case study that draws upon interviews, participant observation, and archival data.FindingsThe article demonstrates that the conception of the framework was a funnelling process of sustainability valuation comprising two co-constituted mechanisms: a process of valorization – judging what is deemed of value – and a process of evaluation – agreeing on how to assess value. This valuation process was unfolded by creating the framework, thanks to two enabling conditions: the creation of non-prescriptive evaluative criteria that avoided financialization and the valuation support of an enabling organization.Originality/valueThe article helps understand how an industry can encompass the diversity of motives and practices associated with the adoption of sustainability by its economic actors while suggesting a common framework to report on and assess those practices. It uncovers alternatives to the financialization process of sustainability accounting standards. The article also offers insights into the advantages and inconveniences of such a framework. The article enriches the literature in the sociology of valuation, financialization, and sustainability accounting.

The Value-Translation Model of Consumer Activism: How Consumer Watchdog Organizations Change Markets

AbstractHow do consumer watchdog organizations (CWOs) change markets? Research on consumer activism has prioritized studying grassroots movements of ordinary consumers over more formalized activist actors, resulting in a paucity of theoretical resources for understanding the activism of powerful consumer organizations such as CWOs. This article draws on the sociology of valuation and evaluation to develop a new theoretical model of consumer activism, the value-translation model, which departs from previous research in shifting the focus from activists’ efforts to change which higher-order values govern markets to activists’ efforts to change how they govern markets. Through a historical study of a Danish CWO associated with the comparative-testing movement, the article shows how CWOs “translate” higher-order values into “trials of value” (i.e., practical evaluation procedures that “test” the strength of the connection between goods and higher-order values) and “evaluation agents” (i.e., market actors capable of carrying out and acting on evaluations). Such translations structure how higher-order values influence markets and are therefore critical to manage for directing market change. The study extends our understanding of how objects are systemically valorized and revalorized and how formalized forms of consumer activism can play an important role in such processes.

Study Preparation of Refugees in Germany: How Teachers’ Evaluative Practices Shape Educational Trajectories

Recent research shows that a remarkable share of refugees who have arrived in Germany over the past few years is highly qualified and has strong educational and academic aspirations. Preparatory colleges (Studienkollegs) and language courses of higher education institutions are the two main organisations providing obligatory study preparation for non‐EU international study applicants in Germany, including an increasing number of refugees. So far, research on conditions for refugees’ successful transitions into and through study preparation, and eventually into higher education, is scarce. The article fills a research gap on the organisational level by considering the established norms and rules of study preparation organisations and the key role of teachers in shaping successful pathways into higher education. Based on central concepts deriving from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, categorisation, and evaluative repertoires, the article aims to illustrate the organisational norms and rules in play shaping teachers’ experiences and perceptions of their students’ ability to study. The qualitative analysis of seven expert interviews shows how teachers differentiate between students with and without a refugee background in terms of performance and reveals opportunities and constraints to take refugees’ resources and needs in study preparation programmes into account.

New developments in institutional research on performance measurement and management in the public sector

PurposeThis paper reviews and reflects on institutional research on performance measurement and management (PMM) in the public sector emerging over the past decade and discusses potential extensions of this body of research.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes the form of a reflective review with an emphasis on how institutional theory has been used in PMM research in the public sector.FindingsAlthough institutional research on PMM in the public sector has continued to grow over the past decade, much of this research still pays relatively one-sided attention to the influence of pre-existing institutions on PMM practices and has left the constitutive effects of such practices under-researched. In order to address this shortcoming and nurture research that pays more equal attention to the institutional effects on and of PMM practices, a research agenda based on dialogue with the sociology of valuation and valuation studies is outlined. Such research is arguably well-suited for examining emerging themes in the public sector accounting and management literatures centred on the publicness of public service provision and notions of organisational hybridity.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper offers a starting point for research that can provide a more holistic and dynamic perspective on how PMM practices are implicated in the shaping of institutional fields over time.Originality/valueThe paper continues to advance an established research agenda in the public sector accounting and management literatures whilst suggesting ways of extending this research agenda.

Back to disciplines: exploring the stability of publication regimes in chemistry: the case of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (1879\u20132010)

Based on a case study, this article explores the stability of publication regimes (as defined by Hilgartner (2015, 2017)) in chemistry. Starting with a slight detour via open access (OA) policies, it concentrates on the conditions of editorial production and trade of a scholarly journal, from an historical perspective enriched by a sociology of valuation and pricing. Prices are seen as social constructs as I consider the modalities of market coordination among actors of the publishing enterprise in a major scholarly society, the American Chemical Society (ACS). The study focuses on the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), a periodical that was founded in 1879 by the ACS, of which it is the “flagship” journal. The investigation relies mainly on a detailed examination of the JACS imprint from a diachronic perspective (1879–2010). I describe how scientific papers (as singular entities) gradually entered into a commodity market, first with the page-charge mechanism and the imposition of authors’ fees, up to the emergence of the Article Processing Charge (APC) model, where the authors/institutions pay fees to have the electronic versions of their articles in OA. The proposed timeline in five periods is marked by two points of rupture that correspond to State intervention and the adoption of federal laws. Inherited from the deployment of science regimes in the post-WWII period, revenue collection models were collectively invented by the ACS and its members as successive adjustments to address massive imbalances caused by changes in scientific, institutional, and regulatory environments. Specific market mechanisms and modes of coordination have been put in place to support the development and guarantee the continuity of a disciplinary program (that of chemistry) in the frame of what I call a disciplinary publication regime.

What's it worth? Value and valuation of late-life creativity

AbstractNew interest in late-life creativity has arisen in gerontology. To date, such research has mainly focused on the positive impact creativity has on older adults, but has scarcely contextualised older adults’ creative engagement. Drawing on the sociology of valuation, this article aims to contextualise late-life creativity by critically exploring how creativity gains, stabilises and loses its value and how these processes are related to perceptions, images and discourses addressing old age. Data from 13 interviews with older (60+) adults involved in creative practices in Austria are used to explore these topics. Interviews examined perceptions of creative production, everyday routines and personal attitudes towards ageing. Interviews transcripts were analysed using the documentary method. The analysis revealed three registers of valuation in late-life creativity: economic value, in which valuable creativity was given away at a high revenue; field value, where valuable creativity was appreciated by institutions or other artists in the field; and lifecourse value, in which doing a creative activity for a long time meant being able to produce a creative product that was high in value. This article emphasises late-life creativity as a process of value production that is structured by the making and evaluating of creative products and adds to the current critique that the narrow view of late-life creativity in its associations with wellbeing present a reductionist picture of the capacities that the arts and creativity have for older adults. The results demonstrate the potential for valuation studies in gerontology as they highlight the circumstances and practices by which the activities of older adults are (de)valued. For policy and practice, this article suggests imagining arts-based interventions for older adults beyond the realm of health and wellbeing, and encourages thinking about how valuable artistic experiences can be supported in later life.

Social Embeddedness as a Business Goal: New Theoretical Implications from the Case of a Global Value Chain

This paper provides new theoretical implications for the concept of social embeddedness as one of the main objectives for business relations. Previous studies have considered social embeddedness as an external factor to market exchanges that forms outside of economic relations; in other words, embeddedness appears as an incidental product of market interactions. Here, I propose that social embeddedness is being intentionally constructed by market actors as an integral part of a business process. This view is developed by a theoretical adaptation of studies in relational marketing and the sociology of valuation. Relational marketing shows that interfirm relations have additional value for businesses and can educate market practitioners to intensify social interactions. Valuation studies explain the process of value creation for end goods, and this explanation is applied to interpreting the value of interfirm relations. For the empirical validation, I focus on the field of global value chains because the global coordination of business interactions requires an explicit discussion of relational characteristics. The research is performed using a qualitative design. The empirical part consists of 13 months of participant observation as a sales manager in a Russian global value chain that works in fast-moving consumer goods and consumer electronics. Also, 33 deep semistructured interviews were conducted with employees of the global value chain. Data analysis is performed within a grounded theory perspective. The empirical section demonstrates that the proposed vision of embeddedness as an integral and desirable part of a business process is applicable to firm practices. Economic actors participate in permanent valuation processes to maintain a common interpretation of interfirm relations; they conceptualize business ties as an important source of market value.

The Valuation of Online Science Communication: A Study Into the Scholarly Discourses of Altmetrics and Their Reception

Online communication has gained momentum in science. In light of this momentum new forms of quantification have emerged, so-called alternative metrics. What these new metrics signify is still considered unclear and issue of on-going debate. Building upon theories from the sociology of valuation and genre theory, this paper analyzes the discourses embedded in a corpus of over 400 articles from the scientometric community on these new metrics. The results suggest two grand narratives, “societal impact” and “research performance”, in this discourse that both may lead to orthogonal performative effects in stabilizing either established or new valuation regimes.

Lowbrows as Rebels: Under What Circumstances a “Low” Musical Genre Can Change its Cultural Value? The Case of Disco Polo and Populism in Poland

Abstract The sociology of culture and the sociology of valuation and evaluation are closely related (Lamont 2012). In both cases, social hierarchies are the primary, fundamental focal point. Usually, sociologists of culture show what the necessary conditions for building social boundaries in a given historical context are (see e.g. Bourdieu, 1984; Ang, 1985; Ikegami, 2005). The main aim of this paper, however, is to present how lowbrow aesthetics can resist fierce social critique and how social stigma related to “low” tastes can be reversed. I focus on “disco polo” – a genre of simple dance music that became popular in the early 1990s, almost disappeared in 2010s, and recently came back all of the sudden. Disco polo (henceforth: DP) formed an entire aesthetics style, comprising not only music and a kitschy (thus stigmatized and ridiculed) style of videos, but also androcentric values behind the lyrics, a specific way of dressing – with prominent status signifiers such as golden chains or sport cars. Although the empirical material comes from Poland, the core issue is far more generally applicable: the rehabilitation of the lowermost (from the point of view of Bourdieusian dominant classes) kitschy tastes (Kulka 1996; Ward 1996), which is very different from camp sensibility (Sontag 2018). How can lowbrow consumers resist symbolic oppression and derive pleasure from culturally sanctioned “shameful” objects? Focusing on the historical example of this typically Polish music genre, I will show under what circumstances the open rejection of legitimate tastes and admiration of low tastes is possible.

The making of professors: Assessment and recognition in academic recruitment.

How do academics become professors? This paper considers the making of ‘professor’ as a subject position through which academics are acknowledged in both organizational contexts and disciplinary fields. The paper examines social processes of recognition in 145 appointment procedures for professorships in the discipline of history at sixteen German universities between 1950 and 1985. Based on an analysis of over 1500 documents from archived appointment records, I investigate how academics are acknowledged as professorial in appointment procedures. The procedures invoked both (1) processes of judgement, in which worth and qualities are attributed to candidates, and (2) processes of legitimation, in which said judgements are stabilized and made acceptable. Using insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, this paper sheds light on the fundamental processes of recognition and valorization in academia. The findings contribute to the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies, which have concentrated on academic recognition in the realm of research, but paid less attention to such recognition in organizational contexts. Complementing this literature, the paper allows for a more general understanding of ‘professor’ as a focal academic subject position.

From Valuation to Instauration: On the Double Pluralism of Values

At the request of Valuation Studies, Antoine Hennion reflects on his own investigative trajectory as a way to explore the ways in which the sociology of attachment, which lies at the heart of his pragmatist approach, can refine our understanding of a number of recurring problems with which the sociology of valuation is confronted.

Putting the World in Orders: Plurality in Organizational Evaluation

Sociologists have shown that external evaluation stimulates convergent organizational behavior, yet many evaluative practices are superficial or susceptible to manipulation. When does external evaluation lead to convergence in organizational fields? Organizations regularly and increasingly experience fragmented social orders based on orthogonal notions of value, or so-called plurality. I propose that the plurality of evaluative landscapes, that is, the universe of rankings, ratings, and awards in an organizational field, compromises the potential homogenizing influence of any single evaluative practice. Plurality in the evaluative landscape weakens the causal channels through which evaluative practices influence organizational behavior. Because evaluative activities are responsive to social conditions, plurality is suggested to be highest when organizations face multiple audiences, when the meaning of value is contested, and when access to evaluation is unregulated. Neoinstitutional organizational theory and the sociology of valuation, both of which inform this article, would benefit from a more integrated account of evaluative landscapes.

Policy entrepreneurs in policy valuation processes: The case of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies

Policy problems and solutions are frequently loaded with moral, emotional and cost-effectiveness components as well as with other ideational and symbolic elements in order to provide them with, or deprive them of, significance. Skillful policy entrepreneurs are key actors in this valuation process which results in policy problems and solutions becoming valued, overvalued or undervalued. Drawing on insights from the sociology of valuation, this article distinguishes between four types of policy entrepreneurs – defined by the particular strategies they pursue – that may be involved in this process: norm entrepreneurs, reputation entrepreneurs, meaning entrepreneurs and standards and performance metrics entrepreneurs. The article elaborates on the role of these actors in the policy valuation process and the interactive nature of their activities. It thereafter illustrates their activities by elaborating on the valuation strategies pursued by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, which led several European governments to provide financial support for the Carbon Disclosure Project.

The Birth of Policy Bubbles: Conceptual Foundations

A theory of policy bubbles suggests that academic attention should be directed at the growth of bubbles rather than at their emergence. This argument is conceptually challenged here on the grounds that different processes of bubble emergence may lead to different types of policy bubbles. Drawing primarily on the sociology of valuation, this paper develops a conceptual framework which distinguishes between preference-driven policy bubbles, which emerge as the output of what policy entrepreneurs want in terms of attaching a distorted or biased meaning to a policy, and institution-driven policy bubbles, which emerge as the output of a process wherein policy entrepreneurs are restricted in attaching a distorted meaning to a policy by transparency constrained on the policy domain (e.g., secrecy laws). It is suggested that transparency constraints on the policy domain may lead to stronger and more sustainable distorted policy valuations, and thereby, to relatively stable and self-sustaining policy bubbles. The lack of such constraints may lead to weaker and less sustainable distorted policy valuations and, thereby, to relatively fragile policy bubbles.

Grappling with the Economy of Enrichment

In a conversation with Fabian Muniesa from the board of editors of Valuation Studies, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre unravelled a few of the distinguishing features of their new work on the sociology of valuation. Combining an updated view on the pragmatics of justification and a more recent preoccupation with the problem of prices, their proposal appears as both a suitable contribution and a timely challenge to current threads in valuation studies. It also interacts in a stimulating fashion with their concomitant analysis of the political atmosphere in France, and more widely of the shift to identity that so vividly informs the critique of capitalism today.

The Transcending Power of Goods: Imaginative Value in the Economy

What do we value? For markets to operate and for economies to grow, producers must attract purchasers to the products they offer. In advanced capitalist economies, market saturation and decline of demand are constant threats to markets. But how do we understand why actors desire the things whose value they reveal in the purchase? In this article I distinguish between three types of value: Physical value, positional value and imaginative value. Based on Durkheim’s sociology of religion, I argue that imaginative value emerges from the imaginative connections made between goods and socially rooted values, as well as the aesthetic ideals held by the purchaser. The article explores how the connection between objects and their symbolic meaning is created and maintained, and why the symbolic valuation of objects changes. By arguing that the imaginative value of goods is closely linked to social values, I suggest that consumption is not the expression of a hedonistic individualism but inherently connected to the social and moral order of society. Durkheim’s sociology of religion is thus read as a sociology of valuation.

Het artistieke blijft het belangrijkste': rockesthetica en individuele selecties binnen de Vlaamse alternatieve mainstream.

Next to the mainstream and the underground, the alternative mainstream con¬stitutes the third segment within the popular music circuit: music that combi¬nes economic mainstream-qualities with an artistic imago. Inspired by the up¬ coming sociology of valuation and evaluation and the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we examine which general selection logics are used by Flemish professionals when dealing with the extensive offer in alternative mainstream music. Our 24 depth-interviews with a well-reasoned sample of radio programmers, journalists, artist managers and festival or concert programmers indicate that four selection logics are at stake. Because of the importance attached to it, also normatively, we focus on the so-called individual logic or ‘selecting out of one’s personal artistic taste’. This logic is closely related to the underlying value of authenticity: ‘good music sounds honest and truthful’. We therefore speak of a romantic discourse that we also characterize, inspired by other authors, as ‘the rock aesthetic’. We subsequently discuss how the individual selection logic is deployed as a means of distinction in the delineation of the alternative mainstream towards the main¬ stream. We then highlight the definition struggle within the Flemish alternative mainstream that is grafted onto the individual logic and the boundary with the mainstream. Next, we show how that very same individual logic goes hand in hand with a binding legitimate taste or ‘doxa’, which the respondents have clearly interiorized. In the final section we examine the relationship between the dominant criterion of choice and the other selection logics, particularly the organisational-economic one. We thereby look at possible frictions and the thus generated ambiguity in the interviewees’ discourse. We conclude with a broader contextualization of our research findings by relating them to the tension between ‘the artistic’ and ‘the economic’ in most sectors of the creative or cultural economy.