What if value is neither an intrinsic quality of an object, nor a reflection of a subjects preferencesbut rather something that is organized and brought into existence through mechanisms, technologies and practices of valuation? This edited book addresses the question of valuation theoretically and through empirical analyses of diverse objects of valuations, such as university ranking lists, ice skating scoring, wind power, insurances, gold and big data. The theoretical inspiration is interdisciplinary and the volume brings together scholars from economic sociology, accounting, organization studies, and science and technology studies with the aim of understanding through which practices and processes things are made valuable. Valuing is understood as a plural activity where pricing things is just one way of signifying value. Socio-economic reality is constituted through different orders of worth that are grounded in the way people praise and prize things. The book is arranged around five concerns that underpin the debate about making things valuable. These concerns are: calculating/economizing; commensurating/switching; visualizing/hiding; modelling/tracing; and knowing/disciplining.
Introduction: Making Things Valuable ; 1. Noticing Numbers: How Quantification Changes What We See and What We Dont ; 2. Value in the Age of Doubt: Accounting as a Maieutic Machine ; 3. Rating Reports as Figuring Documents: How CRAs Build Scenarios of the Future ; 4. Subitizing Practices and Market Decisions: The Role of Simple Graphs In Business Valuations ; 5. Capitalization devices: business models and the renewal of markets ; 6. Valuable assemblages or assembling values ; 7. Valuation devices orientation to each other: Imitation and differentiation among devices valuing companies social and environmental performance ; 8. What is a catastrophe model worth? The (e)valuative practices of cat analysts in insurance companies ; 9. The enactment of Economic Things: The Objects of Insurance ; 10. The politics of values: A case study of conflict-free gold ; 11. Notes on Objectual Valuation ; 12. Tracing Data Paying Attention: Interpreting digital methods through valuation studies and Gibsons theory of perception