Full Description
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.
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Theoretical perspectives
1. Classifications, the sacred, and moral individualism: Durkheimian perspectives on valuation
2. Anthropological perspectives on value and valuation
3. The rise of a French pragmatic sociology of values
4. On Science and Technology Studies and valuation
5. Relinquishing value: Aristotle and the substances of institutional practice
6. Value(s) and (e)valuation in sociological systems theories
7. The 'new' sociology of knowledge and the sociology of valuation
Part II: Central valuation practices in societal spheres
II. A. Economic valuation
8. Economic valuation
9. Where the value is: Accounting and the spatialization of worth
10. Rethinking value through waste: About devaluation and society
II. B. Valuation in education and science
11. The panopticon of evaluation in educational organizations
12. Research on research evaluation: From particularism to synthesis
13. Competition and valuation in science and higher education
14. How evaluations fail: Investigating scientific misconduct
II. C. Valuation in arts and culture
15. Valuation practices in the visual arts
16. What is good music? Distinction and valuation in music worlds
17. What makes a book "good"? New perspectives on literary evaluation
Part III: Cross-cutting valuation practices
III. A. Valuation of human beings
18. Self-optimization
19. (A) Being worth it? Self-worth and self-(e)valuation within Valuation Studies
20. Social inequality: A neglected topic in studies of valuation and evaluation?
III. B. Digital valuation
21. Algorithms and valuation: In search of a means to get beyond opacity
22. Digital surveillance and valuation in datafied societies
23. Valuation and digital platforms
24. The social logics of platform units: A brief history of valuation practices online
Part IV: Valuation and societal change
25. Economization: Valuation and the boundaries of valuation games
26. Risky values: Seeing risk through the lens of Valuation Studies
27. Valuation and sustainability
28. Datafied and (e)valuated: Datafication as driver of contingent (e)valuation
29. The amateurization of valuation in the digital age
30. Worlds of rankings research
Part V: Reflections
31. Reflections on the emergence of a research field: An interview with Michèle Lamont
Index
