Valuation Studies Method

The valuation studies method treats valuation—the production, measurement, ordering, and contestation of worth—as a social practice to be studied empirically rather than a hidden mental act or a settled economic fact. Consolidated by Claes-Fredrik Helgesson and Fabian Muniesa and complemented by Michèle Lamont's comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation, it follows how rankings, metrics, prices, and evaluation procedures actually do their work, and asks how worth comes to be, by whom, with which devices, and to what effect.