Valuation Studies Method
Also known as: Sociology of valuation, Valography, Study of evaluation practices
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.
Key highlights
- Reframes value from a given fact into an observable practice, opening rankings, metrics, and prices to empirical scrutiny.
- Bridges STS, economic sociology, and cultural sociology, drawing on market devices, orders of worth, and comparative evaluation.
- Foregrounds the reactivity of valuation—how being measured changes the measured—which other approaches treat as mere noise.
- Reveals the politics and devices behind apparently neutral indicators, exposing whose criteria of worth prevail.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the valuation studies method when your object is the social production of worth—how something comes to be ranked, rated, priced, or judged—and you want to study that process empirically as it happens. It suits research on rankings and metrics, markets and pricing, peer review and credit assessment, audit and impact evaluation, and disputes over quality or merit. It assumes valuation is a practice equipped by devices and shaped by competing registers of worth, best accessed through ethnography, documents, and interviews. It is less appropriate when you simply need a valuation produced (the method studies valuing, it does not perform it), or when the relevant valuing is inaccessible to observation.
Strengths & limitations
- Reframes value from a given fact into an observable practice, opening rankings, metrics, and prices to empirical scrutiny.
- Bridges STS, economic sociology, and cultural sociology, drawing on market devices, orders of worth, and comparative evaluation.
- Foregrounds the reactivity of valuation—how being measured changes the measured—which other approaches treat as mere noise.
- Reveals the politics and devices behind apparently neutral indicators, exposing whose criteria of worth prevail.
- Its interpretive, practice-based stance resists generalisation and quantified comparison across many valuation sites.
- The breadth of 'valuation' risks conceptual sprawl, making it hard to bound what the method does and does not cover.
- Close observation of valuation in action requires access to often confidential settings such as rating committees or panels.
- It analyses how worth is produced but offers little guidance on whether a given valuation is itself good or just.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
What is the difference between valuation and evaluation in this method?
Helgesson and Muniesa note that valuation usefully covers both senses at once: the production of worth (making something valuable, as in pricing or rating) and the assessment of worth (judging the value of something, as in peer review). English conveniently lets 'valuation' span both. The method studies the full arc—how worth is simultaneously produced and assessed in practice—rather than separating an objective value from a subjective judgement of it.
What is a 'valography'?
A valography is a close empirical study of valuation in action—an ethnographic or documentary account of how a particular instance of valuing actually unfolds: who does it, with which devices, following what procedures, invoking which criteria of worth, and with what consequences. The term signals the method's commitment to describing valuing as a situated practice rather than theorising value in the abstract, paralleling how an ethnography describes a culture in action.
How does this method relate to actor-network theory and market-device studies?
It is a close descendant. The STS work on market devices and performativity—how calculative tools and formulas help enact the realities they purport to measure—feeds directly into valuation studies, and many practitioners share ANT's commitment to following devices and associations symmetrically. Valuation studies adds an explicit focus on worth and its plural registers, and it brings ANT-style attention to devices into dialogue with cultural sociology's interest in evaluative criteria and legitimacy.
Sources
- 1.Helgesson, C.-F., & Muniesa, F. (2013). For what it's worth: an introduction to valuation studies. Valuation Studies, 1(1), 1-10.
- 2.Lamont, M. (2012). Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 201-221.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Valuation Studies Method. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/science-technology-studies/valuation-studies-method