JS-24
Price, Value & Worth: Conceptualizing Social Practices of E/Valuation Pt. 1

Tuesday, 17 July 2018: 10:30-12:20
Location: 801B (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC35 Conceptual and Terminological Analysis (host committee)
RC02 Economy and Society

Language: English

Valuation and evaluation are widespread social practices. Investigating these practices is essential to understanding how social order comes about and changes over time. With the spread of capitalism, (e)valuations have come to be understood primarily in economic terms. And with the spread of neoliberalism and market fundamentalism, governments and organizations are increasingly turning to valuation mechanisms to quantify the worth of people, processes, and outcomes. For example, credit rating agencies evaluate individuals’ creditworthiness, bank stress tests evaluate banks’ stability, and stock markets evaluate corporations’ worth. One of the striking characteristics of such market valuations is that they create commensurations that are interpreted as objective, informed, depersonalized, apolitical and expert. Despite such apparently successful abstracting, a leitmotif in a number of research programs (e.g., the New Economic Sociology, and current reformulations of Critical Theory) is that the economy and social life are not separate spheres with distinctive values and practices. Exploring this productive tension, this joint session of RC02 and RC35 collects together conceptual as well as theoretically-informed empirical papers that investigate the beliefs, values and practices embedded in diverse social practices of (e)valuation and the role and functions of (e)valuations as well as devaluations for the reproduction and development of contemporary society. We particularly encourage papers that unpack social processes of price formation, valuation, and the assessment of worth. A second set of papers is presented on Wednesday, July 18, 17:30-19:20.
Session Organizers:
Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA and David STRECKER, University of Frankfurt, Germany
Chair:
Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA
Oral Presentations
Valuation As Science and Art in Asset Management
Ekaterina SVETLOVA, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Evaluation As a Two-Way Process
Naoki IGUCHI, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Valuation Constellations
Frank MEIER, University of Bremen, Germany; Thorsten PEETZ, University of Bremen, Germany; Désirée WAIBEL, University of Bremen, Germany
Market Impurity: Welfare Liberalization As Moral Transgression
Morten FREDERIKSEN, Aalborg University, Denmark