XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-24

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

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.