Valuation

Last updated: Tuesday, 02 July 2024

Specifically, valuation a a social practice.

Thinking about how the value or values of different entities (objects, services, ideas, etc.) are constructed, evaluated, and afforded meaning through various mechanisms, and by different actors.

McConnell, the glass expert, provided long accounts of manufacturing histories, explaining, for example, the significance of Venice not only as a place of production but also as a node in international commercial transactions. Later, he held a glass fish to his chest and exclaimed, “it’s not worth anything, next to nothing, but it’s Italian made. They’re still being made today but represents (sic) the aspirations of the working class moving into the middle classes in the 1960s/1970s.” — Helen Cornish et al., “For love and money: Navigating values at the antiques roadshow event” (2024)

Rather than expert evaluations dominating or usurping object valuation, the [Antiques] Roadshow Event reveals a more organic, and often collaborative encounter. Experts are sensitive to how their economic valuations may disrupt people’s emotional connections to their possessions and make efforts to balance use value or sentimental value, playing down economic worth when necessary. Owners end up taking what they need from these encounters, whether expanded stories to tell, rejections of calls to use items, or even help in finding a reason to let objects go. Together these experiences demonstrate how value is not a measurement, but a dimension of the thing and its context. — Helen Cornish et al., “For love and money: Navigating values at the antiques roadshow event” (2024)

How people, things, ideas/ideals are ordered.

“Value” as a noun, vs. “value” as a verb.

“Value” (singular) vs. “values” (plural).

“Valuation” vs. “evaluation”.

Evolution/extinction of an earlier, apparently settled regime of values, changing what is publicly valued in society. Think talk of “degrowth” and “post-materialist values”?

Assessment tools? Multi-criteria mapping?

Transactional regimes? Web-based rating and recommendation systems?

• [?] How is valuation entangled in the organisational and technological processes of economic exchange?
• [&] See also: appropriate technology? (“appropriateness” as a value, or evaluative heuristic)