233044 SE The worth of things. STS, values, markets and governance (2023S)

The way we ascribe value to objects and processes in the world matters for how we choose to live in the world, to paraphrase an STS mantra. Three examples: What is the value of an ecosystem that might be destroyed by building a renewable energy plant? What is the value of a year of good quality life that may be achieved with a new cutting edge medical therapy? What is the value of an academic’s work in hiring for a professorship?
In all of these questions, and in many like them, valuations are linked to difficult decisions, often decisions that need to be made under high uncertainty. But these decisions have important consequences. Careers are built and destroyed, people, animals and plants live or die. At the same time, what value is in each of these cases is far from straightforward. It is not simply there, but needs to be produced in processes. Markets are the most well-known of these processes, but there are many more. For most valuations, there are also different, often competing ways of attributing value. In all of this, value can be defined in economic terms, or in other, different registers.
Valuation Studies is an approach in STS (and other fields) that analyses the processes in which values are made and the consequences the making of these values has for how decisions are made and more broadly, for how societies are governed. Valuation processes are very interesting for STS, because on the one hand, valuation processes draw on different forms of knowledge and use technological tools. Markets do not simply exist, for example, they need to be brought into being and sustained by infrastructures comprised of technologies and expertise. On the other hand, valuation processes are of key importance for understanding many processes we are interested in in STS, such as why scientists choose to work on some topics rather than others.
In this course, we will first read and discuss central texts in valuation studies to get a grasp on the perspective and vocabulary of this approach. Then, we will discuss work that analyses processes of valuation and their consequences in four different fields: the economy, the environment, health and scientific knowledge production.