Moments of Valuation

Ariane Berthoin Antal, Senior Fellow, WZB Berlin,Michael Hutter, Director, Research Unit 'Cultural Sources of Newness', WZB Berlin,David Stark, Arthur Lehman Professor Sociology & International Affairs, Columbia University

Ariane Berthoin Antal is senior fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, where she currently leads the research stream on "Artistic Interventions in Organizations" in the Research Unit "Cultural Sources of Newness." She is Distinguished Research Professor at Audencia Nantes School of Management in France and honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin. She earned her B.A from Pomona College, her M.A from Boston University and Dr. phil from the Technical University of Berlin. She has published widely in English, French and German on business and society, organizational learning and knowledge creation, and intercultural management, including the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge (with Meinolf Dierkes, John Child and Ikujiro Nonaka). She serves on the editorial board of numerous journals, including Organization Studies, Management Learning, and Gender and Management.


Michael Hutter is research director at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, where he heads the unit "Cultural Sources of Newness." He earned a B.A. in mathematics at Portland State University, an M.A. in economics at the University of Washington in Germany and a doctorate at the University of Munich. From 1987-2008, he held the chair for economic theory at Witten/Herdecke University, and from 2008-13 he was research professor for knowledge and innovation at the Institute of Sociology at Technische Universitat Berlin. He was invited as a visiting scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio (2000), the School of Information Management Systems, UC Berkeley (2002), and the Getty Research Institute (2003 and 2007). His publications include Beyond Price. Value in Economics, Culture and the Arts (co-edited with David Throsby) and The Rise of the Joyful Economy (forthcoming).

David Stark is Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University where he directs the Center on Organizational Innovation. His book, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life (Princeton University Press 2009) is an ethnographic account of how organizations and their members search for what is valuable. A recent essay on observation theory was published in Sociologica 2/2013, and articles in economic sociology appear in The American Journal of Sociology (2006 and 2010) and the American Sociological Review (2012) With photographer, Nancy Warner, he recently published This Place, These People: Life and Shadow on the Great Plains (Columbia University Press, 2013). Among other awards, Stark is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002) and an Honorary Doctorate from the Ecole normale superieure de Cachan (2013).

Michael Hutter, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
David Stark, Columbia University
Trevor Pinch, Cornell University
Antoine Hennion, Mines ParisTech and CNRS
John Brewer, Queens University Belfast
Svetlana Kharchenkova, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Olav Velthuis, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Phillipa Chong, University of Toronto
Sophie Mützel, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Anne-Sophie Trebuchet-Breitwiller, Institut Francais de la Mode
Claude Rosental, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Andrea Mennicken, London School of Economics
Michael Power, London School of Economics
Liliana Doganova, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation
Peter Karnoe, Aalborg Universitet
Holger Strassheim, Humboldt University
Arlena Jung, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Rebecca-Lea Korinek, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Ignacio Farías, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Ariane Berthoin Antal, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Kimberly Chong, University College London

"Taken together, these chapters provide a broad and multi-level overview of valuations as an analytical lens. Reading through the chapters, I was tempted to reframe many current academic issues as problems of valuation; creativity and innovation, institutional work and contradictory logics, identity and role dynamics, sense making and storytelling approaches could all benefit from thinking in terms of valuation activities and devices. The centrality of materials, aesthetics and practices in performing valuation further suggests a theoretical synergy; indeed, valuation might provide an interesting hook for materiality scholars to hang their hat on. What are the stakes of such a choice, and what would be gained and lost in the process?" -- Gazi Islam, Grenoble Ecole de Management/U. Grenoble Alpes ComUE-IREGE and Insper, Organization Studies

"A remarkable feature of the book is the persistent coexistence of, on the one hand, the vast array of techniques described to establish aesthetic and material bases for valuation, and on the other hand, the centrality of the principle of dissonance, that newness comes not from the success of these techniques but from their perpetual incompleteness." - Gazi Islam, Organization Studies (SAGE)

"This collection of brilliant essays suggests that a cacophony of work within cultural sociology can be understood more fully and simply within the frameworks of valuation of dissonance. Not only do these works give scholars important ideas to contend with, they suggest a path for more fruitful conversations about our social world." Shamus Khan, Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

"Through its focus on moments of valuation, this edited collection radically broadens the range of sites in which the unfolding of value can be observed, from a Chinese art village to Danish pig farms, an AI newsgroup, Berlin restaurants and social housing design. Bringing together key international representatives from sociology, accounting, science and technology studies and organization studies, the book demonstrates that valuation does not necessarily signal the domination of one regime of worth economy, politics, aesthetics over others, but happens at the intersection of different registers. In so doing, Moments of Valuation returns to the all-too-familiar question of the new a much needed sense of puzzlement and surprise." Noortje Marres, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

"Moments of valuation are certainly critical moments. They determine the fate of whatever it is that is appraised. They also alter the traits of whatever it is that is appraising. The contributions gathered here rightly take these moments as the crucibles in which reality is brewed. These are the sites where an apt vocabulary for the appraisal of valuation shall be developed." Fabian Muniesa, Ecole des Mines de Paris, author of The Provoked Economy

"Moments of Valuation is an essential contribution to the rich literature on evaluation which is attracting a great deal of interest in North America and Europe alike. The editors have assembled a splendid cast of stars and younger researchers who each shed light on different micro-situation where evaluation unfolds. This important volume shows paths for future inquiries and thus makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of one of the most fundamental social processes." Michèle Lamont, Harvard University, author of How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment