Abstract: Welcome to Valuation Studies! We are very glad that you have set your eyes on the very !rst editorial of this new journal. The aim of this inaugural editorial is manifold. We aim, !rstly, to provide some re"ections about the starting of this journal. This will bring us both to the issue of the perceived topicality of the study of valuation as a social practice as well as our provisional answers to the many questions embedded in the very embarking on such an endeavour. (Why a new journal? Why open access? Why a transdisciplinary scope? Etc.) Secondly, we want to take the opportunity to discuss what we take as the scope of the journal. We feel that the topic of valuation as a social practice would bene!t from a large amount of openness. Yet, there are also limits to the amount of diversity that can be fruitfully embraced within the (digital) covers of any journal. Thirdly, we would also like to address the many questions concerning valuation of academic work that relentlessly surface in an endeavour such as this one. (Will the contributions be any good? Will the journal provide a good arena for scholarly discussions about valuation and the study of it? Will an article published in Valuation Studies given any value in the valuation practices performed by the universities to evaluate faculty and candidates for positions? Etc.) Finally, we would want to touch upon the issue of further actions, ours as well as of others. Valuation Studies 1(1) 2013: 1–10

Abstract: As a contribution to the !eld of valuation studies this article lays out a number of lessons that follow from an exploratory inquiry into ‘good tomatoes’. We held interviews with tomato experts (developers, growers, sellers, processors, professional cooks and so-called consumers) in the Netherlands and analysed the transcriptions carefully. Grouping our informants’ concerns with tomatoes into clusters, we differentiate between !ve registers of valuing. These have to do with money, handling, historical time, what it is to be natural, and sensual appeal. There are tensions between and within these registers, that lead to clashes and compromises. Accordingly, valuing tomatoes does not !t into inclusive formal schemes. Neither is it simply a matter of making judgements. Our informants told us how they know whether a tomato is good, but also revealed what they do to make tomatoes good. Their valuing includes activities such as pruning tomato plants and preparing tomato dishes. But if such activities are meant to make tomatoes good, success is never guaranteed. This prompts us to import the notion of care. Care does not offer control, but involves sustained and respectful tinkering towards improvement. Which is not to say in the end the tomatoes our informants care for are good. In the end these tomatoes get eaten. And while eating performs tomatoes as ‘good to eat’, it also !nishes them off. Valuing may lead on to destruction. An important lesson for valuation studies indeed.

Abstract: Sociology and economics tend to focus more and more on the intermediaries involved in economic and social relations, in the shape of distributors, matchmakers, consultants, and evaluators. Once they are distinguished according to their forms, their types of intervention and their effects, the intermediaries are a helpful category in order to study the social organization of markets as well as the changes that operate on them, especially regarding the social and economic values of goods, individuals and organizations. We discuss in the !rst section the link between intermediaries and information, through an analysis of the functions they ful!ll that may explain their emergence, as well as the opportunistic behavior of intermediaries in relation to information "ows. In the second section, we adopt a more pragmatist perspective on issues of valuation mainly based on ”economics of convention”, which emphasizes the collective dynamics of valuation. We show how intermediaries contribute to de!ne valuation through their different activities and foster valuation frames that can improve the coordination of actors, but also reorganize the markets in different ways. We suggest an analytical distinction between the distribution, the temporality and the generality of the frames, and raise the issue of the valuation power of market intermediaries, their legitimation and the eventual regulation of their activities.

Abstract: This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What speci!c issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? 3. What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identi!es a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the speci!c issues and sites that deserve further attention.

Abstract: This paper examines counterfactual display in the valuation of carbon offsetting projects. Considered a legitimate way to encourage climate change mitigation, such projects rely on the establishment of procedures for the prospective assessment of their capacity to become carbon sinks. This requires imagining possible worlds and assessing their plausibility. The world inhabited by the project is articulated through conditional formulation and subjected to what we call “counterfactual display”: the production and circulation of documents that demonstrate and con!gure the counterfactual valuation. We present a case study on one carbon offsetting reforestation project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We analyse the construction of the scene that allows the “What would have happened” question to make sense and become actionable. We highlight the operations of calculative framing that this requires, the reality constraints it relies upon, and the entrepreneurial conduct it stimulates.

Abstract: Since the !nancial crisis of 2008, the term “crisis” has proliferated as a folk concept, and yet remained largely unexamined as an analytic concept. In this essay, I draw on my experience as a research assistant and research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, during what would come to be called the Latin American debt crisis, to contribute to rethinking of !nancial crisis. Putting aside the assumption that we know a priori the meaning of crisis, I bring into view the material devices, temporalities and, in the words of Bronislaw Malinowski, the “imponderabilia of daily life” entailed by perceiving and regulating crisis. Rather than high-level of!cials of the Federal Reserve Bank, the essay focuses on research assistants, junior economists, midlevel of!cials, and also mainframe computers with their glitches and bugs. The essay shows how local, historically speci!c processes of generating knowledge in a 1980s of!ce of the Federal Reserve Bank were part of grand projects of social reinvention, in which even the lowliest research assistant helped shape a narrative of crisis.

Abstract: Economic sociology treats the process of valuation and commensuration of resources as socially-embedded practices determined by historical, cultural, and political conditions. Empirical studies of valuation and commensuration demonstrate that the practices of creating metrics, accounting procedures, and other forms of numerical representations that denote underlying resources are bound up with social interests and instituted beliefs. Recently, cultural resources and culture production have been advocated as key drivers of economic growth in what has been branded the “the creative economy.” At the same time, a lot of cultural resources and culture production are, historically, not strictly valued in terms of economic worth, instead being commonly regarded as having an intrinsic social value. Such norms disconnect cultural resources and economic worth, while much culture production is simultaneously being funded by welfare states, making the allocation of public funding a matter of professional expertise. This article reports on a study of how of!cers of a regional Culture Agency allocate regional culture budgets and monitor culture production via processes of valuation and commensuration. The study contributes to our understanding of how valuation and commensuration play a role in non-market or pseudo-market settings where both political interests and wider social interests are bound up with calculative practices.

Abstract: The making of valuations is not only an activity cherished by scholars engaging with this journal. The performance of valuations is at times furthermore something devoured as a public spectacle. Calling something a “spectacle” might sound defamatory, especially if one relies on the rather daunting turn the word took after Guy Debord’s 1967 La Société du Spectacle (Debord 1994), but it can sound positive too if emphasis is put on the collective enjoyment, on the memorable performance and, in short, on culture. In this editorial introduction we want to use the notion of spectacle to point to an interesting topic for valuation studies in general and for Valuation Studies (i.e. this journal) in particular. Valuation is not only something that is done, it is in addition something that people may watch, as a spectacle. It is this aspect of valuation that we aim to begin exploring here. When we say that people watch the performance of valuations as a spectacle, we are to begin with thinking of television. Classic televised game-shows like The Price is Right (!rst aired in the United-States on NBC in 1956) or The Dating Game (on ABC in 1965) are landmarks in the global culture of assessment-qua-entertainment. They further constitute, we presume, critical ingredients of the education of hundreds of millions of persons. Antiques Roadshow is an example of a contemporary show where the multifaceted valuation of (preferably vintage) objects is the main attraction. The authenticity, curiosity, and market value of the objects are recurrent parts of the valuation Valuation Studies 1(2) 2013: 119–123