Valuation as a Semiotic, Narrative, and Dramaturgical Problem

Value is, at least in part, about signs.But then the study of valuation as a problem requires confronting the multifarious debates on the meaning of signification.Several paths have been opened already, with many studies of valuation drawing from various traditions in semiotics, resulting in different understandings of what value assign is and does.And a similar point can be made about narration.Valuation is a narrative accomplishment and therefore it can (and has been) analyzed with the help of tools developed to inspect styles, tropes, and plots; and through different ways of connecting these to different theories of the rhetoric, narrative, and linguistic constitution of reality.And comparable paths can be (and have been) explored in which value is thought of as a performance, where valuation is examined from the perspective of dramaturgy, contrasting several understandings of what it means to act, to enact, to represent, or to express.It is now time, it seems, to acknowledge the fact that social studies of valuation rely -or can rely -to a great extent on analytical tools