Valuation as Evaluating and Valorizing

The notion of valuation often blurs a distinction that is crucial to the understanding of economic processes: the distinction between processes of assessment (in which things undergo judgements of value) and processes of production (in which things are produced so as to be of value). Adapted from the introduction of an infuential collection of essays edited by François Vatin and first published in French in 2009, this essay aims to clarify this problem. Based on a collective research venture by a group of social scientists in France, this essay revisits the sociology of evaluation using the sociology of work, and signals the analytic distinction between the two faces of valuation: evaluating and valorizing (in French, évaluer and valoriser). The text was translated from French by Juliette Rogers and revised by Alexandra Bidet.