ABSTRACT
What is the value of ANT research into economic valuation devices? This question serves as a starting point to sketch the perspectives opened by ANT’s incursions onto the problem of value. I start by observing that while early ANT works took scientific research as a central object of analysis, and occurred in the midst of the push towards the “valorization” of scientific research, they did not regard the question of the economic value of research as central. Recent ANT-inspired analyses have addressed this question frontally, and they have radically transformed it, by shifting attention from the measurement and amplification of economic value, to the analysis of valuation processes, practices and devices. The chapter then explores what these analyses can bring to ANT research, on the one hand, and to contemporary political debates, on the other hand. I argue that the value of ANT research into economic valuation devices might well lie in its ability to broaden scholarly and popular visions of the economy beyond the locus of markets, and to provide analytical tools for describing and engaging with the economic devices that frame problems of value today.
