ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the production of markets and prices, as well as more general economic framings of value, in domains where value(s) were framed in non-economic terms. It focuses on research conducted through a project designed in response to a call from the UK’s Leverhulme Trust for research focusing on ‘value’. The book examines a number of separate experiments in the articulation and calculation of value in the interconnected fields of policy and governance regarding development, environment and conservation. It deals with the development and application of specific ‘calculative devices’, i.e. new techniques and tools of quantification either working alongside traditional balance-sheet cost accounting at the firm level, or being used to influence social outcomes by public and private actors. The book offers an explanation for why carbon markets have declined in terms of a number of interconnected meanings of value.
