Valuography

Valuation in Welfare Markets : The Rule Books, Whiteboards and Swivel Chairs of Care Choice Reform

“…There are several methodological challenges in an investigation of the current kind, having to do with both collection of data and analytical handling of data. As for data collection, the study thrives on a 'valuographic' outlook (Dussauge et al, 2015) from which valuation is seen to be multiple, indeterminate, and contested, as expressed in data. It is nested territory; for actors the stakes are high, and for people living in the studied county, the outcome from the valuation processes result in real-life effects.…”

“…This I refer to as 'methodological situationalism' (Stark, 2009) as advanced by pragmatism, in that I target perplexing, highly practical situations in which actors grapple with problems of worth. This strategy devises something that could be labelled a 'valuography' (see Figure 1.1) (Dussauge et al, 2015); that is, an empirical investigation of a practice where values are concrete matters. …”

“…Healthcare markets are no longer exclusively a concern and academic interest for health economics, but regain more and more interest from sociology, organizational studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, etc. (Dussauge et al, 2015;Mol, 2002;Moreira, 2013;Roscoe, 2013;Sjögren & Helgesson, 2007b;Zuiderent-Jerak, 2009;Zuiderent-Jerak et al, 2010). The effect is however that 'the' debate is highly heterogeneous, and it would be hasty to proclaim a conflation of the interests of academic analysts, media, and other commentators.…”

“…35 This stance puts the question of whether value could/should be analytically defined beforehand in a new light. Dussauge et al (2015) [W]e deploy a few clumsy and provisional placeholder-terms to give an indication of the sets of values which recur across the empirical fields of interest to us. We use words like 'economic', 'medical', and 'cultural' to point to the diverging registers of value that this volume explores.…”

“…These placeholder-terms stem from empirical work, and are not an appeal to analyse values using these words as the only categories. (Dussauge et al, 2015) The authors propose that we (analysts) need some idea of what values are (for studied actors) to be able to conduct analysis at all. Such 'placeholders' are to be deduced emically.…”