Geographies of value and valuation: On boundary objects, a sensibility and trajectories

This article introduces the special issue on ‘Geographies of Value and Valuation’ and has a threefold objective. Apart from introducing the contributions to the special issue, it reviews important modes of thinking with regard to the spatial politics of value and valuation, and identifies some ways forward for geographers’ engagement with questions of value, valuation and value experience. It discusses Marxist thought on value primarily by considering recent texts by David Harvey, and reflects on the multiple ways in which value is performed through the philosophies of Brian Massumi and John Dewey, diverse economy scholarship, and the burgeoning research in sociology and science and technology studies on valuation. It also encourages geographers to consider valuation as more than the preserve of humans, to heed value as non-cognitive experience, and to experiment with value, valuation and value experience to affirm, enact and institutionalize more-than-capitalist worlds at a time of poly-crisis. Engaged pluralism and cross-fertilization across theoretical traditions will help geographers in realizing the potential contributions their engagement with value and valuation can make over and above the considerable achievements so far.