In terms of economic sociology, Viviana Zelizer and the cultural school of economic sociology can be seen as an early precursor to this area of interest, with following work by her students and postdoctoral researchers (e.g. Olav Velthuis in art),[1] along with Patrick Aspers, Jens Beckert, Marion Fourcade,[2][3] Michele Lamont, Donald MacKenzie, David Stark[4][5] and many others.
Considerably more could be said on the topic about French sociologists, given the longstanding traditions of theorists like Pierre Bourdieu.
Part of this is due to the overlap of work from science and technology studies (STS) and sociology of knowledge, where we again see influences from e.g. Donald MacKenzie and Karin Knorr Cetina,[6] as well as Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and related Paris-Mines innovation school and others, such as Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot.
[7] The area shows growing interest, given a number of books[8] and a degree of institutionalization as a potential subfield shown by the first issue of the academic journal Valuation Studies[9] in 2013,[10] while existing journals in cultural sociology and economic sociology, like Poetics and Socio-Economic Review, show a strong treatment of the topic even before the valuation label came to have a common and recognizable use as a research focus (e.g. specifically used as a keyword in journal article metadata).
One reason is that people working in this area do not solely publish in their own field, but often send papers to accounting, sociology or management in order to find an appropriate home for the specific manuscript.