Study Preparation of Refugees in Germany: How Teachers’ Evaluative Practices Shape Educational Trajectories

Recent research shows that a remarkable share of refugees who have arrived in Germany over the past few years is highly qualified and has strong educational and academic aspirations. Preparatory colleges (Studienkollegs) and language courses of higher education institutions are the two main organisations providing obligatory study preparation for non‐EU international study applicants in Germany, including an increasing number of refugees. So far, research on conditions for refugees’ successful transitions into and through study preparation, and eventually into higher education, is scarce. The article fills a research gap on the organisational level by considering the established norms and rules of study preparation organisations and the key role of teachers in shaping successful pathways into higher education. Based on central concepts deriving from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, categorisation, and evaluative repertoires, the article aims to illustrate the organisational norms and rules in play shaping teachers’ experiences and perceptions of their students’ ability to study. The qualitative analysis of seven expert interviews shows how teachers differentiate between students with and without a refugee background in terms of performance and reveals opportunities and constraints to take refugees’ resources and needs in study preparation programmes into account.

Emotions and Valuations: Notre-Dame de Paris on Fire as a Case Study for Axiological Sociology

The emotional reactions aroused by the fire that partly destroyed Notre-Dame de Paris in April 2019 can be analyzed as “valuations” in the light of the pragmatic sociology of values, since they provide empirically grounded material allowing for the description and modeling of the actual implementations and effects of valuations. After a quick summary of the recent history of the pragmatic turn in sociology as related to the sociology of valuation, and a short reflection on the relationship between emotions and values, the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris is used as a case study in the light of “axiological sociology”, a model built on value judgments observed in various contexts, including the display of emotions. This article intends to demonstrate both empirically and theoretically how important it is for the social sciences to consider values as an autonomous issue, deserving to be treated as “axiological facts”, as any other kind of social fact.

What's it worth? Value and valuation of late-life creativity

New interest in late-life creativity has arisen in gerontology. To date, such research has mainly focused on the positive impact creativity has on older adults, but has scarcely contextualised older adults’ creative engagement. Drawing on the sociology of valuation, this article aims to contextualise late-life creativity by critically exploring how creativity gains, stabilises and loses its value and how these processes are related to perceptions, images and discourses addressing old age. Data from 13 interviews with older (60+) adults involved in creative practices in Austria are used to explore these topics. Interviews examined perceptions of creative production, everyday routines and personal attitudes towards ageing. Interviews transcripts were analysed using the documentary method. The analysis revealed three registers of valuation in late-life creativity: economic value, in which valuable creativity was given away at a high revenue; field value, where valuable creativity was appreciated by institutions or other artists in the field; and lifecourse value, in which doing a creative activity for a long time meant being able to produce a creative product that was high in value. This article emphasises late-life creativity as a process of value production that is structured by the making and evaluating of creative products and adds to the current critique that the narrow view of late-life creativity in its associations with wellbeing present a reductionist picture of the capacities that the arts and creativity have for older adults. The results demonstrate the potential for valuation studies in gerontology as they highlight the circumstances and practices by which the activities of older adults are (de)valued. For policy and practice, this article suggests imagining arts-based interventions for older adults beyond the realm of health and wellbeing, and encourages thinking about how valuable artistic experiences can be supported in later life.

Lowbrows as Rebels: Under What Circumstances a “Low” Musical Genre Can Change its Cultural Value? The Case of Disco Polo and Populism in Poland

The sociology of culture and the sociology of valuation and evaluation are closely related (Lamont 2012). In both cases, social hierarchies are the primary, fundamental focal point. Usually, sociologists of culture show what the necessary conditions for building social boundaries in a given historical context are (see e.g. Bourdieu, 1984; Ang, 1985; Ikegami, 2005). The main aim of this paper, however, is to present how lowbrow aesthetics can resist fierce social critique and how social stigma related to “low” tastes can be reversed. I focus on “disco polo” – a genre of simple dance music that became popular in the early 1990s, almost disappeared in 2010s, and recently came back all of the sudden. Disco polo (henceforth: DP) formed an entire aesthetics style, comprising not only music and a kitschy (thus stigmatized and ridiculed) style of videos, but also androcentric values behind the lyrics, a specific way of dressing – with prominent status signifiers such as golden chains or sport cars. Although the empirical material comes from Poland, the core issue is far more generally applicable: the rehabilitation of the lowermost (from the point of view of Bourdieusian dominant classes) kitschy tastes (Kulka 1996; Ward 1996), which is very different from camp sensibility (Sontag 2018). How can lowbrow consumers resist symbolic oppression and derive pleasure from culturally sanctioned “shameful” objects? Focusing on the historical example of this typically Polish music genre, I will show under what circumstances the open rejection of legitimate tastes and admiration of low tastes is possible.

Peer review post mortem. Bewertungen in akademischen Nachrufen

Evaluations have a long history in academia. They do not only ascribe worth to individual achievements like article manuscripts and project proposals, but also to the academic personnel. Evaluations of academic persons are particularly apparent in academic obituaries, a genre that evaluates lifetime achievements of deceased academics. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 216 obituaries that have been published in academic journals, this contribution reconstructs basic characteristics of evaluations of academic persons. The article highlights, first, typical practices of the evaluation of academic persons, second, temporal, national and disciplinary variations of selected evaluation criteria, and, third, it distinguishes modes of evaluation in which academics evaluate either themselves or others. Against this backdrop, the contribution develops an exploratory comparison with other academic and non-academic genres of the evaluation of persons: religious confessions, therapy, and biographies on scientists. The conclusion ties the findings back to general concepts of the sociology of valuation and evaluation.

The making of professors. Assessment and recognition in academic recruitment

How do academics become professors? This paper considers the making of ‘professor’ as a subject position through which academics are acknowledged in both organizational contexts and disciplinary fields. The paper examines social processes of recognition in 145 appointment procedures for professorships in the discipline of history at sixteen German universities between 1950 and 1985. Based on an analysis of over 1500 documents from archived appointment records, I investigate how academics are acknowledged as professorial in appointment procedures. The procedures invoked both (1) processes of judgement, in which worth and qualities are attributed to candidates, and (2) processes of legitimation, in which said judgements are stabilized and made acceptable. Using insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, this paper sheds light on the fundamental processes of recognition and valorization in academia. The findings contribute to the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies, which have concentrated on academic recognition in the realm of research, but paid less attention to such recognition in organizational contexts. Complementing this literature, the paper allows for a more general understanding of ‘professor’ as a focal academic subject position.

The making of professors: Assessment and recognition in academic recruitment

How do academics become professors? This paper considers the making of ‘professor’ as a subject position through which academics are acknowledged in both organizational contexts and disciplinary fields. The paper examines social processes of recognition in 145 appointment procedures for professorships in the discipline of history at sixteen German universities between 1950 and 1985. Based on an analysis of over 1500 documents from archived appointment records, I investigate how academics are acknowledged as professorial in appointment procedures. The procedures invoked both (1) processes of judgement, in which worth and qualities are attributed to candidates, and (2) processes of legitimation, in which said judgements are stabilized and made acceptable. Using insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, this paper sheds light on the fundamental processes of recognition and valorization in academia. The findings contribute to the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies, which have concentrated on academic recognition in the realm of research, but paid less attention to such recognition in organizational contexts. Complementing this literature, the paper allows for a more general understanding of ‘professor’ as a focal academic subject position.

No price without value: towards a theory of value and price

The relationship between value and price, a central focus of classical political economy, has fallen into the shadows of neglect in contemporary economics. This paper builds on a critical realist framework and findings from the economics of conventions and the sociology of valuation to develop a theory of value that returns to the relation between value and price. It argues that value is best understood as a view of the price that something ought to exchange at, and that these views are shaped normatively by a host of lay theories of value and the groups and organisations that advance them. Through their effects on our assessments of value, these theories also influence the determination of prices. Although prices in open systems are determined by many interacting factors, lay theories of value play a crucial role in the process.

Constructing Value

The chapter invokes recent advances in the sociology of valuation to contend that the IP/IPR nexus is the mechanism through which creative products are constructed as valuable: that it orders and settles the multiple evaluative principles at play in creative production. The chapter’s pragmatist approach suggests that IP/IPR is constituted by valuations as diverse as knowledge, networks, or legal stratagems and game playing, valuation practices that coexist with other cultural intermediaries in the creative industries. Although only temporary, such valuations are vital in the operation of markets for creative products: the business of creative work is the construction and exploitation of value through IP/IPR. Its core is symbolic production and it is this symbolic worth that is traded in markets for cultural goods. The symbolic valuation of worth is contingent upon the slicing of IP/IPR facets into works of all kinds that can circulate in the market and be valued.

Emotional Value Attribution and Comparative Value Assessment – Analytical Elements for a Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation

The sociology of valuation and evaluation is a ‘booming field’ (Meer and Lamont, 2016: 8) that provides the thematic framework for a plethora of different empirical phenomena. Yet, current debates lament deficiencies in a clear analytical focus and a profound theoretical conceptualization. In this article, we therefore strive for more analytical and theoretical clarity, first, by suggesting an analytical differentiation of value, values, value attribution, and value assessment as the objects of study within this research field. Second, we propose a theoretical conceptualization of valuation as emotional value attribution and evaluation as comparative value assessment. Assuming that value is nothing objectively given, we highlight the role of emotions for answering the question how value attribution relates to the comparative value assessment of persons, practices, ideas, and objects.