Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of Nature

How do we attribute a monetary value to intangible things? This article offers a general sociological approach to this question, using the economic value of nature as a paradigmatic case, and oil spills litigations in France and the United States as real world empirical illustrations. It suggests that a full-blown sociology of economic valuation must solve three problems: the "why," which refers to the general place of money as a metric for worth; the "how," which refers to the specific techniques and arguments laymen and experts deploy to elicit monetary translations; and the "then what" or the feedback loop from monetary values to social practices and representations. Adapted from the source document.