Locating Value: Theory, Application and Critique

This book considers the concept of ‘value’ at the root of our actions and decision-making. Value is an ever-present, yet little interrogated aspect of everyday life. This book explores value as it is theorised, practiced and critiqued from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

It examines how value is operationalized, endorsed and contested in contemporary society. With international insights from leading scholars, chapters offer a diverse and vibrant geographical engagement with value to showcase its conceptual flexibility. The book explores value’s eclectic epistemic foundations; it’s ‘roll-out’ and legitimation across a range of policy fields; and its challenges and opportunities. The book draws on global examples of value in practice: from forest conservation in Indonesia; protected area management in arctic Norway; a state park in the US; certification schemes for biodiversity in the UK; protection of the international night sky; heritage planning in East Taiwan; a re-developed airport site in Norway; a, local food networks in Canada and the UK; a market in the US and urban development in China.

The book will be of interest to human geographers, political ecologists, heritage scholars and practitioners, planners and those working in public policy, as well as practitioners and policy makers interested in how valuation processes work.

Sam Saville is currently an ESRC postdoctoral research fellow in Human geography at Aberystwyth University and is extending her doctoral work on value and environmental politics in Svalbard. Her research and publications span interests in polar geography, political ecology, climate change and rural globalization.

Gareth Hoskins is senior lecturer in Geography at Aberystwyth University where he teaches on a variety of topics including urban geography, the politics of memory, heritage, and material culture. His publications involve case studies in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa.