Valuation practices as drivers for (regional) sustainability transition

Abstract

The transition of the economy to a sustainable mode of production and consumption is a pressing political issue, of which the European Union's Green New Deal is just one example. There is also considerable scientific interest in these issues. The sustainability transition studies offer a rich body of research and perspectives on this topic (see, for example, Köhler et al. (2019) or Markard et al. (2012)). Even though transition studies offer a rich body of work and different perspectives, there is still room for new perspectives. I argue that the valuation perspective is a particularly fruitful one. The aim of valuation studies is to describe "[...] any social practice where the value or values of something is established, assessed, negotiated, provoked, maintained, constructed and/or contested" (Board of Editors, 2020). In valuation studies, the value or values of something are seen as enacted and therefore changeable (Heinich, 2020a). Starting from this understanding of how values are created, and following Jeannerat & Crevoisier (2022), I try to understand how valuation processes influence/affect efforts towards sustainable transition in changing socio-institutional settings. This in the sense that a transition towards sustainability requires a change in the way society values things or states of the world (Diepenmaat et al., 2020). This will be done by analysing the Swiss furniture industry and its task towards a circular economy. More specifically, the research will analyse the valuation mechanisms that may or may not have led to sustainability transitions in the said industry and, therefore, as a secondary effect, in the region.