Unsettling issues: valuing public goods and the production of matters of concern

Abstract

What are public goods – of any kind – worth? How are they valued, and made valuable? What expertise is involved in their production? Questions over the value of public goods – a sporting championship, the arts, scientific advances or quality of life – figure prominently in our public and political discourse, as politicians and administrators struggle to manage the often competing claims of instrumental, economic reason and intangible, cultural evaluations. We must decide not only what characteristics and ‘goods’ to value, but how to value them, sometimes in the less than fully-realized knowledge that modes of valuation are performative (Austin, 1978) of worth.