Theme Call for Abstracts

Title: Comparing, Categorizing, Valuating: Entangled Modes of Ordering

Editors: Editors: Thomas Müller (Bielefeld University), Leopold Ringel (Bielefeld University), Elisa Ronzheimer (Bielefeld University), Jørgen Sneis (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich).

In our personal and professional lives, we are constantly categorizing, comparing, and valuating: we identify people’s gender; we grade term papers; we hold some artworks in esteem when visiting an exhibition while perhaps showing disregard for others. These are merely a few examples for countless acts of comparing, categorizing, and valuating people, performances, artefacts, organizations, governments, etc. Though analytically distinct, such practices are in fact often deeply interwoven in dense webs of subtle, yet powerful modes of social, cultural, and political ordering. This theme call invites papers that explore the different modes of ordering that emerge from or rely on combinations and entanglements of practices of categorizing, comparing, and valuating.

Comparing (e.g., Epple et al., 2020; Deville et al. 2016; Heintz, 2016; Steinmetz, 2019), categorizing (e.g., Bowker & Star, 1999; Navis & Glynn, 2010; Zuckermann, 1999), and valuating (e.g., Karpik, 2010; Kornberger et al., 2015; Lamont, 2012) have each attracted considerable scholarly attention over the past decades. Despite sharing many interests – whether it con-cerns research questions, empirical themes, epistemologies, or social theories – they have largely remained “separate research fields” (Heintz, 2021, p. 6), with a proclivity to privilege one of the concepts while relegating the others to being subprocesses. The theme issue in-tends to overcome these divisions by fostering dialogue across established boundaries. In-stead of privileging one concept, we invite submissions that study categorizing, comparing, and valuating as linked modes of ordering.

The three research fields share several themes. Notably, all three emphasize that practices of categorizing, comparing, and valuating are shaped by and, in turn, shape the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they are performed. They (re)produce but also challenge hier-archies, orders of worth, and the distribution of various forms of capital. In short, they gener-ate different modes of ordering. We propose to organize the dialogue around three themes in particular: (1) the actors or communities that combine practices of categorizing, comparing, and valuating (groups, communities, professions, or other actors) (2) the factors that enable, shape, facilitate, constrain, or prohibit combinations between these practices; (3) the effects that combinations of these practices have on social, cultural, and political modes of ordering.

We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions. Given our aim to facilitate dialogue between separate research fields, we are particularly interested in papers that do not focus on just one of the three practices but rather explore linkages between categorizing, compar-ing, and valuating, thereby approaching them as entangled modes of ordering. The three themes translate into a range of questions that contributions could address. These questions include, but are not limited to, the following:

- How do practices of categorizing, comparing and valuating relate to each other?
- When and for what purposes do actors combine practices of categorizing, comparing, and valuating?
- In which contexts – organizations, networks, fields, discourses, legal frameworks, mar-kets, institutional domains etc. – are these actors embedded and how do these contexts shape the combinations and entanglements of practices of comparing, categorizing, and valuating?
- What social structures, orders of worth, or status orders do these practices affirm, con-test, or change?
- How, and with what effects, have the entanglements between practices of categorizing, comparing, and valuating changed over time?

Expressions of interest shall be submitted in the form of an extended abstract (about 1.000 words) by email to the editors by March 31, 2024. Selected authors will then be invited to submit full papers for peer review by October 1, 2024.

Please address queries and expressions of interest to Thomas Müller (thomas.mueller@uni-bielefeld.de), Leopold Ringel (leopold.ringel@uni-bielefeld.de); Elisa Ronzheimer (elisa.ronzheimer@uni-bielefeld.de(; Jørgen Sneis (J.Sneis@lmu.de).

Important dates
- March 31, 2024: Extended abstracts due
- April 15, 2024: Notification of authors
- October 1, 2024: Full papers due (for peer review)