Conceptualized by John Dewey in the 1930s, valuation can be defined as a social practice whereby actors reflexively reframe the inherited unsatisfactory values. Values are not considered as abstract properties, predetermined benefits, private preferences or undebatable statements, but as observable facts, practices and judgements, that everyone can see in our attitudes, relations and gestures. Valuation is thus a process where ends and means always interact, and where “ends-in-themselves”, transform into provisional “ends-in-view”. Finally, valuation implies an ethical and political dimension as the pragmatists only embrace values that enable emancipation, and help democratic processes flourish.
