Organizing through Standards and Value Hierarchies

This session is a follow-up to our past session “Governing Value(s) and Organizing through Standards”, which sparked a lively debate on the intersections between valuation and standardization. While standards have been acknowledged as a fundamental form of organizing, its interrelation with value(s) is still empirically underexamined and undertheorized. In the context of natural resources, standards are particularly mobilized to account for abstract values, such as biodiversity, health, equality, sustainability or transparency. At the same time, how these natural resources are ‘valued’ and codified into hierarchies of value within standards with consequences for the use of standards to organize sectors, industries, value chains, built environments and nature. This time we invite contributions that explore the role of values and organization in an expanded way in the context of ongoing standardization. Instead of limiting attention to organization, we ask what role meta-organizations (organizations whose members are organizations) play in the creation, adoption, and diffusion of values-based standards. Who are these meta-organizations and how, and with what consequences do they participate in the construction of natural resources' value? In addition, and instead of limiting attention to the construction and accentuation of values, we ask what values are prioritized and, more importantly, what values are ignored and subordinated? What values are at the bottom of the hierarchy and what becomes valueless when standards organize production, farming, extraction, or conservation?