Accounting and the plasticity of valuation

This chapter explores exemplary moments of dissonance and innovation in accounting valuation. Examining the cases of value-added accounting, brand accounting, fair value accounting and impairment testing, this chapter traces debates and show that accounting valuation is ‘plastic’ due to both methodological variability and the different domains of worth that get registered within accounting concepts and techniques. Accounting is both a powerful vehicle of economization, valorising economic constructions of actors and things, and a practice which has been significantly destabilized by processes of financialization, namely ideas and practices of financial economics. The plasticity of accounting should not be read as weakness. This chapter confronts the apparent paradox that the power and reach of accounting as a practice of ordering and valorising has never been greater than at the time of crisis when its core practices of measurement and valuation are most contested and plural.