Bringing together diverse perspectives, this book seeks to delineate a systematic research agenda and, more challengingly, to imagine future methodologies and approaches to decision-making that do not sweep the irreducible plurality under an economistic carpet. This is essential reading for anyone interested in value-based approaches to art and culture and in less reductive – and more democratic – forms of valuation. Patrycja Kaszynska, Cultural Value Expert, Senior Research Fellow, University of the Arts London, UK.Plural Values of Culture in Europe is an exceptionally ambitious and rare achievement. Bringing together the often disparate worlds of cultural production, consumption, and administration, it offers an analytically rigorous, empirically rich, and theoretically sophisticated account of cultural valuation -- one that is as policy-relevant as it is intellectually pathbreaking.Vanina Leschziner, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada.Plural Values of Culture in Europe situates values within more formalised regimes of valuation and evaluation whose inner complexities it explores by examining, inter alia, the grammars and methodologies governing their formation; and by examining the operation of these regimes across the relations between different actors in the processes through which cultural policies are formed and put into effect (constituency advocates and lobbyists, cultural sector professionals, politicians and bureaucrats). A landmark text, then, offering a rigorous counter to narrow economistic framings of the value issues that cultural policies need to engage with.Tony Bennett, Emeritus Professor in Social and Cultural Theory, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia. Honorary Professor, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia."All too often the value of culture is primarily seen in economic terms, as illustrated by concepts like creative economy or cultural industries. Detailed studies from several countries demonstrate a far greater and nuanced richness of cultural values while suggesting how the potential of culture for society could be enhanced". Helmut K. Anheier, Senior Professor of Sociology, past President, Hertie School, Germany.