Performing Apparatus: Infrastructures of Valuation in Hospitality

Abstract

The authors examine infrastructures of valuation by asking how the specific materializations of categories and ratings make a difference in practice. Drawing on the notion of apparatus, the authors explore how different valuation schemes entail specific inclusions and exclusions that have material consequences for the valuations that are produced. Focusing on agential realist conceptualizations of apparatus allows a shift in attention to a particular reading of performativity in which different valuation infrastructures perform different phenomena in the world. The authors focus on two specific valuation systems within hospitality – star ratings of the Automobile Association and regional rankings on TripAdvisor – and examine how these make boundaries, direct agencies of observation and condition the possibilities for action. The authors consider the conditions of possibility that are increasingly being produced through digital infrastructures and highlight the performative uncertainties that are generated as a result of their materializations in practice.