The Price is Right: An Orders of Worth Analysis of Positions on Housing Prices

In this pilot study, we investigate how community leaders in a rural Texas small town argue about economic development. To study this, we examine 33 semistructured interviews collected by undergraduate interns and analyze this data using Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s Orders of Worth framework. Using this approach, we find that morals exacerbate a local housing crisis. This study extends Saul Carliner’s work by showing an alternative way to name the competing value systems that trouble the assessment of technical documentation. However, this pilot study is also important to the field of communication design insofar as it models the use of a new theoretical framework to study the articulation of different value systems at work in practices of community advocacy.