Land, Values, and Valuation Work: Moral Imaginaries of Land Markets in England and Germany

Land markets are commonly thought to deviate from the neoclassical model of perfect competition due to natural scarcity, their asset-like character, and the fictitious features of what is traded. But how can such a recalcitrant market object be valued and exchanged? This paper introduces a novel perspective on land markets as moral imaginaries. Based on archival and ethnographic research in the field of land valuation in England and Germany, this article reveals how valuation work renders land a legitimate market good by enacting moral visions of what ‘the land market’ is and what it ought to be as an object of knowledge. While in England the imaginary of restless land markets emerged ‘bottom-up’ around valuers’ pragmatic engagement with the real estate sector, in Germany the careful post-war re-liberalization of the land market was intimately tied to the imaginary of orderly markets enforced through the tight legal framework of the building code to counter speculation. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the critical reimagining of land markets in the 21st century.