Kristin Asdal

• Asdal, Kristin (2026). Democracy as a Social Epistemology of Grounding: Document-Things, Little Tools of Democracy, and an Exploration into Their Modes of Grounding. Social Epistemology. ISSN 0269-1728. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2025.2595702. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Doganova, Liliana (2025). Valuation and Critique in “The Good Economy” Part 1. Valuation Studies. 12(1), p. 1–15. doi: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2025.12.1.1-15. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This two-part theme issue of Valuation Studies is the result of an invitation to investigate economic situations where we can observe how practices and instruments are working to combine the pursuit of profit with other forms of good, and the more overarching question of how the economic and the non-economic are in different ways entangled in the manufacturing of economies. The notion of “the good economy” proposed in earlier research (Asdal 2022; Asdal et al. 2023) was made to denote this double entendre.

• Asdal, Kristin & Doganova, Liliana (2025). Revisiting Critique. Introduction to Valuation and Critique in the Good Economy. Valuation Studies. 12(2), p. 195–213. doi: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2025.12.2.195-213. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  As we were writing this editorial, we learned with immense sadness of the passing of Michel Callon on 28 July 2025. His thinking has shaped the ways we study markets, valuation and the economy. It has spurred and enabled much of the analyses presented in the pages of this journal. His view of markets, inspired by the social studies of science and technology, is a powerful springboard to tackle many of the issues raised by processes of valuation in the economy and beyond. The topic addressed in this theme issue – valuation and critique in the good economy – is no exception. The introduction to the second part of the theme issue explores this topic with Michel Callon as a companion, putting emphasis on how his work sheds light on our inquiry. We would like to dedicate this editorial to Michel Callon as a humble contribution to the acknowledgement of the legacy of his writings for all scholars interested in the economy.

• Druglitrø, Tone; Morsman, Silje Rebecca & Asdal, Kristin (2025). Choreographies of co-modification: instrumentizing cod for immunology and the economy. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. ISSN 0391-9714. 47. doi: 10.1007/s40656-025-00677-3. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  How to make sense of the struggle of scientists in their efforts to answer demands to contribute simultaneously to the advancement of science and the economy? The life sciences are understood to be particularly affected by the increased institutional and political expectations to engender scientific innovations and value creation Fochler et al., (Minerva, 54:175–200, 2016). The expectations are often closely linked to the tools that life scientists work with, such as new sequencing technologies or model organisms that are invested with hopes of novelty. The experimental life of the Atlantic cod, which is our object of study, serves here as an entry point for understanding this significant feature of contemporary life sciences. The paper shows how equipping a species to do experimental work is not necessarily about having it perform only one type of job Clarke & Fujimura (1992) or performing in one, and exclusively one, site. On the contrary, an experimental organism may be promising and interesting due to how it can be put to work to perform both in and for science, and in and for the economy, simultaneously. In analyzing the double entendre of experimental work, this paper draws upon the analytical concepts co-modification and choreography that have been carefully crafted in close empirical studies. The notion co-modification is put to work together with the notion of choreography to delineate both the material and semiotic work that go into the drawing together of the inside and outside of the lab and the material arrangements that shape the rhythm of a disciplined and controlled lab site. Together we refer to this as choreographies of co-modification.

• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Document studies. In Felt, Ulrike & Irwin, Alan (Ed.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781800377981. doi: 10.4337/9781800377998.ch15. Full text in Research Archive
• Cointe, Béatrice & Asdal, Kristin (2024). The Performativity Test. In Geiger, Susi; Mason, Katy; Pollock, Neil; Roscoe, Philip; Ryan, Annmarie; Schwarzkopf, Stefan & Trompette, Pascale (Ed.), Market Studies. Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action. Cambridge University Press. ISSN 9781009413961. p. 100–113. doi: 10.1017/9781009413961.009. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Doganova, Liliana & Fochler, Maximilian (2024). Valuation studies as a frame in STS. In Felt, Ulrike & Irwin, Alan (Ed.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781800377981. doi: 10.4337/9781800377998.ch08. Full text in Research Archive
• Druglitrø, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2024). Experimenting with care and cod: On document-practices, versions of care and fish as the new experimental animal. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. doi: 10.1177/03063127231223904. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  A key ambition in care studies has been to study care in practice and as practice. By turning towards practices, care studies has rendered visible and acknowledged important work that is not captured through looking at formal procedures or official and written materials, such as policy documents and medical protocols. In this literature, document materials and the written have often been seen as unable to demonstrate and address the ‘specificities of care’ (Mol et al., 2010, p. 9). We challenge this view by showing how pragmatically-oriented approaches can be extended to the procedural and formalized aspects of care practices. We draw upon fieldwork in the life sciences—comparative immunology—investigated through experiments on Atlantic cod ( Gadus Morhua). How to care for fish is a contested domain; many uncertainties exist around how to care for fish so that legal requirements are met. We ask: How are existing legal and ethical principles and procedures put to work in cod immunology and animal research? By what document-practices and document-tools is care for cod in research negotiated and settled? How does the cod stand out as an object of care in the life sciences? Our article answers these questions by empirically teasing out how scientists navigate the terrain and arguing for the importance of bringing the document-based realities of animal research into analysis. We do this by delineating three different versions of care: procedural care, skilled care, and dispassionate care.

• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Facing Bruno Latour. In Pontille, David & Rabeharisoa, Vololona (Ed.), Une journée avec Bruno Latour. Presses des Mines. ISSN 9782385426088. p. 119–122. Full text in Research Archive
• Engen, Stine & Asdal, Kristin (2024). The politics of climate risk: How the climate issue is turned into a risk issue through the little tools and operations of finance. Journal of Cultural Economy. ISSN 1753-0350. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2024.2370258. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The notion of ‘climate risk' has become key to how finance understands and manages the climate issue. This paper seeks to empirically trace the making of the climate-finance nexus through analyzing a so-called roadmap for the Norwegian financial sector as a tool that worked to turn the climate issue into a climate risk issue. We show how the roadmap follows the definition laid out by the influential TCFD, that renders climate change a risk for finance, due to extreme weather events, but also due to possible changing conditions for finance. This latter risk is the so-called ‘transition risks’ stemming from how governments may affect finance through climate policy. We show how the roadmap enables the entanglement of financial and climate concerns by acting both materially and conceptually on the climate issue. First, the roadmap moves the notion of climate risk into the political system. Second, it turns the climate issue into a risk issue that must be politically handled as a transition risk for finance. As such, we argue, the roadmap partakes in a process of financialization that aligns the climate issue with the concepts and needs of finance.

• Asdal, Kristin & Lahn, Bård (2024). Governing as valuing: Assetization and the making of the Norwegian oil fund. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. ISSN 0308-518X. doi: 10.1177/0308518X241260588. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Recent scholarship has highlighted ‘assetization’ as an increasingly prevalent process in which valuation practices from financial economics are imposed on new aspects of society. This paper analyses the establishment of the Norwegian ‘oil fund’ – currently the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – as the outcome of such a process. It traces the shift in the Norwegian government’s valuation arrangements from valuing oil as ‘activity’ in the 1970s towards valuing oil as a ‘national asset’ from the mid-1980s, and shows how this shift happened through close exchanges between economic expertise and governmental procedures. The paper contributes to understanding assetization as a mode of governing by showing both how it happens through governmental tools and practices and how it can have direct material consequences. In the case of Norwegian oil, the introduction of new tools of valuation made the Norwegian government manage the oil resource in a new way, and led to a re-timing of the pace of its extraction. The outcome was speeding up the conversion of oil into financial holdings, and the establishment of the ‘oil fund’ as a new infrastructure for handling oil as a national asset.

• Asdal, Kristin (2023). From scarce resources to ‘the good economy’: a new ‘version of economization’ replacing Weber’s rational ascetism as the capitalist spirit? Journal of Cultural Economy. ISSN 1753-0350. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2023.2167853. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  One of the major merits to Keith Tribe’s new introduction and translation of Weber’s Economy and Society is to re-place Weber, taking him out of the firm grasp of (American) sociology and releasing him onto alternative planes for grasping economic life and the problem of social-economic explanation.Footnote1 It is as if he asks us to consider: What would happen to our way of relating to Weber if we read his main concern, in the context of his writing, as the economy and economics and not the social and sociology? Another major merit is to bring the English translation and introduction of Weber closer to the original German language and meaning, which consequently alters how we should understand Weber’s sociology.

• Asdal, Kristin (2023). The Nature and Politics of Documents: The Anthropocene as a Document Site. In Münster, Ursula; Eriksen, Thomas Hylland & Schroer, Sara Asu (Ed.), Responding to the Anthropocene: Perspectives from Twelve Academic Disciplines. Scandinavian Academic Press. ISSN 9788230403624. p. 245–266. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Anthropocene - the era of humans - refers to a time when humanity has left its indelible stamp on the planet, including its geology and biogeochemistry. Understanding the Anthropocene, where the risk of irreversible and catastrophic ecological damage looms on the horizon, is a daunting task and solutions seem to be difficult to come by. What we offer in this book consists of fifteen perspectives on the Anthropocene written by scholars with backgrounds in over a dozen academic disciplines - archaeology, biology, geology, cultural history, literature, art history, science and technology studies, anthropology, political ecology, geography and law. Together, they offer tools enabling us to grasp the Anthropocene as a multifaceted phenomenon that requires attention from across the social and natural sciences as well as the humanities. Unlike most academic texts, these chapters are written in a personal and engaging style indicating not only that the Anthropocene is a worthy subject of scholarly attention, but that its implications are existentially important to the authors, who are not just researchers, but also global citizens.

• Hoag, Colin; Heyman, Josiah; Asdal, Kristin; Reinertsen, Hilde & Hull, Matthew (2023). Government Analytics. Using Anthropological Methods, The Government Analytics Handbook: Leveraging Data to Strengthen Public Administration. World Bank. ISSN 9781464819810. p. 645–655. doi: 10.1596/978-1-4648-1957-5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter aims to present an overview of how anthropologists study bureaucracy and why that approach has value to the World Bank and its interlocutors. Anthropologists are most commonly associated with immersive ethnographic methods, such as participatory observation. In this chapter, we describe those methods and their usefulness, but we also highlight the heterogeneity of the empirical materials that anthropologists draw upon. The chapter makes the case that, while the ethnographic approach of anthropologists might sometimes be perceived as “messy” or “unstructured,” in fact, the efforts of anthropologists are motivated by an abiding concern with empirical rigor—a refusal to ignore any sort of data or to content oneself with a single view of such a multifarious thing as bureaucracy. This is to say that an anthropological approach is a holistic one, which envisions bureaucracy as a rich, multidimensional world.

• Asdal, Kristin & Cointe, Béatrice (2022). Writing good economics: How texts ‘on the move’ perform the lab and discipline of experimental economics. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. doi: 10.1177/03063127221079600. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Cointe, Béatrice; Hobæk, Bård; Reinertsen, Hilde; Huse, Tone & Morsman, Silje Rebecca [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2021). 'The good economy': a conceptual and empirical move for investigating how economies and versions of the good are entangled. BioSocieties. ISSN 1745-8552. doi: 10.1057/s41292-021-00245-5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Across Europe and the OECD, the bioeconomy is promoted as that which will succeed the carbon economy: an economy based in ‘the bio’ that will be innovative, sustainable, responsible and environmentally friendly. Yet how to critically approach an economy justifed not only by its accumulative potentials but also its ability to do and be good? This paper suggests the concept of ‘the good economy’ as an analytical tool for investigating how economic practice is entangled in versions of the good. Building upon the classic contributions of Weber, Thompson and Foucault in combination with valuation studies, this paper shows how the good economy concept can be employed to examine how the economic and the good are intertwined. Empirically, the paper teases out how what is made to be good in the bioeconomy is radically diferent than in economies of the recent past. While ‘the good economy’ of the early oil and aquaculture economy concerned how to insert this economy into society in a good manner, society is surprisingly absent in the contemporary bioeconomy. The bioeconomy is enacted as an expert issue, pursued by the tools of economic valuation, and based in the unquestioned idea that ‘the bio’ makes any economy good.

• Asdal, Kristin & Cointe, Béatrice (2021). Experiments in co-modification: a relational take on the becoming of commodities and the making of market value. Journal of Cultural Economy. ISSN 1753-0350. 14(3), p. 280–292. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2020.1846592. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Social studies of science have for many years analyzed and demonstrated the key role of experiments to science and the making of facts. But what is the role of experiments in market work? And what, if anything, can we learn from them about markets and commodities? It is perhaps tempting to say that we can learn very little. This paper investigates a series of market research experiments investigating consumers' valuations of farmed fish, and these are almost comical in their painstaking attention to mundane details. However, when looked into closely, they provide key insights into commodification processes and the scholarly literature to understand them. Most importantly, their analysis allows us to grasp how commodities do not simply emerge as the outcome of a one way process directed towards the market, but through a relational process that jointly works with and acts upon things and people, markets and production. The paper works with the notion of co-modification to trace and stay close to these relational processes. In doing this the paper simultaneously strives for an approach that is not framed by the dominant conceptual distinction between production and market, but instead directed towards the materiality and activeness of the things exchanged. The notion of co-modification emphasises that there is more to market that the human hand. The paper shows that it can also be used in a stronger sense to suggest that commodification is a process where things, people, production methods and markets are actively modifying one another.

• Asdal, Kristin (2020). Foucaults metode og nyliberalismen. Eller skal vi heller snakke om den grenseløse og intense innovasjonsøkonomien? Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon. ISSN 0800-7136. 37(03-04). Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Hobæk, Bård (2020). The modified issue: Turning around parliaments, politics as usual and how to extend issue-politics with a little help from Max Weber. Social Studies of Science. ISSN 0306-3127. 50(2), p. 252–270. doi: 10.1177/0306312720902847. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Ordinary political institutions such as parliaments remain under-explored in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the conceptual resources for studying politics are far less developed than for science. But sites like parliaments are far more interesting than are their received images. This article argues that novel re-combinations of the issue-literature in STS and the works on parliament and objectivity by the German scholar Max Weber can provide us with analytical resources for grasping parliamentary politics with new lenses. In fact, reading Weber in light of the issue-literature provides for a better understanding of his work, and points towards how Weber’s accounts are crucially about parliamentary politics as work – on and with issues and the matters at hand. In addition, Weber may improve STS’s accounts of politics by his way of including the ordered and procedural side to issue-politics: Issue-politics is both about ‘opening up’ an issue as well as coming to decisions and take action. The article underlines this by discussing an often-misread part of Weber’s work, namely his work on objectivity and points to how political procedure was a key inspiration to his understanding and developing of this notion.

• Asdal, Kristin (2019). Is ANT equally good in dealing with local, national and global natures? In Blok, Anders; Farias, Ignacio & Roberts, Celia (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory. Routledge. ISSN 9781138084728. p. 337–344. doi: 10.4324/9781315111667-37. Full text in Research Archive
• Reinertsen, Hilde & Asdal, Kristin (2019). Calculating the blue economy: producing trust in numbers with business tools and reflexive objectivity. Journal of Cultural Economy. ISSN 1753-0350. 12(6), p. 552–570. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2019.1639066. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The ‘blue economy’ has in recent years become a leading concept for envisioning what may come after the fossil-based era. In efforts at calculating the potential economic value of the ocean, policy-oriented documents seek to unite diverse actors around common goals. Through the calculation of numbers, large-scale and long-term policy visions are being crystallized. But how do such numbers come into being in practice? This article interrogates this question with an example from the Norwegian context: the established policy goal of a so-called ‘five-fold increase’ in marine value creation in the year 2050. While powerful numbers are commonly expected to be produced through the procedures of ‘mechanical objectivity’ that involve strict quantification and scientific methods, our analysis shows a rather different route towards a powerful number: By loosely combining tools developed for business management, the number is calculated by, first, openly combining qualitative and narrative operations into the calculation and then, next, decoupling qualitative uncertainties from the quantified potential. The result is a calculative process that takes the form of what we suggest to call ‘reflexive objectivity’ and a policy-oriented number that encourages risk-taking and action over restraint and precaution.

• Reinertsen, Hilde & Asdal, Kristin (2018). Ikke lenger uberegnelig og uregjerlig? Visjoner om et kalkulerbart, produktivt og bærekraftig hav i politiske tekster. Arr - Idéhistorisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7005. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2018). Å gjøre oppdrettstorsk spiselig. Innovasjonsprosa som verdsettingsverktøy. In Bjørkdahl, Kristian (Eds.), Rapporten: Sjanger og styringsverktøy. Pax Forlag. ISSN 9788253040523. p. 230–275. Full text in Research Archive
• Mangset, Marte & Asdal, Kristin (2018). Bureaucratic power in note-writing: authoritative expertise within the state. British Journal of Sociology. ISSN 0007-1315. 70(2), p. 569–588. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12356. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  What produces the power of senior civil servants at ministries of finance, positioned at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy? Max Weber has claimed that a hierarchical organization, meritocratic recruitment and procedural work provide bureaucracies with legitimacy. In particular he insisted on the role of Fachwissen (disciplinary knowledge) obtained through formal education. However, he also argued for the role of Dienstwissen, forms of knowledge and skills stemming from the experience of service in itself. Weber did not elaborate on this concept in detail, and few analysts of governmental expertise have examined this notion. We draw on the practice‐turn in sociology, combining the study of governmental expertise with micro‐sociological studies of administrative practices. By analysing interviews with 48 senior civil servants at the British, French and Norwegian ministries of finance about their daily practices, this article demonstrates that bureaucratic note‐writing and the procedural evaluation of such notes constitute a key form of expertise that yields authority. The study provides an analytical framework for understanding what administrative expertise consists of, how it is integral to procedural work, the forms bureaucratic hierarchies take in practice and how these three dimensions provide authority.

• Asdal, Kristin (2018). "Interested Methods" and "Versions of Pragmatism". Science, Technology and Human Values. ISSN 0162-2439. 43(4), p. 748–755. doi: 10.1177/0162243918773446. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this commentary, Kristin Asdal reflects on pragmatism as one of the methodological touchstones of Science, technology and society (STS). In its focus on practices, pragmatist STS can be prone to falling into a problematic presentism, obscuring the historicity of the practices being studied, and to falling into problematic material/semiotic binaries. But what does it take, in practice, to be pragmatic? In her commentary, Asdal points to how this ought to imply being open when it comes to our choice of methods, thus finding creative ways of maintaining a crucial recognition of history as well as relations between the textual and the material. This in turn might instantiate new, distinctive, and inspiring modes of pragmatist methodological insight—such as precisely in these special issue papers devoted to animal care. These papers are also inspiringly pragmatic, in the meaning of careful—in order not to be overtly programmatic, i.e. deciding beforehand your position or standpoint on a given topic, such as human–animal relations. Following on from this she puts forward the notion “interested methods.”

• Asdal, Kristin & Jordheim, Helge (2018). Texts on the Move: Textuality and Historicity Revisited. History and Theory. ISSN 0018-2656. 57(1), p. 56–74. doi: 10.1111/hith.12046. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Druglitrø, Tone (2017). Modifying the biopolitical collective. The law as a moral technology. In Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Hinchliffe, Steve (Ed.), Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More Than Human Condition. Routledge. ISSN 9781472448682. doi: 10.4324/9781315587639-4. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who ‘we’ humans think ‘we’ are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples’ everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with “more than human others”.

• Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Hinchliffe, Steve (2017). Introduction. The more than human condition: Sentient creatures and versions of biopolitics. In Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Hinchliffe, Steve (Ed.), Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More Than Human Condition. Routledge. ISSN 9781472448682. doi: 10.4324/9781315587639-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who ‘we’ humans think ‘we’ are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples’ everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with “more than human others”.

• Asdal, Kristin & Hobæk, Bård (2016). Assembling the Whale: Parliaments in the Politics of Nature. Science as Culture. ISSN 0950-5431. 25(1), p. 96–116. doi: 10.1080/09505431.2015.1093744. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2015). What is the issue? The transformative capacity of documents. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. ISSN 1600-910X. 16(1), p. 74–90. doi: 10.1080/1600910X.2015.1022194. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2015). Enacting values from the sea: On innovation devices, value practices, and the co-modifications of markets and bodies in aquaculture. In Dussauge, Isabelle; Helgesson, Claes-Fredrik & Lee, Francis (Ed.), Value Practices in the Life Sciences & Medicine. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780199689583. p. 168–185. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780199689583.003.0009. Full text in Research Archive
• Law, John; Afdal, Geir; Asdal, Kristin; Lin, Wen-yuan; Moser, Ingunn Brita & Singleton, Vicky (2014). Modes of Syncretism:Notes on Noncoherence. Common Knowledge. ISSN 0961-754X. 20(1), p. 172–192. doi: 10.1215/0961754X-2374817. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Many European societies are confronted by critical challenges. Traditional forms of authority are contested. Political authority has been displaced, scientific and medical expertise is questioned, and religious authority returns. There are ethnic and religious differences and conflicts, debates about migration and about the boundaries of the European community, its values and heritage. This article explores and characterizes what happens when authorities meet and negotiate their difference. To do this we draw on insights, analytical resources, and approaches from studies of Science, Technology and Society (STS). This discipline has developed powerful tools for exploring how practices generate different forms of knowledge, expertise and authority in specialist locations including laboratories, hospitals and organisations. However, STS remains underdeveloped in two crucial respects. First, the extent to which it has explored differences between major forms of authority is limited. This is a significant omission in an era of contested authority when, for instance, faith in science or in biomedicine is being challenged by the rise of new forms of religious authority or alternative therapies. Second, its concern with normativities and values involved in the enactment of authority has been similarly restricted. This, too, is a significant STS failing in an era when ethnic and religious diversity, ageing populations with the increasing need for chronic and end of life care, the role of the state and of parliamentary politics and authority, and state-religion relations are all crucial issues of controversy. This is the context for the article. Since authority is chronically contested and negotiated, the core problem addressed is to understand how such differences and contestations unfold in practice. In particular it analyzes how religion is involved, how religion interacts with other authorities and how these interactions constitute the enactment and development of normativity in society. The article investigates the forms of competence, knowledge and values authorities are committed to. It explores how such encounters are structured. It explores how they avoid turning those differences into overt conflicts. It explores what happens when conflict is not averted. It explores how conflicts are then rendered manageable. It explores and characterizes the skills involved, and examines whether the encounters reveal characteristic patterns or styles.

• Asdal, Kristin (2014). Politisk autoritet versus vitenskapelig kompetanse: Å ominnrede stortingssalen, rettslokalet og laboratorierommet. In Flaatten, Sverre & Heivoll, Geir (Ed.), Straff, lov, historie: historiske perspektiver på straffeloven av 1902. Akademisk Forlag. ISSN 9788281520431. p. 153–184. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2014). From climate issue to oil issue: Offices of public administration, versions of economics and the ordinary technologies of politics. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. ISSN 0308-518X. 46(9), p. 2110–2124. doi: 10.1068/a140048p. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Marres, Noortje (2014). Performing environmental change: The politics of social science Methods. Introduction. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. ISSN 0308-518X. 46(9), p. 2055–2064. doi: 10.1068/a140292e. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Druglitrø, Tone (2014). Veterinærene. En profesjons arbeid på grensen: For jurisdiksjon og velferd. In Slagstad, Rune & Messel, Jan (Ed.), Profesjonshistorier. Pax Forlag. ISSN 9788253037523. p. 700–734. Full text in Research Archive
• Ween, Gro Birgit & Asdal, Kristin (2014). Writing Nature. Introduction to Special Issue. Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies. ISSN 1894-4647. 2(1), p. 4–10. doi: 10.5324/njsts.v2i1.2130. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Gradmann, Christoph (2014). Science, technology, medicine - and the state: The science-state nexus in Scandinavia 1850-1980. Science in Context. ISSN 0269-8897. 27(3), p. 177–186. doi: 10.1017/S0269889714000039. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2014). Contesting the Animal Model: Axel Holst and the Controversy over Scurvy and Beriberi. Social history of medicine. ISSN 0951-631X. 27(3), p. 577–593. doi: 10.1093/shm/hku007. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2014). Versions of milk and versions of care: The emergence of mother´s milk as an interested object and medicine as a form of dispassionate care. Science in Context. ISSN 0269-8897. 27(2), p. 307–331. doi: 10.1017/S0269889714000088. Full text in Research Archive
• Hebrok, Marie & Asdal, Kristin (2013). Fra gull til gråsten. Avhending av møbler. In Strandbakken, Pål & Heidenstrøm, Nina (Ed.), Hinsides symbolverdi. Materialiteten i forbruket. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270997374. p. 183–206. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2013). Å verdsette fremtiden: Fra klimasak til oljesak. Fortid. ISSN 1504-1913. 10(4). Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2012). Versjoner av melk. In Bondevik, Hilde & Lie, Anne Kveim (Ed.), Rødt og hvitt. Om blod og melk i fortid og nåtid. Unipub forlag. ISSN 9788274775190. p. 187–200. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2012). Dyrs smerte og menneskers straff: tekst og kontekst i straffeloven av 1902. Arr - Idéhistorisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7005. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2012). Contexts in Action - And the Future of the Past in STS. Science, Technology and Human Values. ISSN 0162-2439. 37(4), p. 379–403. doi: 10.1177/0162243912438271. Full text in Research Archive

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• Asdal, Kristin & Huse, Tone (2023). Nature-Made Economy: Cod, capital and the great economization of the ocean. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262545525. 280 p. doi: 10.7551/mitpress/14707.001.0001. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  An exploration of the economization of the ocean through the small modifications that enable great transformations of nature.<p> <p>The ocean is the site of an ongoing transformation that is aimed at creating new economic opportunities and prosperity. In Nature-Made Economy, Kristin Asdal and Tone Huse explore how the ocean has been harnessed to become a space of capital investment and innovation, and how living nature is wrested into the economy even as nature, in turn, resists, adapts to, or changes the economy. The authors' innovative methodological and conceptual approaches examine the economy by focusing on surprising and numerous “little tools”—such as maps and policy documents, quality patrols, and dietary requirements for the enhancement of species' biological propensities—that value, direct, reorder, accomplish, and sometimes fail to serve our ends, but also add up to great change.<p> <p>Throughout Nature-Made Economy, Asdal and Huse follow one species, the Atlantic cod, and explore how it is subjected to different versions of economization. Taking this species as a point of departure, they then provide novel analyses of the innovation economy, the architecture of markets, the settling of prices, and more, revealing how the ocean is rendered a space of intense economic exploitation. Through their analysis, the authors develop a distinct theoretical approach and conceptual vocabulary for studying nature–economy relations.<p> <p>Nature-Made Economy is a significant contribution to the broad field of STS and social studies of markets, as well as to studies of the Anthropocene, the environment, and human–animal relations.

• Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2022). Doing document analysis: A practice-oriented method. Sage Publications. ISBN 9781529759792. 256 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2020). Hvordan gjøre dokumentanalyse: En praksisorientert metode. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISBN 9788202543631. 276 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Hinchliffe, Steve (2017). Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More Than Human Condition. Routledge. ISBN 9781472448682. 224 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who ‘we’ humans think ‘we’ are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples’ everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with “more than human others”.

• Ytreberg, Espen; Jordheim, Helge; Rem, Tore; Hvattum, Mari; Brekke, Torkel & Asdal, Kristin [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2014). Hva skal vi med humaniora? Rapport om de humanistiske fagenes situasjon i Norge. Fritt Ord. ISBN 9788299655439. 171 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Huse, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2025). The great economization of the Ocean: Following cod and doing empirical economy. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2025). Et sosial­demokratisk Amerika | Klassekampen. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Eydehavn er stedet norgeshistorien glemte.

• Asdal, Kristin (2025). Vitenskap og demokrati: Fem tiltak for at samfunnet skal stå skulder ved skulder for vitenskapen om fem år. Forskerforum.no. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Det er alvor nå, og på så mange fronter at vi nesten ikke vet i hvilken retning vi skal snu oss, skriver Kristin Asdal.

• Asdal, Kristin (2025). Fiendskap mot vitenskap | Klassekampen. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Allerede under Nazi-Tysklands framvekst advarte Robert K. Merton mot kildene til forskningens fiender.

• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Iphonen din har en moral. Og gjør noe med moralen din. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Direktoratifisering av universitetene? Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Det grønne skiftet går av sporet. Nå haster det at ekspertene snakker sammen. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Saklig­hets­fel­les­skapet. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2024). Vil ha faglig «verneplikt». [Journal]. Klassekampen. Full text in Research Archive
• Huse, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2023). Presentation, TIK Lounge and Launch Seminar, Nature-Made Economy. Full text in Research Archive
• Huse, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2023). Natur og økonomi: evige motsatser? Full text in Research Archive
• Huse, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2023). Natur og økonomi i havets brytningstid. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Huse, Tone; Fulsås, Narve; Sundsvold, Bente & Husebekk, Anne (2023). Natur og økonomi i havets brytningstid - Bpkbad og panelsamtale. Full text in Research Archive
• Morsman, Silje Rebecca & Asdal, Kristin (2023). Challenge experiments and choreographies of cod immunology. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2023). Et forsvar for kvalitetsvurderinger og fagfellevurderinger. Khrono.no. ISSN 1894-8995. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2023). Å arve verden. Vinduet. ISSN 0042-6288. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2022). Tellekanter kan være bra, særlig for damer. Full text in Research Archive
• Engen, Stine & Asdal, Kristin (2022). A new market for finance: how finance is becoming the new environmental actor. Full text in Research Archive
• Engen, Stine & Asdal, Kristin (2022). Good money for the good economy? The financialization of the environment and the politicization of finance. Full text in Research Archive
• Stilling, Marie; Asdal, Kristin & Druglitrø, Tone (2022). Forskningsdagene: Hvalrossen Freya. Fornuft og følelser. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Kjetill Sigurd; Johansen, Finn-Eirik; Qiao, Shuo-Wang; Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Morsman, Silje Rebecca (2021). Torsken skrotet deler av immunforsvaret. Hva kan vi lære av det? doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/viten/i/jBR2ko/torsken-skrotet-deler-av-immunforsvaret-hva-kan-vi-laere-av-det. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Det er ikke tilfeldig vi går til torsken for å forstå mer av immunsystemet.

• Asdal, Kristin & Lahn, Bård Lappegård (2021). Oil matters: Tools of governing and tools of valuation in turning oil into a risky asset. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2021). Det går et gjenferd gjennom nyliberalismekritikken. Morgenbladet. ISSN 0805-3847. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2021). Hvordan gjøre dokumentanalyse? En praksis-orientert metode. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2021). Including documents in the repertoire of practices: A method. Full text in Research Archive
• Molland, Hedda Susanne; Jørgensen, Dolly; Asdal, Kristin & Bjærke, Marit Ruge (2021). Panelsamtale: Hva er miljøhumaniora? Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Kjetill Sigurd; Johansen, Finn-Eirik; Qiao, Shuo Wang; Asdal, Kristin; Druglitrø, Tone & Morsman, Silje Rebecca (2021). Torsken skrotet deler av immunforsvaret. Hva kan vi lære av det? Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Lahn, Bård Lappegård (2020). Valuing the oil economy: On climate targets and ‘tools of valuation’. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Reinertsen, Hilde & Brenna, Anders (2020). Podcast: Den blå økonomien. [Radio]. Norgeshistorie.no. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2020). Following viruses - following documents. Teknovatøren. 19, p. 26–29. Full text in Research Archive
• Nickelsen, Trine; Asdal, Kristin & Reinertsen, Hilde (2020). Dokumentene former livene våre - og hele samfunnet. [Journal]. Forskningsmagasinet Apollon. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2019). Thomas Brandt, Mats Ingulstad, Eirinn Larsen, Marte Mangset & Vera Schwach Avhengig av forskning. De norske forskningsrådenes historie Oslo: Fagbokforlaget 2018. 688 sider. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning (TfS). ISSN 0040-716X. 60(4), p. 424–429. doi: 10.18261/issn.1504-291X-2019-04-09. Full text in Research Archive
• Reinertsen, Hilde & Asdal, Kristin (2018). Humaniora til havs. Politiske dokumenter som kunnskapshistoriske tilnærminger til humanistisk miljøforskning. Full text in Research Archive
• Druglitrø, Tone & Asdal, Kristin (2018). Accounts that may move: Material-semiotics and the more-than-human condition. Full text in Research Archive
• Reinertsen, Hilde; Asdal, Kristin & Hobæk, Bård (2017). The little tools of large-scale visions: Seeing like a firm. Conference presentation. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Hobæk, Bård & Reinertsen, Hilde (2016). Hvem former havsatsingen? Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Hobæk, Bård & Reinertsen, Hilde (2016). Ble Helgesen akterutseilt? Dagens næringsliv. ISSN 0803-9372. Full text in Research Archive
• Reinertsen, Hilde; Asdal, Kristin & Hobæk, Bård (2016). The Little Tools of Large Scale Visions: Seeing Like a Firm. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Brekke, Torkel; Hvattum, Mari; Jordheim, Helge; Rem, Tore & Sandmo, Erling Sverdrup [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2014). Krise nå igjen? p. 22–23. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Brekke, Torkel; Hvattum, Mari; Jordheim, Helge; Rem, Tore & Sandmo, Erling Sverdrup [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2014). Humanioras muligheter. p. 4–5. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Brekke, Torkel; Hvattum, Mari; Jordheim, Helge; Rem, Tore & Sandmo, Erling Sverdrup [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2014). Hva skal vi med humanioradebatten? p. 24–25. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2014). For mye etikk av det gode. Dagens næringsliv. ISSN 0803-9372. p. 48–49. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin; Brekke, Torkel; Hvattum, Mari; Jordheim, Helge; Rem, Tore & Sandmo, Erling Sverdrup [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2014). Hva skal vi med nytte? Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.). ISSN 0804-3116. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin & Marres, Noortje (2014). Guest editorial. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. ISSN 0308-518X. 46(9), p. 2055–2064. doi: 10.1068/a140292e. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2013). Political Animals: Re-setting parliament, the lab and the courtroom. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2013). Straffeloven av 1902: Juridisk ekspertise versus politisk autoritet. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2013). Det er i laboratoriet det skjer. Full text in Research Archive
• Asdal, Kristin (2013). Models as contested objects. Full text in Research Archive
• Engen, Stine; Asdal, Kristin & Doganova, Liliana (2025). What climate change is to Finance. An investigation into value and the notion of climate risk. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis is about the notion of climate risk and the relations it establishes between finance, questions of value and climate change. Finance has been denoted a central place in the politics of climate change in recent years, noticeable, for example, in how the UN climate conferences since 2021 have included a designated “Finance Day”. A pivotal moment for this development was the 2015 Paris Agreement, which emphasised the importance of shifting financial flows to enable a green transition. The question then is, how to make finance take climate change into account or, conversely, how to make climate change into something of financial value? One of the main ways the relationship between finance and climate change has been conceptualised is as risk. In particular, the notion of climate risk is tied to the idea that climate change may devalue financial assets at a large scale, ultimately causing a financial crisis. It has been noted how this idea has been brought forth both to incentivise financial actors to start thinking about climate change as a financial risk and move their funds accordingly and because of the worry that a failure to account for climate change could threaten the stability of the financial system. In recent years, climate risk has been established in larger reporting frameworks, but it is not fully understood how finance makes sense of climate risk and what it enables in practice. Through four papers, this thesis contributes to this understanding and seeks to answer the overriding research question: What is climate risk to finance? I answer this question by investigating how the notion of climate risk is shaped in practice through the sites, tools and valuations of finance. The sites I investigate are the main organisation for the Norwegian financial sector, central bank communities, the political apparatus, the climate conference in Glasgow and the market. I thus investigate climate risk in sites that can be said to be part of “the financial world”, in sites of politics and in the relations that are established between them. More specifically, I analyse these sites mainly through documents that are produced in these sites, or in relation to them, and where climate risk is made active. To shed light on how climate risk is both something that is part of larger sociotechnical networks and something that must be made sense of in the different practices, I approach climate risk through actor-network theory and the related pragmatist traditions valuation studies and cultural economy. I also make use of a practice-oriented approach to documents, which underlines how the ocuments are both discursive and material artefacts that enable climate risk to act in different ways. The first paper analyses a roadmap for the Norwegian financial sector and how it took part in moving the notion of climate risk, as formulated by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), into the state apparatus. More specifically, the paper shows how this movement resulted in the appointment of a new task for the Financial Supervisory Authority to oversee climate risk, in effect making the financial risks of climate policy a concern for government. In the second paper, I investigate a document published by the Bank for International Settlements and Banque de France, which discusses how central banks should understand and work on the financial risks of climate change. As I show, climate risk is framed as uncertaintyas opposed to some measurable risk, leading to a critique of economic knowledge. The conclusion becomes that central banks should handle climate change neither through risk modelling nor explicit political measures. Instead, it is proposed to connect the concern for the stability of the financial system and the stability of the Earth’s climate so that they are governed together. The third paper investigates a book written by Mark Carney, who has become an important figure in the intermingling of financial and climate concerns. I analyse the value theory put forth in the book, which frames finance as a value-creating and not value-extracting activity that can enable a green transition. An important element of this value theory is climate risk. I read the book in relation to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which was set up by Carney during the 2021 climate conference in Glasgow and which comprised some of the world’s largest banks, insurers, asset managers and pension funds. At the time of writing, this alliance has been more or less dismantled, and I argue that the reasons for this canbe seen in the “value economy” put forth in the book, which obfuscates the need for political frames that guide financial action. The fourth paper analyses climate risk in investment practice and shows how climate risk is framed as the financial risks of future climate policy and a tool that works to align financial risk with climate policy goals. I compare the economization of climate change conducted by climate risk to the approach afforded by carbon markets. In making this comparison, I point to how climate risk and carbon markets operate with different framings of the climate problem they provide solutions to. I argue that while carbon markets approach climate change as a “pollution issue”, climate risk frames it as a “transition issue”, moving it into the future. Concretely, I show how this framing leads to an allocation of capital exclusively to high-emissions companies so that risk management can be used to decarbonise these companies. As I note, it is precisely the assumption that climate policy will become stricter in the future which leads to this action. By taking climate risk as the empirical object of the thesis, the different papers show how climate risk becomes both a technology, a tool of valuation and an idea that must be made sense of in the different practices. A main argument I make in the thesis is that climate risk should not be understood as something ready-made, either as an idea or after it has been defined in regulatory frameworks. As I show, when brought into specific contexts, the framing of climate risk is intricately tied in with questions of which forms of knowledge, tools and political orderings are required for its management. The more specific argument I make across the four papers is that climate risk ties the concerns of finance and the concerns of climate change more closely together. I show how these connections are made normatively by tying climate change mitigation to the need for a stable financial system, and how they are established concretely in the political apparatus by making the financial risks of climate policy into a concern for government. Conversely, climate risk sets up financial valuation as a tool that is to enable and guide political action; by pricing future climate policy, climate risk is thought to internalise and enable policy objectives. As I point to, however, political frames are the precondition for climate risk to have financial consequences and thus turn climate change into climate risk

• Lahn, Bård & Asdal, Kristin (2022). Carbon connections: On the work of making climate change an issue for politics and government. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive

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