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Paper short abstract

Values are central to healthcare but hardly explicitly theorized. To understand the role of values in societal transitions, we examine how values are interpreted, enacted, and negotiated in real-world practices. We present an interdisciplinary framework to study values and value conflicts in situ.

Paper long abstract

Values are at the core of healthcare, fundamentally shaping how caregiving is organized, priorities are set, what finds resonance, and what is resisted. Despite their omnipresence, values are hardly explicitly theorized. Often conflated with stated preferences or abstracted to broad principles few would disagree with (i.e. “solidarity”), such abstractions or simplifications obscure value dynamics in concrete practices (Oldenhof et al., 2025).

The role of value dynamics become particularly urgent to understand in relation to societal transformations like ‘ageing in place’. As the principles of welfare states globally are under pressure as they are struggling with ageing populations, increasing percentages of chronically ill patients and declined workforce, governments, technology firms and expert bodies are enacting imaginaries of ‘future-proof’ care systems for ageing adults. Such enactments mobilize promissory tropes regarding technological solutions or emphasize the importance of informal care networks.

To effectively understand the role of values in societal transitions, it is essential to move beyond abstractions and examine how values are interpreted, enacted, and negotiated in real-world practices. We present the contours of an interdisciplinary framework to study values and value conflicts in situ, integrating theoretical and empirical insights from empirical philosophy (Mol, 2008; Pols, 2012), valuation studies (Dussauge et al., 2015; Kornberger, 2017), pragmatist sociology (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Oldenhof et al., 2022), empirical bioethics, history and speculative design. Presenting some empirical vignettes, we illustrate how this framework can provide a robust analytical lens for understanding and addressing value dynamics, including value complexities and value changes, in societal transitions.