Evaluative Capital: A Micro-Stratification Approach to Academic Metrics

This article introduces the concept of evaluative capital, a form of personal academic capital grounded in quantifiable performance metrics (citation counts, h-index, journal impact factors) that function within both formal and informal academic evaluation rituals. Drawing on Randall Collins’s microinteractionism and Viviana Zelizer’s concept of circuits of value, and engaging with critiques of bibliometric indicators, the article distinguishes evaluative capital from Bourdieu’s symbolic capital by emphasizing its personal, quantifiable, and institutionalized nature. It develops a micro-stratification approach to theorize how such metrics are interpreted and converted into career resources through everyday academic interactions. The article examines how different actors (elite scholars, early-career academics, and late-career academics) accumulate and deploy evaluative capital, shaping patterns of academic stratification. Further, it explores the mechanisms by which metrics translate into professional advantages and the inflationary dynamics that can erode their value over time. Finally, the analysis situates evaluative capital within broader institutional and infrastructural conditions that shape visibility, commensurability, and symbolic valuation in science, shedding light on how metric-centric evaluation regimes transform academic hierarchies.