The price of science is calculated more and more decisively: from peer-review processes via journal and university rankings, impact factors, to evaluations. This volume does not start a counter-calculation. Rather, the discomfort with optimization phantasies becomes the starting point of current historical explorations in cultural studies. This also serves to investigate the instruments of valuation with regards to their practical effects and their discursive production of truth. The authors of the debate section address current practices of ethnological exhibitions from different disciplinary perspectives and discuss curatorial alternatives with Christian Kravagna.