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2007), including the emergence of carbon offset markets as well as biodiversity
conservation programmes and wetland banking systems (see, e.g., respectively Mac-
Donald, 2005; Robertson, 2006).
Finally, it is not only in the strictly material sense that nature is increasingly
commodifi ed. Rather, what we come to know as nature seems ever more tied to
commodity circuits. From representations of pristine and wild spaces circulated to
sell travel and adventure tourism, to the invocation of pastoral mythologies in the
sale of everything from cheese to wine, and even to scientifi c representations that
help render biophysical entities alienable and commensurable (Bridge and Wood,
2005; Robertson, 2006), 'nature' in the semiotic sense of the term is also subject to
processes of commodifi cation.
In this context, a growing and diverse range of scholarship and activism has
tackled in various ways the commodifi cation of nature, the nature of commodifi ca-
tion, and the social and environmental implications of commodifi cation. Though I
cannot do justice to this full range, I would argue most of this literature is animated
by various forms of three key questions: (i) What does commodifi cation entail, in
general terms and specifi cally with respect to nature? (ii) How exactly are discrete
elements of nature (non-human
and
human, material and symbolic) made to circu-
late in the commodity-form? (iii) What are the interlinked social and environmental
implications of commodifying nature, and of commodifi cation more generally?
Defi nitions
Despite the ubiquity of commodities and a rich and growing literature on commodi-
ties and commodifi cation, there are in fact longstanding, enduring and important
differences in the ways that these terms are conceptualised and deployed. For
instance, some have invoked more generic notions of commodity as
anything
that is
exchanged or is exchangeable (e.g., Appadurai, 1986). This expansive sense of the
term implicitly recognises the diverse historical, geographical, and cultural circum-
stances under which peoples have met their needs and desires by means of exchange.
It also suggests (again, somewhat implicitly) that things become commodities through
exchange; thus, 'commodity' or commodity-form is an acquired trait (Castree, 2001)
representing but one phase in the 'complex social life of things'.
Yet, reference exclusively and simply to exchange as the defi ning feature of a
commodity misses some potentially important distinctions, particularly in a con-
temporary world of seemingly rampant commodifi cation (Sayer, 2003). For some,
then, a crucial role in increasingly far-fl ung contemporary commodity circuits is
played by money, not least in providing a common metric of value and thus allow-
ing production and exchange to be separated by great gulfs of time and space.
Castree, for instance, defi nes commodifi cation as '. . . a process where qualitatively
distinct things are rendered equivalent and
saleable through the medium of money
'
(Castree, 2003, p. 278, emphasis added). Similarly, Ben Page (2005) states that
'. . . a commodity is an object that is bought and sold
with money
' and that com-
modifi cation is
'...the process during which a thing that previously circulated
outside monetary exchange is brought into the nexus of a market...' (p. 295,
emphasis added). And Peter Jackson (1999, p. 96) argues that 'commodifi cation'
refers '. . . literally, to the extension of the commodity form to goods and services
that were not previously commodifi ed'. He goes on to point to the 19th century as
a period of exploding commodifi cation (fi rst and most particularly evident in Britain)
