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as the commodity-form became the dominant vehicle by which economic value was
expressed (and made to travel), and the predominant way in which human needs
and wants (i.e., use values) were secured.
An important connotation of Jackson's notion of commodifi cation is that it
points to interlinked transformations, including in the realms of
both
production
and exchange. That is, as consumption or demand is increasingly met via exchange,
production becomes increasingly oriented towards exchange. This is perhaps why
economic historian Karl Polanyi, in considering the signifi cance of what he viewed
as modern, market-centred economies, defi ned commodities '. . . as objects pro-
duced for sale on the market' (Polanyi, 1944, p. 75). This is a simple yet subtle
statement that does two things. First it links the dynamics of production and con-
sumption in commodifi cation, seemingly important (as we will see) if we want to
know not only how and why commodities are exchanged, but also something of
where they come from, and how they travel through various stages from inputs of
raw materials and labour, through transportation, storage and distribution, and
ultimately to markets (and waste disposal!). This is important to note not least
because overly singular focus on the realms of either production or exchange has
been a consistent source of tension in the commodifi cation of nature literature, and
in the literature on commodities more generally.
1
Second, however, Polanyi's decep-
tively simple framing implicates a shift towards economic production increasingly
motivated
by or for exchange.
This shift has profound implications. The signifi cance
of production motivated increasingly by exchange has long been noted, including
in the writing of Aristotle, in the work of numerous classical political economists
(including Adam Smith and Karl Marx), and of course by Polanyi. This lineage of
thought views with suspicion economic production driven primarily or even exclu-
sively by the pursuit of profi t and money as ends in and of themselves (rather than,
for instance, commodity exchange purely as an outlet for surplus production), and
this is a concern evident in more popular and pejorative invocations of the term
'commodifi cation' (see, e.g., Booth, 1994; Sayer, 2003).
2
Whether one shares this
normative concern or not, historically, the notion of commodifi cation '. . . as a
change from producing what previously or otherwise might have been simply use
values to producing things for their exchange value' (Sayer, 2003, p. 343) points to
a sociological transformation particularly apparent in and an important feature of
capitalist political economies.
Synthesising these observations, and recognising the need to consider what might
be distinct about the complex socio-spatial and institutional networks of contem-
porary commodity circuits in an increasingly integrated global economy, we might
usefully defi ne commodifi cation as interlinked processes whereby: production for
use is systematically displaced by production for exchange; social consumption and
reproduction increasingly relies on purchased commodities; new classes of goods
and services are made available in the commodity-form
3
; and money plays an
increasing role in mediating exchange as a common currency of value. And given
this, it might be useful to consider two distinct moments in commodifi cation. The
fi rst of these is the development of relations of exchange spanning across greater
distances of space and time (market expansion) or
stretching
. The second is the
systemic provisioning of more and more types of things (goods and services) in the
commodity-form, or
deepening
(see fi gure 9.1).
4
Note here in particular that an emphasis on commodifi cation suggests dynamism,
change, and process, pointing to transformations always more (or less) in a state of
