Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Commodification
of labour-power
(fictitious); tied to
commodification
of “land” or nature
(also fictitious)
Increasing reliance
on goods and
services purchased
with money in the
commodity-form
Commodification
as stretching and
deepening
Expanding scale
and scope of
commodification-
including spatial
expansion.
Figure 9.1
Commodifi cation as integrated processes of stretching and deepening,
including the increasing commodifi cation of biophysical nature (i.e., the circulation of
discrete socio-natures in the commodity-form).
fl ux and transition (Castree, 2001). Despite evident tendencies, there is a diversity
of ways in which discrete goods and services come to be produced, circulated and
exchanged in the commodity-form, shaped in part by the material and discursive
character of what is being commodifi ed, as well as the geographical and historical
context in which these processes occur. In no way does any of this imply that there
is a single path to commodity status (this is a particularly important theme in the
commodifi cation of nature literature). Moreover, and as I return to below, the
process-oriented valence of commodifi cation suggests the possibility of reversal, and
thus of (de)commodifi cation (Page, 2005; Sayer, 2003).
Capitalism and Commodifi cation
No one has proposed - not even Karl Marx - that commodities and processes of
commodifi cation are in and of themselves unique features of capitalist political
economies. Nor is it true that all of the commodities circulating in our (more than)
capitalist world are produced and exchanged under the auspices of the private
sector, profi t driven economy. States, for instance, clearly produce commodities
(given the defi nitions above), not least via state-owned companies, utilities, etc. (e.g.,
electricity, water, public transportation services). One can even trace complex his-
tories of energy and water service delivery which ebb and fl ow between state and
private provisioning, and yet which remain commodifi ed in important respects
throughout (Bakker, 2005; Page, 2005). And it is quite clear that the historical
origins of far fl ung commodity regimes - e.g. the sugar trade (Mintz, 1985) - are
