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deepening in order (i) to provide outlets for the productive capacity of this expanded
capital; and (ii) to renew conditions of profi tability eroded by capitalist competition.
Commodifi cation under capitalism thus entails the proliferation of circuits (includ-
ing biophysical ones) through which this capital as value-in-motion may fl ow. This
in part propels the restless, growth driven logic of capitalist political economies,
with important geographical implications, including a tendency to expand and
rework the space economy (Harvey, 1982; 1985), and with it, to make and remake,
transform and 'produce' nature (Smith, 1984; 1996). These tendencies are manifest
in demands for greater and greater amounts but also more and more different kinds
of raw material inputs while at the same time generating waste products (typically)
on an expanding scale and in frequently novel forms. 6 All of this gives capitalism
its own specifi c form of socio-natural metabolism (Foster, 2000), distinct ways in
which biophysical nature is appropriated, made and remade.
Commodifi cation and/of Nature
All that said, considerable recent scholarship in geography and related fi elds has
examined the commodifi cation of specifi c natures as a sort of collective 'special case'
based in part on the 'difference' that biophysical processes make in shaping and
conditioning trajectories of commodifi cation (e.g., Bridge, 2000; Sayre, 2002;
Bakker, 2003; Prudham, 2005). At a basic level, the idea here is that the commodi-
fi cation of any particular 'nature' relies on ecological production processes whose
subordination to the realm of market-coordination can only ever be partial. One
might say further that this includes both non-human and human nature, in as much
as the reproduction of labour-power by market coordination alone is a project in
the commodifi cation of human nature (as bodies, as identities, etc.) and is, similarly,
a dubious if not impossible project.
These seemingly basic observations underpin Polanyi's (1944) argument that
labour and nature can only ever be fi ctitious commodities. According to Polanyi,
nature and labour are special categories of commodity in that they are not literally
produced exclusively or even primarily for sale. For instance, if we consider non-
human, biophysical nature, ecological functions of myriad kinds remain clearly
important in the provision of all manner of environmental inputs and services, and
these are only incompletely coordinated by social decision making, including market
coordination (see discussion and elaboration in Prudham, 2005). Recognising this
basic fi ctitiousness points to all manner of problems with calls to privatise nature
and to extend markets in order to meet environmental objectives. If nature is only
a fi ctitious commodity, then market coordination in the allocation of environmental
goods and services can only ever be partial. And this is so not only because of what
we might call strictly 'objective' constraints (i.e., that formally economic production
relies on all manner of formally non- or extra-economic production whose complete
subordination to the market is simply not possible) but also because of subjective
concerns having to do with social struggle over the allocation of biophysical nature
(i.e., that quite apart from the physical impossibility of subordinating biophysical
processes wholly to the price mechanism, 'society' in the broadest sense will never
accept this politically) (O'Connor, 1998). The creation of markets in water, for
instance, can give rise to or reinforce the separation of large numbers of people
from reliable access to water (Smith, 2004). This in turn can violate commonly held
sensibilities concerning rights to water which are perceived to trump commercial,
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