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All that said, the fetishism idea is not without its critics. One problem is that
aggressive invitations to get 'past' or 'behind' the veil of the fetishism of commodi-
ties in order to unmask them - as for example explicitly advocated by Hartwick
(2000) and Harvey (1990) - run the risk of assuming that the origins of com-
modities are unambiguous and also that the 'facts' of exploitation and ecological
degradation can speak for themselves (Jackson and Holbrook, 1995; Jackson, 1999;
2002; Page 2005). However, highly complex trajectories and displacements of even
single commodities in the contemporary international economy (see Dicken, 1998)
suggest that 'origins' are multiple and not at all obvious. Indeed, the proliferation
of production sites serving mass markets in seemingly generic commodities shows
considerable geographical variation, so much so that the geography and politics of
production cannot be read backward simply from commodities (Leslie and Reimer,
1999). Moreover, power, agency, and decision-making capabilities are often dis-
tributed in complex, dispersed and contradictory ways across networks linking
commodity production, distribution and consumption (Marsden et al., 1996; Fried-
berg, 2004). In some ways, then, commodity chains and circuits do not have clear
end points; they merely proliferate, requiring careful analytical and political choices
in the conduct of commodity chain analyses and campaigns.
In addition, it is not always apparent what political and ethical commitments,
judgements, and actions will or should attend the revealed origins of commodities.
Indeed, despite commodity chain analyses that provide a '. . . critique of consump-
tion founded on geographical detective work . . . highlighting the connection between
producers and consumers' (Hartwick, 2000, p. 1178), it is not necessarily clear what
changes in consumption or production practices ought to follow from this work.
Instead, political action requires diffi cult choices to be made, including between
contending forms of social liberation and exploitation among commodity produc-
ers, and sometimes between social and ecological dimensions of enhanced sustain-
ability (Mutersbaugh, 2004). Is it socially just, for instance, to choose to reduce
food miles by eating locally and truncating food trade if this means depriving distant
peasants and farm-workers of their livelihoods in globally integrated food produc-
tion and distribution circuits (Friedberg, 2004)?
On these and related issues, there is much to draw on from a wide ranging
literature that has exploded in the last decade or so concerning the complex geo-
graphical and cultural character of commodities and commodity circuits/networks,
sometimes referred to generally as the 'commodity cultures' or 'geographies of com-
modities' literature. This literature is not restricted to questions concerning the
commodifi cation of nature, and rather is more broadly concerned with the prolifera-
tion of the commodity-form, the complexity of commodity chains/networks, the
articulation of culture and economy in and through commodities, and importantly,
the complex cultural meanings of commodities and mass consumerism (for useful
reviews and commentary, see Jackson, 1999; 2002; Bridge and Smith, 2003; Castree,
2004).
One of the points of contention in this literature is the use (misuse?) of the fetish
idea. Some have argued that a focus on fetishism is essentially elitist and pedantic,
placing all-knowing scholars (and presumably fair trade activists) above more or
less duped consumers (see also Jackson, 2002). Notwithstanding that this is argu-
ably a rather hollow caricature of the fetishism idea as originally formulated by
Marx, it at least serves as a useful caution against elitist condemnations of everyday
consumption practices. And it leads to the important point that consumers and a
