Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx,Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation

Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.     

The Ethics of Emissions Trading

This article defends three ethical arguments against emissions trading. The first argument alleges that emissions trading is morally objectionable, because it ‘commodifies’ the atmosphere. The second argument involves various objections to attaching prices to units of emissions – loosely speaking, the objection is to pricing that which is priceless or should not be priced. The third argument turns on the idea that if a large cut in emissions is to be made by society overall, everyone should ‘do their bit’ by making a particular kind of sacrifice rather than paying others to do it instead. Some general conclusions concern the limitations of confining the analysis to idealised emissions trading, the difficulty in separating ‘economistic’ thinking about policy delivery from policy choice and the need to focus questions of justice on consumers rather than on producers.     

Journey into Parenthood: Commodification of Reproduction as a New Tourism Niche Market

This article examines the phenomenon of viewing life cycle stages associated with reproduction as commodities, and how this has paved the way for developing and marketing new tourism products and experiences. It traces the genesis of this trend and provides a conceptual review of this development by way of four examples—“babymoons,” hotel baby programs, reproductive tourism, and procreation tourism programs. It argues that parents-to-be and new parents form a new tourism niche market, and that these new products occupy the moral boundary of tourism marketing—packaging up previously sacred and non-commodified events for tourist consumption.     

Commodifying the Commodifiers: The Impact of Procurement on Management Knowledge

Current conceptualizations of the commodification of management knowledge prioritize the agency of knowledge producers, such as consultancies, but downplay the role of other actors such as intermediaries. Using a qualitative multi‐method study of the role of procurement in sourcing consultancy knowledge, we demonstrate how intermediaries also commodify management knowledge, thereby limiting the exchange value of that knowledge. Through our analysis we develop a more sophisticated model of the processes and consequences of knowledge commodification. This model clarifies and extends prior research by highlighting the role of commensuration, comparison and valuation, as well as the related tactics that consultants and client managers use to resist procurement's attempts to commodify management knowledge.     

Accumulation without Dispossession? Land Commodification and Rent Extraction in Peri‐urban China

The urbanization of rural China is increasingly achieved not through physical land grabs but the strategic enrolment of rural communities in the commodification of land via speculative rentiership. This article critically examines this shift in approach from the deployment of extra‐economic force in state‐led land expropriations toward an increasing reliance on market mechanisms in land development. A case study, the construction of a financial district in peri‐urban Guangzhou, shows that the enrolment of village communities is achieved through their cooptation as corporatist market players in regimes of rent‐based accumulation. While the apparent use of voluntaristic market exchange has reduced the need for coercion, however, the commodification process has at the same time created new terrain for dispossessory practices whereby value is illicitly extracted and seized by elites through rent relations. The shift from overt land grabbing to more covert mechanisms of value appropriation has important implications for rural class relations and contentious politics.     

Heritage and identity: engagement and demission in the contemporary world

African traditional religions (ATRs) in the Caribbean and Brazil are currently undergoing processes of transformation and commodification due to the influx of religious tourism. This research note reflects preliminary findings on the marketing of ATRs in four locales: Santería (Cuba), Candomblé (Brazil), Vodou (Haiti), and Orisha (Trinidad). Methods employed include participant observation, data collection, and textual analysis. This research can assist in assessing the overall impact tourism has on ATRs, potentially influencing public policy on tourism development in the region, as well assisting religious communities to define how and why they engage in tourism, and what forms their tourism product will take. Further research is necessary to track ongoing trends and new developments, particularly where areas of cultural resistance are evident, and more ethical ways of marketing the sacred are being adopted.     

Neopagan Pilgrimages in the Age of the Internet: A Life Changing Religious Experience or an Example of Commodification?

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of Neopagan ‘pilgrimages’, which are advertised on the Internet and directed to various ancient sacred sites in Greece and in the Mediterranean Sea. After showing how travellers to Greece in the Modern Age have been inspired by classical myths and have often represented their trips as ‘pilgrimages’, the paper examines how Neopagans, women belonging to the Goddess Spirituality Movement, use travels to ancient sacred places as a way to reconstruct their own identity. Therefore, the perception and representation of the tourist journey as ‘pilgrimage’ obscures the reality of the commodification of religious experiences, in a globalised context in which different consumers ‘buy’ different experiences of ancient Greece.     

Toponymy as Commodity: Exploring the Economic Dimensions of Urban Place Names

In recent years the study of urban toponymy (place names) has been revitalized by the emergence of a ‘critical toponymies' approach. This focuses on the cultural politics of place naming and the decisions involved in attributing names to the urban landscape. However, in contemporary cities place names have an economic role in addition to their political role. In particular, there have been recent calls for more attention to the commodification of place‐naming rights and practices. This article seeks to respond to these calls by addressing the issue of urban place names as commodities. It begins by examining the naming of sports stadia by corporate sponsors. It then considers a range of ways in which private‐sector interests are increasingly influencing the naming of the urban landscape, from buildings and neighbourhoods to individual streets. Even the material signage that identifies street names can be appropriated within branding and promotional strategies. Moreover, urban place names are increasingly incorporated into a range of commercially produced spatial datasets collated by private companies. The article ends by proposing a number of directions for future research into the economic role of urban place names and the commodification of toponymy more broadly.