Describe rather than define example

This morning I came across a great example of the assertions I have been discussing that are the results of the project "The need to define commodification." (for more detail, see the post "The need to define commodification"). Appalled at the lack of clear and direct definitions in articles about commodification, I did a Google Scholar search this morning with a refined search term. Instead of "commodification" I searched on the phrase "commodification definition". This was the first result:

Gómez-Baggethun, E., & Ruiz-Pérez, M. (2011). Economic valuation and the commodification of ecosystem services. Progress in Physical Geography,35(5), 613-628.

It is a thoughtfully written and insightful piece. However, I was after direct definitions (let's call it "clear conceptualizations" to be methodologically accurate) of commodification as found in articles employing the term in a central way. Consequently, I pulled up the first article and searched within it until I found the closest thing to a conceptualization of the term commodification I could find. This is what I found:

The concept of commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously nonmarketed areas. It involves the conceptual and operational treatment of goods and services as objects meant for trading. It describes a modification of relationships, formerly unaffected by commerce, into commercial relationships. Commodification of ecosystem services thus refers to the inclusion of new ecosystem functions into pricing systems and market relations.

It is such a perfect representation of what I have been discussing that I had to feature it here. Notice the terms being employed (the emphasis is mine, not that of the authors): "involves", and "describes". There is no "commodification is...", "we conceptualize commodification as..."

Of course, the authors' intentions seem clear when they use the phrase "refers to": they are defining commodification as the new inclusion of something into pricing systems and market relations--the expansion of markets into spaces and places where they did not previously exist. This is a common conception under the business school of thought.

That seems clear enough until we force ourselves to grapple with the rest of the paragraph that we assume they gave us with some intentionality. If we do so, they also include objectification in the Marxist sense: "It involves the conceptual and operational treatment of goods and services as objects meant for trading."

Remember that for the Marxist scholar of commodification, an object need not be exchanged in a market to be "commodified", rather it need only be seen as an object valued for its extrinsic measurable qualities above its intrinsic qualities. This intentionality of market trade has often been describe in a very similar way to the definition given above: "conceptual treatment...as an object meant for trading." It does not have to be traded, only seen as (or conceptualized as) an object--as if it were an object of trade.

The idea of "...modification of relationships..." certainly also has a Marxist tone--as the business theory of commodification has historically been much more concerned with goods and services being exchanged in a market in an undifferentiated way than it is with relationships.

In summary, this definition is representative of the things being discussed on this blog.

1) While this is a better example than most of a direct definition, it also includes notions about what commodification "involves" and "describes" in the definition section.

2) This definition seems to acknowledge the "third space" between Marxist and business notions of commodification. There is no doubt the authors acknowledge the way market exchange is a basis for commodification, but they also describe the general objectification and impact on relationships that come about as market exchange becomes emphasized in new ways.

The conceptualization of commodification in this piece seems clear enough--the expansions of markets into new spaces or places. However, the additional descriptions of what commodification "involves" and "describes" seems to be the authors' (witting or unwitting) acknowledgement of the Marxist side. This article, consequently gives support for the "third" school of commodification--a place where Marxist and business thought seem to intertwine.