Project overview: The need to define commodification

COMMODIFICATION-WIDELY USED, POORLY DEFINED: 

This project examines the assertion that commodification is a term that is widely used but under-conceptualized (Shepherd 2002, Zaman 2006) through a broad and systematic review of literature.

(Related posts: Defining commodification in social exchange, The need to define commodification)

ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF COMMODIFICATION INTO TWO SCHOOLS:

The origins and evolution of the concept over time are discussed with special emphasis on the way two major schools of thought have emerged related to commodification: the Marxist/Frankfurt school and the business school.

(Related posts: Defining commodification in social exchange, History of commodification, What is commodification? An introduction, Marx, business and the third school? What is commodification?)

METHOD:

The search term “commodification” was entered on Google Scholar and Proquest, to produce 200 articles (100 from each search engine). The articles were chosen based on relevance as determined by the search engines (this largely means number of views/citations). The articles were coded for five things: 1) the definition each assigned to the notion of commodification, 2) the clarity of the definition, 3) the field of study of the article, 4) the thing being described as the object of commodification, 5) the school of thought to which the article seems to subscribe (Marxist/Frankfurt, business, neither, or some combination of the two).

(Related posts: What is commodification? An introduction, Table: The need to define commodification)

FINDINGS:

1. A third school of thought: the hybrid view

We find that, in recent times, most articles that use commodification as a major framework seem to be positioned not in one major school of thought or the other, but either in between the two or in some new space.

(Related posts: Marx, business and the third school?)

2. Broad application within and across disciplines

Additionally, commodification was employed broadly across disciplines and research topics in fields as diverse as tourism, geography, anthropology, sociology, business, economics, bio-medicine and even technology.

(Related posts: What is commodification?, The need to define commodification)

3. Support for commodification as a largely “unarticulated” notion

 Finally, we find support for Shepherd’s (2002) notion that commodification is largely “unarticulated” as most authors resorted to describing causes and effects of commodification in lieu of providing straightforward definitions.

This is likely due to at least three things:

 1) The evolution of the term historically into two distinct schools and the way those two distinctions rarely fully capture what the author is looking to describe (as most types of commodification in practice are likely somewhere in between the Marxist/Frankfurt and business schools of thought rather than exclusively in one or the other).

2) The meaning of the root word “commodity” is so complex and variegated.

3) Commodification is being used in such a broad range of disciplines that it is formidable to produce a definition that will appease everyone (therefore it is easier to describe what is happening than to state definitively what commodification is).

(Related posts: Defining commodification in social exchange, What is commodification? An introduction)

Conclusions and discussion:

1. The need to define commodification

These observations demonstrate the need to better conceptualize the term commodification in a way that is broadly accessible, and unifying (meaning it is useful in facilitating descriptions of phenomena that do not fit squarely in just the Marxist/Frankfurt school or in just the business paradigm). Such a conceptualization will facilitate the use of the term in broad and unifying ways. It may even better unite the study of commodification across disciplines, which may in turn further the study of commodification in general due to increased collaboration across disciplines.

2. Synthesizing definition of commodification

In conclusion, we offer suggestions regarding the first steps toward defining commodification and offer a definition that works across all of the different usages that were observed in our study of articles. Specifically, commodification is:

 “An increase in the way some thing (be it a person, culture, material object or so forth) is esteemed, valued or represented vis-à-vis commodities, which are defined broadly as anything used, seen, or represented as an object for exploitation or gain (of any kind) rather than as a subject of intrinsic worth.”

We proffer this definition due to the way it fits with all of the ways commodification was described in our study, and we describe in detail the way current studies and definitions all fit within this definition.  Additionally, as with all scientific inquiry, we mean for this to be a first step in a collaborative effort to define commodification in a way that is broadly accessible and conducive to collaboration between scholars of commodification across all disciplines and topics.