Defining commodification in social exchange

Commodification: Widely used, yet rarely fully defined

In 2002, Robert Shepherd wrote an influential article about commodification and tourism. He notes (as have I in several blog posts--for example: [this one] and [this one]-- related to the project called "The need to define commodification") that commodification is a "generalized yet largely unarticulated notion". In my words: Lots of people want to (and do) use it, and few know exactly what is meant by it (see this post on the need to define commodification).

Why is commodification under-defined if it is so widely used?

This is due to the way researchers often describe the causes and effects of commodification in place of definitions. It is also due to the historical complexity of definitions of the term and of its root word: commodity.

Commodities have been defined as everything from human values or characteristics to mass produced undifferentiated goods traded on a market (this has been discussed elsewhere in this blog). Additionally, commodification has become divided into two schools of thought: 1) a sort of social version of the term having roots in Marxist thought and the Frankfurt school, and 2) the business conceptualization (often termed commoditization). However, an extensive review of articles (see this post) indicates that many studies use commodification in a sort of middle ground between the Marxist and business notions.

Shepherd (2002) seems to acknowledge all of this, first in his description of commodification as a "generalized yet largely unarticulated notion", and second, "Given the social fact that everything, including ‘culture’, is a potential commodity, it would be useful for research to focus on how individuals and groups in host societies gain access to new forms of exchange rather than simply on the fact of commodification." 

This has not been discussed directly in the pages of this blog. However, it is exactly what we have discussed elsewhere (Robison, Oiver & Frank 2015)--that the way nearly everything can be commodified is made more accessible through a study of the types of exchanges people engage in, rather than to simply speak of the causes and effects of commodification, or to recognize and describe that it exists. 

Double discourse of value: Extrinsic and intrinsic valuation coexist

One might also say that our project ("The need to define commodification") builds upon the notion that Shepherd describes (as originally posited by Barbara Herrrnstein Smith) of "double discourse of value". Specifically, I agree with Shepherd that we need not keep the sphere in which things are valued based on that which is sacred, intrinsic or cultural separate from the sphere in which things are valued for their "economic" (or I would add measurable or standardized) worth, because so doing often leads to misunderstanding. The sphere of intrinsic value and that of "extrinsic" value coexist in practice much more often then not. (And, as a side note, so do human exchanges--what we have called "mixed exchanges" elsewhere). Current conceptualizations of commodification tend to divide the concept in a way that is parallel to those two spheres. However, there is overwhelming evidence that researchers often acknowledge the middle ground where those two spheres coexist. Conceptualizations of commodification are in need of revision in order to accommodate the fact that commodification, in practice, takes place where those two spheres coexist far more often than it takes place exclusively in only a world of intrinsic or only a world of extrinsic valuation.