The need to define commodification

Use of commodification as an academic concept

After scouring over many different academic articles that employ the notion of commodification the following is becoming clear to me:

In academic literature commodification is used in many disciplines and as a framework to describe many different subjects across those disciplines.

Describing rather than defining

However, these academic pieces often describe the causes and effects of commodificiation rather than defining commodification itself. This leads to statements and assumptions that are not necessarily incorrect, but may lead to misunderstandings about what commodification is (and is not).

Increasing importance of commodities in society (commodity culture, consumerism, culture industry)

Specifically, commodification has been said to be caused by increasing the importance of consumer culture (as is the case with neoliberalism), paying for things that were not previously commodities, and decreasing the role of the state (decentralization). However, none of these things define commodification, rather they are descriptions of things that cause commodification.

Destruction of authenticity, objectification, dehumanization

Similarly, commodification has been said to destroy authenticity and to cause objectification and dehumanization. Although these may be accurate observations, once again, they are not definitions of commodification but descriptions of mechanism related thereunto.

Possible negative outcomes due to lack of conceptualization

Commodification will be more efficiently and more clearly employed in academic literature if it is better defined. The way academic sources describe rather than define commodification may be a result of a lack of a clear definition of it in the literature. It may also be the result of something else such as an incomplete or inaccurate understanding about what commodification is. If the latter is the case, all the more urgent is the need to better define commodification. Finally, commodification is used in a wide range of disciplines including business, sociology, anthropology, geography, tourism, economics and linguistics. This may be part of the reason commodification has not been clearly definied, as each discipline sees its nuances in a litte different way. However, this is, yet again, all the more reason to solidify a definition.

Lack of clear, concise, accurate, comprehensive yet accessible definition of commodification

All these things taken together, one thing is apparent: that there is a lack of a clear, concise, accurate, comprehensive yet accessible and applicable definition of commodification. It is a topic that piques the interest of many different academics studying many different topics and deserves to be understood in a way that is commensurate with the interest people have in it.