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Concept
Commodification
Summary
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of economic value.
Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example, water, education, data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.
The earliest use of the word commodification in English attested in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1975. Use of the concept of commodification became common with the rise of critical discourse analysis in semiotics.
The terms commodification and commoditization are sometimes used synonymously, particularly in the sense of this article, to describe the process of making commodities out of anything that used not to be available for trade previously; compare anthropology usage.
However, other authors distinguish them (as done in this article), with commodification used in social contexts to mean that a non-commercial good has become commercial, typically with connotations of "corrupted by commerce", while commoditization is used in business contexts to mean when the market for an existing product has become a commodity market, where products are interchangeable and there is heavy price competition. In a quip: "Microprocessors are commoditized. Love is commodified."
Concepts that have been argued as having become commercialized include broad items such as patriotism, sport, intimacy, language, nature or the body.
Commodifications of humans have been discussed in various context, from slavery to surrogacy. Auctions of cricket players by Indian Premier League, Big Bash League and others is also discussed to be a case of human commodification. Virginity auctions are a further example of self-commodification. Human commodity is a term used in case of human organ trade, paid surrogacy (also known as commodification of the womb), and human trafficking.
Official source
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