Commodification

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.

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Exchange value

In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value (German: Tauschwert) refers to one of the four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market, the other three attributes being use value, economic value, and price. Thus, a commodity has the following: a value, represented by the socially necessary labour time to produce it (Note: the first link is to a non-Marxian definition of value); a use value (or utility); an exchange value, which is the proportion at which a commodity can be exchanged for other entities; a price (an actual selling price, or an imputed ideal price).

Market (economics)

In economics, a market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labour power) to buyers in exchange for money. It can be said that a market is the process by which the prices of goods and services are established. Markets facilitate trade and enable the distribution and allocation of resources in a society.

Commodification