Topic
Commodification
About: Commodification is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4201 publications have been published within this topic receiving 85993 citations. The topic is also known as: Commoditization.
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TL;DR: An emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ is described and its implications for ‘information civilization’ are considered and a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power is christened: ‘Big Other.’
Abstract: This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.
1,624 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and link critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do "green grabs" constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground, through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing, how are agricultural social relations, rights and authority
Abstract: Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?
1,396 citations
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the historic development of the conceptualization of ecosystem services and examined critical landmarks in economic theory and practice with regard to the incorporation of ecosystem service into markets and payment schemes, concluding that the trend towards monetization and commodification of ecosystems is partly the result of a slow move from the original economic conception of nature's benefits as use values in Classical economics to their conceptualization in terms of exchange values in Neoclassical economics.
1,317 citations
Book•
12 May 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, a foot in the door: the social organisation of paid domestic work in Europe is discussed, and the legacy of slavery: the American South and contemporary domestic workers.
Abstract: * 1. Introduction: political fictions and real oppressions. * 2. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde: defining domestic work. * 3. A foot in the door: the social organisation of paid domestic work in Europe. * 4. Invisible women I: migrant domestic workers in Southern Europe. * 5. Invisible women II: migrant domestic workers in Northen Europe. * 6. Changing the rules: the case of the UK. * 7. Selling the self: commodification, migration and domestic work. * 8. The legacy of slavery: the American South and contemporary domestic workers. * 9. "Just like one of the family": status and contract. * 10. "Your passport is your life": domestic workers and the state. * 11. Conclusion.
1,194 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services, since it requires that a single exchange-value is adopted for trading.
767 citations