Commodification as a Part of Marketization

When marketization of a geographic area or a domain of human behavior occurs, it is almost necessarily accompanied by commodification. In making things saleable or exchangeable, we are saying that they have monetary or non-monetary substitutes. In some cases these things are treated as fungible, that is equivalent to and interchangeable with an identical appearing equivalent. Thus, one person’s labor becomes equivalent with another’s, one bunch of bananas becomes interchangeable with another, and one mass-produced object can be replaced with another identical object. Commodification can make what were once intimate personal or shared family goods into assets exchangeable in the market. It can likewise make what were once freely available public goods like land and natural resources into private goods with prices and ‘Keep Out’ signs. This chapter examines the impacts of commodification.