![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
In this essay contemporary Marxist writings on the commodification of nature in capitalist societies are reviewed systematically. Recent research on commodities in human geography, cultural studies and related fields have been largely post or non-Marxist in tenor and have paid relatively little attention to the ‘natural’ dimensions of commodities. By contrast, recent Marxist writings about capitalism-nature relations have tried to highlight both the specificity of capitalist commodification and its effects on ecologies and bodies. This fact notwithstanding, it is argued that the explanatory and normative dimensions of this Marxist work are, respectively, at risk of being misunderstood and remain largely implicit. On the explanatory side, confusion arises because the words ‘commodification’ and ‘nature’ are used by different Marxists to refer to different things that deserve to be disentangled. On the normative side, the Marxian criticisms of nature's commodification are rarely explicit and often assumed to be self-evident. The essay offers a typology of commodification processes relating to specific natures with specific effects to which a variety of criticisms can be applied. Though essentially exegetical rather than reconstructive, the essay tries to pave the way for a more precise sense of how the commodification of nature in capitalist societies works and why it might be deemed to be problematic.
|
Altvater, E. 1993: The future of the market. London: Verso. Google Scholar | |
|
Anderson, E. 1993: Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Appadurai, A. ,editor 1986: The social life of things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Bakker, K. 2000: Privatizing water, producing scarcity. Economic Geography 76(1), 4–27. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Bakker, K. 2001: Payin. for water. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 26, 143–164. Google Scholar | |
|
Benhabib, S. 1986: Critique, norm and utopia. New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Benton, T. 1991: The Malthusian challenge. In Osborne, P. , editor, Socialism and the limits of liberalism, London: Verso, 241–269. Google Scholar | |
|
Benton, T. 1993: Natura. relations. London: Verso. Google Scholar | |
|
Bhaskar, R. 1986: Realist theory of science. Brighton: Harvester. Google Scholar | |
|
Billig, M. , Condor, S. , Edwards, D. , Gane, M. , Middleton, D. and Radley, M. 1988: Ideological dilemmas. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Boyd, W. 2001: Making meat. Technology and Culture 42(4), 631–664. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Bowker, G. 2000: Biodiversity datadiversity. Social Studies of Science 30(5), 643–683. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Bridge, G. 2000: The social regulation of resource access and environmental impact. Geoforum 31(2), 237–256. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Brush, S. 1999: Bioprospecting the public domain. Cultural Anthropology 14(4), 535–555 Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Butler, J. 1993: Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Castree, N. 1995: The nature of produced nature. Antipode 27(1), 12–48. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Castree, N. 1997: Nature, economy and the cultural politics of theory. Geoforum 28(1), 1–20. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Castree, N. 2001: Commodit. fetishism, geographical imaginations and imaginative geographies. Environment and Planning A 33, 1519–1525. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Castree, N. 2002: False Antitheses? Marxism, nature and actor-networks. Antipode 34(1), 111–146. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Cook, I. and Crang, P. 1996: The world on a plate. Journal of Material Culture 1(2), 131–153. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Costanza, R. ,1997: The value of the world's ecosystem. Nature 387, 253–260. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Cronon, W. 1991: Nature'. metropolis. New York: WW Norton. Google Scholar | |
|
Dant, T. 1999: Materia. culture in the social world. Buckingham: Open University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Delaney, D. 2001: Making nature/marking humans. Annuals of the Association of American Geographers 91(3), 487–503. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Demeritt, D. 2002: What is the ‘social construction of nature’? Progress in Human Geograph. 26: 767. Google Scholar | |
|
Dickens, P. 2001: Linking the social and natural sciences: is capital modifying human biology in its own image? Sociology 35(1), 93–106. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Doyal, L. and Gough, I. 1991: A theory of human need. London: Macmillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Escobar, A. 1996: Constructing nature. In Peet, R. and Watts, M. , editors, Liberation ecologies, London: Routledge, 46–68. Google Scholar | |
|
Foster, J. ,editor 1997: Valuing nature? London: Routledge. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Fraser, N. 1997: Justic. interruptus. London: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Frow, J. 1996: Information as gift and commodity. New Left Review 219, 89–108. Google Scholar | |
|
Frow, J. 1997: Tim. and commodity culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Gibson-Graham, J.-K. 1996: The end of capitalism (as we knew it). Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Goddard, M. 2000: Of cabbages and kin. Critique of Anthropology 20(2), 137–151. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Hartwick, E. 1998: Geographies of consumption. Society and Space 16, 423–437. Google Scholar | |
|
Hartwick, E. 2000: Toward. a geographical politics of consumption. Environment and Planning A 32, 1177–1192. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Harvey, D. 1974: Population, resources and the ideology of science. Economic Geography 50(2), 256–277. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Harvey, D. 1989: Introductio. to The urban experience. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Harvey, D. 1989: ‘Between space and time: reflection on the geographical imagination’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80(4), 418–434. Google Scholar | |
|
Harvey, D. 1996: Justice. nature and the geography of difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Harvey, D. 1998: ‘The body as an accumulation strategy’. Society and Space 16(4), 401–421. Google Scholar | |
|
Harvey, D. 2000: Space. of hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Henderson, G. 1999: California and the fictions of capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Hodgson, G. 1997: Economics, environmental policy and the transcendence of utilitarianism. In Foster, J. , editor, 1997: Valuing nature?, London: Routledge, 48–66. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Jackson, P. 1999: Commodity cultures: the traffic in things. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 24, 95–108. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Jackson, P. 2002: Commercia. cultures: transcending the cultural and the economic. Progress in Human Geography 26, 3–18. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Katz, C. 1998: Whose nature, whose culture?. In Braun, B. and Castree, N. , editors, Remaking reality, London: Routledge, 46–63. Google Scholar | |
|
Kloppenburg, J. 1988: First the seed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Kopytoff, I. 1986: The cultural biography of things. In Appadurai, A. , editor, The social life of things, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64–91. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Leslie, D. and Reimer, S. 1999. Spatializing commodity chains. Progress in Human Geography 23, 401–420. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Leys, C. 2001: Marke. driven politics. London: Verso. Google Scholar | |
|
Mann, S. and Dickinson, J. 1978: Obstacle to the development of a capitalist agriculture. Journal of Peasant Studies 5 4, 466–481. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Marcus, G. and Fischer, M. 1986: Anthropology as cultural critique. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Google Scholar | |
|
McCarney, J. 1990: Social theory and the crisis of Marxism. London: Verso. Google Scholar | |
|
O'Connor, J. 1998: Natural causes. New York: Guilford Press. Google Scholar | |
|
O'Connor, M. 1994: On the misadventures of capitalist nature. In O'Connor, M. , editor, Is capitalism sustainable?, New York: Guilford Press, 125–151. Google Scholar | |
|
Parry, B. 2002: Cultures of knowledge: investigating intellectual property rights and relations in the Pacific. Antipode 34, 679–706. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Peffer, R. 1990: Marxism, morality and social justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Polyani, K. 1957: The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Books. Google Scholar | |
|
Poster, M. 1990: The mode of information. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Pred, A. 1998. The nature of denaturalized consumption and everyday life. In Braun, B. and Castree, N. , editors, Remaking reality, London: Routledge, 150–168. Google Scholar | |
|
Radin, M. 1996: Conteste. commodities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Robertson, M. 2000. No net loss. Antipode 32(4), 463–493. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Saunders, P. 1995: Capitalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Sayer, A. 2000: Realism and social science. London: Sage. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Scheper-Huges, N. and Wacquant, L. ,editors 2002: Commodifying bodies. London: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Schroeder, R. 1995: Contradictions along the commodity road. Antipode 27(4), 325–342. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Shilling, C. 1993: Th. body and social theory. London: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, N. 1984: Uneve. development. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar | |
|
Smith, N. 1996: The production of nature. In Robertson, G. , Maoh, G. , Tickner, M. , Bird, L. , Curtis, B. , and Putnam, T. , FutureNatural, London: Routledge, 35–54. Google Scholar | |
|
Spoehr, A. 1956: Cultural differences in the interpretation of natural resources. In Thomas, R.W. , editor, Man's role in changing the face of the earth, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 321–332. Google Scholar | |
|
Swyngedouw, E. 2000: Modernity and hybridity. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90, 445–462. Google Scholar | |
|
Taussig, M. 1980: The devil and commodity fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Thomas, N. 1991: Entangled objects. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Thrift, N. 2000: Commodity. In Johnston, R.J. , Gregory, D. , Pratt, G. and Watts, M. , editors, The dictionary of human geography (fourth edition), Oxford: Blackwell, 95–96. Google Scholar | |
|
Watts, M. 2000: Enclosures. In Cloke, P. , Crang, P. and Goodwin, M. , editors, Animal spaces beastly places, London: Arnold, 305–315. Google Scholar | |
|
Webber, M. 1994: Markets resources, environments. Australian Geographical Studies 32 1, 3–16. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Whatmore, S. and Thorne, L. 1997: Nourishing networks. In Watts, M. and Goodman, D. , editors, Globalizing food, New York: Routledge, 287–304. Google Scholar | |
|
Williams, R. 1980: Problems of materialism and culture. London: Verso. Google Scholar | |
|
Young, I.M. 1990: Justic. and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Yoxen, E. 1986: Unnatural selection? London: Heinemann. Google Scholar |
