The commodification of nature is an area of research within critical environmental studies that is concerned with the ways in which natural entities and processes are made exchangeable through the market, and the implications thereof.
Drawing upon the work of Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, James O’Connor and David Harvey, this area of work is normative and critical,[1]: 125 based in Marxist geography and political ecology. Theorists use a commodification framing in order to contest the perspectives of "market environmentalism," which sees marketization as a solution to environmental degradation. The environment has been a key site of conflict between proponents of the expansion of market norms, relations and modes of governance and those who oppose such expansion. Critics emphasize the contradictions and undesirable physical and ethical consequences brought about by the commodification of natural resources (as inputs to production and products) and processes (environmental services or conditions).
Most researchers who employ a commodification of nature framing invoke a Marxian conceptualization of commodities as "objects produced for sale on the market"[2] that embody both use and exchange value. Commodification itself is a process by which goods and services not produced for sale are converted into an exchangeable form.[3]: 1229 [1]: 125 It involves multiple elements, including privatization, alienation, individuation, abstraction, valuation and displacement.[4]
As capitalism expands in breadth and depth, more and more things previously external to the system become “internalized,” including entities and processes that are usually considered "natural." Nature, as a concept, however, is very difficult to define, with many layers of meaning, including external environments as well as humans themselves.[5] Political ecology and other critical conceptions draw upon strands within Marxist geography that see nature as "socially produced," with no neat boundary separating the "social" from the "natural."[6] Still, the commodification of entities and processes that are considered natural is viewed as a "special case" based on nature's biophysical materiality, which "shape[es] and condition[s] trajectories of commodification."[1]: 128
- ^ a b c Prudham, William Scott (2009) ‘Commodification’, in Castree, Noel, et al. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 123-142. (p. 125)
- ^ Polanyi, Karl (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. (p. 75)
- ^ Kosoy, Nicolás and Corbera, Esteve (2010) ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services as Commodity Fetishism’, Ecological Economics, 69(1): pp. 1228-1236.
- ^ Castree, Noel (1 June 2003). "Commodifying what nature?". Progress in Human Geography. 27 (3): 273–297. doi:10.1191/0309132503ph428oa. ISSN 0309-1325. S2CID 143816987 – via SAGE journals.
- ^ Braun, Bruce (2009) ‘Nature’, in Castree, Noel, et al. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 19-36. (p. 20); Castree, Noel (2005) Nature, London: Routledge.; Smith, Neil (2008) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, Third Edition, Athens: University of Georgia Press. (p. 11)
- ^ Bakker, Karen and Bridge, Gavin (2006) ‘Material Worlds? Resource Geographies and the "Matter of Nature"’, Progress in Human Geography, 30(10): pp. 5-27. (p. 8); Braun 2009 (p. 24); Castree 2005 (p. 24); Castree, Noel (2010a) ‘Neoliberalism and the Biophysical Environment 1: What ‘Neoliberalism’ is, and What Difference Nature Makes to it’, Geography Compass, 4(12): pp. 1725-1733. (p. 1725); Smith 2008
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