One. Thematic Introduction: Decommodification, Democracy, and the Battle for the Commons

Buying and Selling Breasts: Cosmetic Surgery, Beauty Treatments and Risk

“…It seems that in the context of a neoliberal shift towards privatization and de-regulation of areas of collective provisioning – such as health – previously shielded from the market (Soron and Laxer, 2006), culturally constructed demand for ‘cosmetic’ change can be almost entirely detached from medical concerns and restraints. The bodies of young women like those in my study are opened up for profit, albeit with their consent.…”

“…Haiken (1997: 299) argues that plastic surgeons ‘have not created the process of medicalisation, but they have contributed to it by inventing new names for a growing number of deformities’ including ‘bat wing deformity’, ‘spare tire deformity’, and so on. Yet it could also be argued that the expansion of the cosmetic surgery industry reflects and contributes to the ‘radical extension of the scope and authority of the market’ that has taken place over the past three decades (Soron and Laxer, 2006: 28).…”

‘Commodification of everything’ arguments in the social sciences: Variants, specification, evaluation, critique

“…The literature's other prominent definition of ‘commodity’ derives from Polanyi, who ‘empirically defined’ commodities as ‘objects produced for sale on the market’ (2001: 75). Many authors in the commodification-of-everything literature adopt versions of this definition (Harvey, 2014: 25, 39; Leys, 2001: 87; Leys and Harriss-White, 2012; Soron and Laxer, 2006: 17), though they do not always do so consistently. The Polanyian approach provides, however, a shaky foundation for commodification-of-everything claims.…”

“…A 3 May 2022 Google Scholar search for ‘commodification of everything’ returned 2290 hits, and commodification-of-everything claims (or closely related arguments using different language) have been made by such prominent figures as Giorgio Agamben, Massimo De Angelis, Jeremy Gilbert, David Graeber, Stuart Hall, David Harvey, Naomi Klein, Branko Milanovic, Jason Moore, Margaret Jane Radin, Jeremy Rifkin, Michael Sandel, Wolfgang Streeck, Yanis Varoufakis, Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Watts, Cornel West, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and Ellen Meiksins Wood. 1 Opposition to the commodification of everything, too, is frequently put forward as a core principle of contemporary left politics (Klein, 2001: 81–82; Soron and Laxer, 2006; Varoufakis, 2018: 180; West, 2020).…”

“… 2. Dennis Soron and Gordon Laxer's definition of commodification as ‘the production of a good or service for a profit’ (2006: 17) is close to Williams’ usage.…”