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Cited by 95Political Economy and MarxismEconomic and Social IssuesSocial and Economic Solidarity

Decommodification and Egalitarian Political Economy

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Vail, John·2010·Politics & Society
DOI 10.1177/0032329210373069
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Abstract

This article contends that decommodification is an appropriate concept for understanding diverse initiatives such as fair trade, microfinance, open source, social enterprises, and the environmental commons as component features of a common process. Decommodification is conceived as any political, social, or cultural process that reduces the scope and influence of the market in everyday life. Given recent transformations in market societies, a more expansive framework for decommodification is urgently required. Decommodification would insulate non-market spheres from market encroachments; increase the provision of public goods and expand social protection; promote democratic control over the market by creating economic circuits grounded in a logic predicated on social needs rather than profit; and undermine market hegemony by revealing the market’s true social costs and consequences. By ensuring basic needs, enhancing individual capacities and capabilities, and promoting social cooperation and collaboration, decommodification constitutes a central feature of an egalitarian agenda.

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  • The burnings were also an act of decommodification in the broader sense of a 'political, social or cultural process that reduces the scope and influence of the market in everyday life'.

    “In addition to the value of the pelts themselves, the burnings were also an act of decommodification in a broader sense of a ' political, social or cultural process that reduces the scope and influence of the market in everyday life ' (Fridell 2007; Vail 2010, 313; Wallerstein 2002).”

    From Blazing Pelts and Burning Passions: Nationalism, Cultural Politics, and Spectacular Decommodification in Tibet (2013) · cites this paper as Vail 2010, 313

  • The act of burning also sought to effect an ethical and emotional transformation to realign preferences with a new collective ethos.

    “It also sought to effect an ethical and emotional transformation to realign preferences with a new collective ethos (Vail 2010).”

    From Blazing Pelts and Burning Passions: Nationalism, Cultural Politics, and Spectacular Decommodification in Tibet (2013) · cites this paper as Vail 2010

Cites

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2 of the 33 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 22

  1. For fair trade, see Laura T. Raynolds, Douglas L. Murray, and John Wilkinson, Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization (London: Routledge, 2007); on community struggles against water privatization in South Africa, see Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002); for microcredit, see Daniel Bornstein, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004); on the social economy, see Carlo Borzaga and Jacques Defourney, The Emergence of Social Enterprise (London: Routledge, 2001).
  2. Yochai Benkler, 2006, The Nation
  3. Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1990). One notable exception to this is Claus Offe, who even if his insights were not flushed out into an alternative framework, certainly envisioned decommodification in the wider way that I am proposing herein: "areas of social life that have been decommodified by welfare state interventions can be developed, through political struggle, into relatively autonomous sub-systems of life oriented to the production and distribution of use values." Claus Offe, Modernity and the State (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1996), 265.
  4. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Recasting Egalitarianism: New Rules for Equity and Accountability in Markets, Communities, and States, ed. Erik Olin Wright (London: Verso, 1998); Andre Gorz, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1999); Jane Wheelock and John Vail, eds., Work and Idleness: The Political Economy of Full Employment (Boston: Kluwer, 1999).
  5. Martha Ertman and Joan Williams , eds. Rethinking Commodification ( New York: New York University Press, 2005), 4.
  6. Fred Block, 2007, Socio-Economic Review, 5, 326
  7. Leo Panitch, Panitch and Leys, Socialist Register, 1
  8. Viviana Zelizer, 1994, The Social Meaning of Money
  9. This thesis of market corrosion has a long lineage in the social sciences as Albert Hirschman eloquently traces; see Albert O. Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). For contemporary accounts, see Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and Margaret Radin, Contested Commodities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
  10. On the commodification of gay identities, see Alexandra Chasin, Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2000); on the dependencies of bonded labor, see Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
  11. Paul Collier, 2008, The Bottom Billion
  12. David Miller insists that there is still a "first order question" to decide, namely which goods society deems is necessary to make public. Given that certain groups may benefit more from certain public goods than others, public goods are subject to the same kind of social justice considerations as any other forms of social wealth. Indeed in an era of widespread fiscal constraints, the debate about which public goods might be sacrosanct from the inevitable public sector cuts rages on both side of the Atlantic. David Miller, Market, State and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1989).
  13. Dean Baker, 2003, The Artistic Freedom Voucher: An Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights
  14. On local exchange trading systems (LETS), see Claus Offe and Rolf Heinze, Beyond Employment: Time, Work and the Informal Economy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1992); on open source, see Benkler, Wealth of Networks and Kelty, Two Bits; on fair trade, see Raynolds, Murray, and Wilkinson, Fair Trade; on pensions, see Robin Blackburn, "Plans for a Global Pension," New Left Review 47 (September-October 2007): 71-92.
  15. Raynolds , Murray, 2007, Fair Trade; Fridell, Fair Trade Coffee; Daniel Jaffee, Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability and Survival
  16. Gosta Esping-Andersen, 2009, Incomplete Revolution: Adapting Welfare States to Women’s New Roles
  17. Karl Marx, 1973, Capital
  18. Joshua Cohen, 1983, On Democracy
  19. Polanyi, Great Transformation, 156, 157, 135, 98. In the classical economist’s explanatory schema, "vision was limited to the market" yet "society as a whole remained invisible"; Polanyi, Great Transformation, 258. For a fuller discussion of Polanyi’s argument, see John Vail, Karl Polanyi and the Paradoxes of the Double Movement (New York: Routledge, forthcoming), chap. 3.
  20. The term moral shock comes from James Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); cognitive liberation from Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
  21. Hilary Wainwright , Arguments for a New Left ( Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994), 8.
  22. Amitai Etizioni, 2009, The New Republic

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Authors
Vail, J.
Affiliations
Newcastle University (GB)
Corresponding author
Vail, John
Venue
Politics & Society
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2010-08-24
Volume
38
Issue
3
Pages
310-346
ISSN
  • 0032-3292 (ISSN-L)
  • 1552-7514
DOI
10.1177/0032329210373069
OpenAlex
W2043875995
Semantic Scholar
d08282fd702ade1560ba17faaacdf0612c223be6
Cited by
95
References
33
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 8
FWCI
16.52
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Politics & Society (publishedVersion, public-domain)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Economy and Marxism
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Economic and Social Issues
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Economic Solidarity
Keywords
decommodification, public goods, social protection, social needs, market hegemony, social cooperation, fair trade, microfinance, social enterprises, open source, environmental commons, basic needs

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