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Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2012 in Switzerland, Catalunya and different zones of francophone Canada in sites related to heritage and cultural tourism, we argue that tourism, especially i n multilingual peripheries, is a key site for a sociolinguistic exploration of the political economy of globalization. We link shifts in the role of language in tourism to shifts in phases of capitalism, focusing on the shift from industrial to late capitalism, and in particular on the effects of the commodification of authenticity. We examine the tensions this shift generates in ideologies and practices of language, concerned especially with defining the nature of the tourism product, the public and the management of the tourism process. This results in an as yet unresolved destabilization of hitherto hegemonic discourses linking languages to cultures, identities, nations and States.

Although the commodification of experience has been a long-standing concern for critical scholars, today the breadth and depth of this practice and the conscious manipulation involved is unparalleled. In this paper I analyse contemporary commodification of experience drawing on insights from the early Frankfurt school and autonomist thought. In doing so, I show how contemporary commodification of experience, understood in particular in terms of expropriation of the affective common, comprises a form of biopolitical exploitation that is part of broader biopolitical struggles in which capital seeks to draw the entirety of human life into its circuit of valorization. Although the critique of the Frankfurt school remains important, the variety of forms of experience for sale today warrants a broader politico-economic analysis in light of historical changes in the logic of accumulation and the operation of the commodity-form, which autonomist thought can help illuminate.

Commodification is a multifaceted concept, having roots in political and economic theory as well as cultural and literary studies. Broadly defined, commodification is the transformation of immaterial, social relationships into commercial relationships that often utilize the language and ideological stances of a market driven economy and capitalist society (for example, terms and ideas surrounding "buying and selling," "supply and demand"). In order to understand this important and complex idea, we need to understand the etymology of the word commodification. At the root of the word is commodity, which in modern language usage is defined as "a kind of thing for use of sale, an article of commerce, an object of trade" and "food or raw materials as objects of trade" (Oxford English Dictionary).

AbstractWe aim to show anti-commodification theorists that their complaints about the scope of the market are exaggerated. There are we agree things that should not be bought and sold but that's only because they are things people shouldn't have or do or exchange in the first place. Beyond that we argue there are legitimate moral worries about how we buy trade and sell but no legitimate worries about what we buy trade and sell. In almost every interesting case where they have argued markets are morally impermissible on the contrary we argue such markets are permissible. Where they see the market as having a fundamentally amoral ethos or as tending to corrupt us we see it as moral and morally ameliorative. Where they think the solution is to contract the market we think the solution is to expand it.

The Commodification of Information

Anti-commodification theorists condemn liberal political philosophers for not being able to justify restricting a market transaction on the basis of what is sold, but only on the basis of how it is sold. The anti-commodification theorist is correct that if this were all the liberal had to say in the face of noxious markets, it would be inadequate: even if everyone has equal bargaining power and no one is misled, there are some goods that should not go to the highest bidder. In this paper, I respond to the anti-commodification critique of liberalism by arguing that the political liberal has the wherewithal to account not only for the conditions under which goods should not be sold, but also for what kinds of goods should not be for sale in a market economy. The political liberal can appeal to a principle of equal basic rights, and to one of sufficiency in basic needs and the social bases of self-respect, I argue, to account for what's problematic about markets in civic goods, necessary goods, and physical goods including body parts and intimate services.

This paper discusses the question whether care work for dependent persons (children, the elderly, and disabled persons) may be entrusted to the market; that is, whether and to what extent there is a normative justification for the "commodification of care." It first proposes a capability theory for care that raises two relevant demands: a basic capability for receiving care and a capability for giving care. Next it discusses and rejects two objections that aim to show that market-based care undermines the caring motives essential to care, one of them because of its reliance on contracts and the other because of the corrupting influence of payment on motivation. If market care is in principle legitimate, the commodification question transforms into one about the appropriate combinations of market and non-market care. This question can be answered only by adding an additional complication: care is to be balanced against other activities, most notably work for the labor market. This brings in the problem of gender inequality, since paid work has been traditionally distributed to men and caring activities to women. I show how the capability theory of caring presented in this paper can help resolve the dispute between competing models for balancing work and caring.

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THE PRINCIPLE OF THE NON-PATENTABILITY OF LIVING THINGS. IT TRACES THE JOURNEY OF GRANTED PATENTS FROM MEDICINE IN 1940 TO PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN THE 1980S, IT EXAMINES ETHICS, DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL CONFRONTATION OF THE PROBLEMS PRESENTED BY THE "COMMODIFICATION OF LIFE". IT EXAMINES, ALSO, THE REPERCUSIONS OF A CHANGE OF ATITUDE TOWARD PATENTS AS THE COURTS PROCEED ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS AND ON PURELY TECHNICAL GROUNDS.