Talk:Commodification

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 September 2021 and 1 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cmorris2018.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Removed Cultural Commodification language un-cited and opinionated
I removed a chunk of the section on Cultural Commodification due to inaccuracies, sourcelessness, and simply smelling like opinion but putting the previous language here because the two example may be able to be highly re-worked for objectivity:

"Socialist movements are losing their voices on change because members of the "movement" are not promoting the message but participating in a fashion statement. Activists' hard works are marketable to the masses without accountability. An example of commodification is the colors red, black, and green, which are the colors of the African Liberation Army (ALA). For people of African descent these colors represent red (the innocent bloodshed of Africans), black (African people) and green (stolen land of Africa). These colors are marketed worldwide on all types of apparel and clothes."

I think the commodification of socialist and anarchist symbols and culture can be argued for if sources can be found (Murray Bookchin's /Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism/ comes to mind).

The African Liberation Army seems to not exist (maybe the author meant the Black Liberation Army?) but these colors seem to derive from the banner adopted by the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1920. I believe this symbol /has/ been a target of cultural commodification I could not find any source that speaks to that commodification. Maybe another can find one. Mycoolsighman (talk) 00:05, 27 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm not even sure if a combination of colors should be able to be exclusively claimed (trademarked or whatever) by any specific group. Certainly not a combination of common colors such as black, red, and green. --The owner of all ✌️ 16:38, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding linked term "commodity"
Because certain people use the term commodity with a different meaning than economists use the term, I wonder if it is even appropriate to link to the article commodity, due to that article focusing on the economics use of the term. In particular, 'commodities' are good (a competitive market is better than a monopolistic market), but commodification is not about commodities but rather the idea that there is, or should be, or should not be, a market for certain things (examples from article such as water, housing, etc). --The owner of all ✌️ 16:36, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Concepts that have been commercialized?
This sentence makes no sense in context: "Concepts that have been argued as having become commercialized include broad items such as patriotism,[14] sport,[15] intimacy,[16] language,[17] nature[18] or the body.[19]"

First, the introductory sentence says that commodification is talking about turning things into objects of trade. This refers to "concepts" being turned into objects of trade. I'm not sure how one trades the concept.

Second, this is talking about "commercialized" when the wiki entry is about a process called "commodification" - the difference is not explained, and there is no clarity in the included cites.

I recommend deletion or a rewrite.

96.241.35.140 (talk) 07:36, 8 January 2022 (UTC)Concerned about confusing people trying to look up economics terms like commodities

Neither of these clauses are true. Only 1 even has a reference and it can't even be seen
"However, capitalism requires consistent growth of the market to survive, which makes commodification of new objects necessary for the continuation of the capitalist economy.[7]" Mind Caviar (talk) 02:51, 29 June 2022 (UTC)


 * To me it looks like this describes Marx's theory of the capitalist Growth Imperative from Capital, Chapter 24, and him taking that to its logical extreme to predict total commodification in The Poverty of Philosophy:
 * "[T]here comes a time when all that men have regarded as inalienable become objects of exchange, of traffic, and can be disposed of. It is the time in which even the things which until then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought—virtue, love, opinion, science, conscience, &c.—where all at last enter into commerce. It ​is the period of general corruption; of universal venality, or, to speak in the terms of political economy, the time when everything moral or physical having become a saleable commodity, is conveyed to the market to be appraised at its proper value." Mycoolsighman (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

New student editor
Hi! This article is a topic of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. I will be editing the Commodification article as a project for COMM 500 Theory and Literature of Communication. Mitsuo500 (talk) 12:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Removed these paragraphs.. did not have references ... I will look for references and cite and replace back.
 * Oxygen: People do not have to pay for the oxygen we breathe; however, oxygen is commodified by filling it in cans and selling for various usages by people who can not access it from nature, e.g., patients, divers, mountain hikers, etc.
 * Water: All living beings can access freely available water in nature; however, we need to pay for the commodified water when it is processed and supplied at our homes or offices as tapped water or bottled as purified or mineral water.
 * Knowledge: All living beings learn from nature either by observation or because of various needs like hunger or threats. The knowledge from parents, elders, and other people is also an example of free public goods. However, the examples of commodified knowledge are books, educational institutions, and various commercial training courses.
 * Love and Relationships: Even love and relationships are commodified by dating apps or matchmaking companies or apps. Mitsuo500 (talk) 13:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: COMM 500 Theory and Literature of Communication
— Assignment last updated by Vsiguenza (talk) 07:56, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Public goods water section needs references and citation?
Hello... I feel this: "''Imagery of natural springs and mountains creates an idea of bottled water as a commodity associated with nature while being cleaner and more accessible. The water bottles have advertising and commercialized ways of promotion, despite the necessity of it as a resource for life. Public water has become conceptualized as dirty and unsafe, which makes it seem less of an issue when water sources are actually unsafe for consumers. Corporations are more trusted than the government regulation of public water. The distrust and acceptance of public water sources as unclean has in turn, allowed further commoditization of natural resources, a vicious cycle that enables itself. This is an issue, as the privatization and commodification of natural resources affects all humans, who rely on natural resources to live and especially harms marginalized communities who do not have access to the same level of commodities. The idea of water, which is a common natural resource which can be sourced from a multitude of sources and which is replenished by rainfall, has become commodified through the pollution of waterways. As such, bottled water is increasingly seen as a safer, more reliable and accessible option. Commodification overall creates an environment in which natural resources and human necessities are placed within the market to be advertised, creating a sense of fetishization''." Seems a biased opinion and needs a citation.  I have removed but it is saved here Mitsuo500 (talk) 14:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

added section from Mitsuo500 sandbox.. font is different
I moved a section from my sandbox to the existing Commodification article, cut and pasted, but the font is different size on the live article Mitsuo500 (talk) 22:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Updating article
Moved lead section, History section from Mitsuo500 sandbox.. See Also section small edit moved from Mitsuo500 sandbox. Mitsuo500 (talk) 02:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Changes made during Wiki Education assignment: COMM 500 Theory and Literature of Communication
I have completed the WikiEdu semester course for evaluating and editing Wikipedia articles. The changes made are moved from my sandbox to live. Mitsuo500 (talk) 14:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Completed moving edits from sandbox to live article
Added some paragraphs for explanations of Commodification of Culture. Structure cleanup with examples under Commodification of Culture section. Added History section to clarify research on Commodification. WikiEdu assignment is complete. I will not make any other large edits. Mitsuo500 (talk) 15:33, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Flagged for possible plagiarism, removed section
removed this:

Indigenous cultures [edit caption for bell hooks, review note]
American author and feminist bell hooks described the cultural commodification of race and difference as the dominant culture "eating the other". To hooks, cultural expressions of Otherness, even revolutionary ones, are sold to the dominant culture for their enjoyment. And any messages of social change are not marketed for their messages but used as a mechanism for the dominant ones to acquire a piece of the "primitive". Any interests in past historical culture almost always have a modern twist. According to Mariana Torgovnick:"What is clear now is that the West's fascination with the primitive has to do with its own crises in identity, with its own need to clearly demarcate subject and object even while flirting with other ways of experiencing the universe."hooks states that marginalized groups are seduced by this concept because of "the promise of recognition and reconciliation"."When the dominant culture demands that the Other be offered as sign that progressive political change is taking place, that the American Dream can indeed be inclusive of difference, it invites a resurgence of essentialist cultural nationalism."Commodification of indigenous cultures refers to "areas in the life of a community which prior to its penetration by tourism have not been within the domain of economic relations regulated by criteria of market exchange” (Cohen 1988, 372). An example of this type of cultural commodification can be described through viewing the perspective of Hawaiian cultural change since the 1950s. A Hawaiian Luau, which was once a traditional performance reserved for community members and local people, but through the rise of tourism, this tradition has lost part of its cultural meaning and is now mostly a "for profit" performance. Mitsuo500 (talk) 07:02, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Removed another section flagged by iThenticate:
 * === Internet and Online Communities ===
 * Digital commodification occurs when, a business or corporation uses information from an online community without their knowledge, for profit. The commodification of information allows a higher authority to make money rather than a collaborative system of free thoughts.  Corporations such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon accelerate and concentrate the commodification of online communities. Digital tracking, like cookies, have further commodified the use of the internet, giving each click, view, or stream, monetary value, even if it is an interaction with free content. Mitsuo500 (talk) 07:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Removed section flagged by iThenticate:
 * === Human commodification ===
 * Suppressed_-_Human_flesh_at_auction.jpg
 * Commodification of humans have been discussed in various context, from slavery to surrogacy. Auctions of cricket players by Indian Premier League, Big Bash League and others is also discussed to be a case of human commodification.   Virginity auctions are a further example of self-commodification. Human commodity is a term used in case of human organ trade, paid surrogacy (also known as commodification of the womb), and human trafficking.   According to Gøsta Esping-Andersen, people are commodified or 'turned into objects' when selling their labour on the market to an employer. Mitsuo500 (talk) 07:49, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Removed Holidays section flagged for possible plagiarism.. Mitsuo500 (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Plagiarism bot question
Hello, I'm new to editing Wikipedia, and went through WikiEdu training this semester and editing the Commodification article was a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 August 2023 and 15 December 2023.

The question is, does moving sections within the article, Alphabetizing the Examples section, cause the Wikipedia bots to flag sections as plagiarism? No changes, but reorganizing the structure for clarity. If this is the case, please undo any removals. Mitsuo500 (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Which bot is giving you these plagiarism reports? Could you point me to one? Re-ordering the article content should not itself create a plagiarism warning. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:46, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for all the help! Mitsuo500 (talk) 13:20, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I hadn't heard of iThenticate before and I've just been learning about it. If you're using iThenticate reports to remove text from Wikipedia, then an important question is, where does the report say the text was plagiarised from? Wikipedia will naturally be in Turnitin and similar systems because Wikipedia is often copied from. So it's not a surprise that these systems will incorrectly report Wikipedia text as plagiarised. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:09, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * thank you .. please undo any removals if you believe the possible plagiarism is an incorrect bot flag. Mitsuo500 (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've put the current version of the article through the Earwig copyvio detector and it finds no problem. If anyone is going to report that this article is plagiarised in future, they should transparently say where it is supposed to be plagiarised from, so we can check the claim and check that the supposed source is not just a mirror of Wikipedia. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:48, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Second paragraph in lead
Thanks for your hard work on this article. As a reader, I'm a bit confused by the lead.

"Mass Media is increasingly shown as the driving force of commodification as seen in, the commodification of culture" What does this sentence mean? Why is "Mass Media" capitalised that way? Why is there a comma after "in"?

"American culture, is an example of this form of commodification," Are you sure American culture is commodification? This is much stronger than saying commodification is a feature of American culture. And why mention American culture in particular, rather than capitalist cultures generally?

"Media, [...] are a leading force for disruption." What does this sentence mean? It seems very vague; "leading force" especially. How does "disruption" relate to "commodification"?

This whole paragraph is cited to a book, but no page numbers are given so the citation is not checkable. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:44, 20 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree and also think this new 2nd paragraph in the lead needs to be highly reworked or better removed. It's not explanatory - not helping us understand the overall concept. Mycoolsighman (talk) 18:21, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Media section
I'll put here an explanation of why I deleted this section, for Mitsuo500's benefit. This text could be put back but it would have to be much more precisely phrased and would have to say something about commodification.

"Mass media is shown to be commodified as seen by the Hollywood blockbuster film" You don't need both "is shown" and "as seen". But my main concern is what you think is being "shown" by these examples. What is it about Hollywood films that makes them commodified, as opposed to other kinds of film, that you also have to pay to see?

"All sectors focused on quantity rather than quality." This has a capital letter and a full stop as though it's a sentence, but it's not a sentence. It could be made into a sentence by adding a couple of words: "All these sectors are focused..." but what's the evidence for the resulting statement? Are all pop music artists focused on quantity at the expense of quality? Who says? Spotify has music from literally millions of artists; are they all focus on quantity at the expense of quality? Why focus on Spotify when there are many, many other ways that music is distributed for money? "television sitcoms and spinoffs" - There are lots of television show formats: documentary, crime drama, reality TV, stand-up comedy... Why pick out situation comedies? What relevance do they have to the topic of commodification that the other formats don't? You've picked a set of examples and it seems like you think it's self-evident that they show commodification of media, but there needs to be explanation of what it means for media to be commodified and why those things in particular.

There is a citation in the paragraph, and it's a scholarly book published by a reputable academic publisher. So it's a great citation to use for Wikipedia! We don't get a page(s) reference so we don't know which part of the book supports the statements in the paragraph. Does the book say that Spotify is focused on quantity rather than quality, or that sitcoms are examples of commodification? Seems unlikely, and if it does say that, we need it spelled out in more detail what point they are making.

You've spent a great deal of time on this article and made a lot of changes. You've also made good use of edit summaries and this Talk page to explain what you're doing. In this case I'm just asking you to make a smaller change with greater care; that's what will last in the article for a long time. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:43, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Commodification is a normative concept, adjusted lede
I've updated the lede to mention the important normative and pejorative connotation of commodification again. I think that is an important starting point to understand the difference in usage between a business or neoclassical story of commodities and cultural change versus the tradition that developed this term.

In the past, the lede of this article explained that commodification is a normative concept and had this language: "commodification is the transformation of things that normally exist outside the market [...] into commodities or objects of trade". in 2022 an IP editor objected to the word "normally" and explained that if things are on the market now then it is "normal" that they are market items. I agree that that sentence isn't the best. But the theory of commodification does come from a normative and prescriptive philosophical/sociological/economic tradition and it does imply a change in what's normal to the people who once had one custom around a thing, and that capitalism changed that custom.

So for clarity I added the context of the starting point for what commodification theorizes that customs change from: "transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things [...] into commodities, or objects for sale." And I added the basic definition normative/pejorative aspect that "It has a connotation of losing an inherent quality or social relationship when something is integrated by a capitalist marketplace."

Now hopefully we can stick to the point that this theory has a normative quality, or explains changes in norms, and not that any editor believes that the changes described here are normal or not. Mycoolsighman (talk) 19:34, 29 January 2024 (UTC)