User:Mitsuo500/sandbox

12/16/23 Completed course, have moved edits to live.

11/20 removed section:

Toponymic (Study of Place names)
Streets named after Martin Luther King Jr.

11/20 update: removed section: not needed

Section: Aspects: may be deleted totally or filled out with any remaining time. 11/11/23 TN

AI

Data from Social Media, Credit card use, Online purchases as a commodity.

Politics

Education

Psychology

Philosophy

Sociology

Socialism

Economics

11/15/23 This sandbox is being used to keep "Before-edits version" and for notes for changes to Commodification sandbox.

and NOTE.. 9/20/23 training Citation ORIGINAL WIKI ARTICLE: 11/6/23: before Mitsuo500 changes.

Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of economic value.

Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example, water, education, data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.

Terminology
The earliest use of the word commodification in English attested in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1975. Use of the concept of commodification became common with the rise of critical discourse analysis in semiotics.

The terms commodification and commoditization are sometimes used synonymously, particularly in the sense of this article, to describe the process of making commodities out of anything that used not to be available for trade previously; compare anthropology usage.

However, other authors distinguish them (as done in this article), with commodification used in social contexts to mean that a non-commercial good has become commercial, typically with connotations of "corrupted by commerce", while commoditization is used in business contexts to mean when the market for an existing product has become a commodity market, where products are interchangeable and there is heavy price competition. In a quip: "Microprocessors are commoditized. Love is commodified."

Examples
Concepts that have been argued as having become commercialized include broad items such as patriotism, sport, intimacy, language, nature or the body.

Human commodification
Commodifications 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. Slave trade as a form of human trafficking is a form of the commodification of people. According to Gøsta Esping-Andersen, people are commodified or 'turned into objects' when selling their labour on the market to an employer.

Animal commodification
Commodification of animals is one of the earliest forms of commodification, which can be traced back to the time when domestication of animals began. It includes animal slavery in all forms, including use of animals for food, medicine, fashion and cosmetics, medical research, labor and transport, entertainment, wildlife trade, companionship, and so forth. Scholars say that the commodification of nonhuman animals in food systems is directly linked to capitalist systems that prioritize "monopolistically inclined financial interests" over the well-being of humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Over 200 billion land and aquatic animals are killed every year to provide humans with animal products for consumption, which many scholars and activists have described as an "animal holocaust". The extensive use of land and other resources for the production of meat instead of grain for human consumption is a leading cause of malnutrition, hunger, and famine around the world.

Indigenous cultures
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.

Public goods
Public goods are goods for which users cannot be barred from accessing or using them for failing to pay for them. However, such goods can also be commodified by value addition in the form of products or services or both.

Even Public goods like air and water  can be subjected to commodification. Following are some of the examples of the commodification of some of the public goods:

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.

Internet and Online Communities
Digital commodification is when a business or corporation uses information from an online community without their knowledge for profit. The commodification of information allows a higher up authority to make money rather than a collaborative system of free thoughts. Massive corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon have something of a monopoly online, meaning that the commodification of online communities is accelerated and concentrated. Digital tracking, like cookies, have further commodified the use of the internet because the information is often used for advertising, giving each click, view, or stream monetary value, even if it is an interaction with free content.

Subcultures
Various subcultures have been argued to as having become commodified, for example the goth subculture, the biker subculture,  the tattoo subculture, the witchcraft subculture, and others.

Tourism
Tourism has been analyzed in the context of commodification in the context of transforming local cultures and heritage into marketable goods. This is related to but distinct from the commodification of indigenous cultures. Rather than commodifying indigenous practices, the commodification of tourism removes local culture from the foreground, replacing it with profitability from non-residents. This may be in the form of entertainment, souvenirs, food markets, or others. Tourism leads, in part, to the commodification of indigenous cultures as people return from visits with partial ideas and representations of the culture.

Holidays
Many holidays such as Christmas, Halloween or Valentine's Day have been argued as having become commodified. The commodification of a holiday refers to making celebrations necessarily commercial and based on material goods, like gift giving, elaborate decorations, trick or treating, and card giving. Modern celebrations of many holidays are now more related to the commercial practices and profitable tactics than they are to the holiday's origins. For some holidays, like Halloween, there are arguments that the commodification of the original holiday turned it into the celebrations that people now love. The commodification of other holidays, like Christmas, sparks arguments about undoing the commercialization and getting back to the intended spirit of the holiday.

In Marxist theory
The Marxist understanding of commodity is distinct from its meaning in business. Commodity played a key role throughout Karl Marx's work; he considered it a cell-form of capitalism and a key starting point for an analysis of this politico-economic system. Marx extensively criticized the social impact of commodification under the name commodity fetishism and alienation.

Prior to being turned into a commodity, an object has a "specific individual use value". After becoming a commodity, that same object has a different value: the amount for which it can be exchanged for another commodity. According to Marx, this new value of the commodity is derived from the time taken to produce the good, and other considerations are obsolete, including morality, environmental impact, and aesthetic appeal.

Marx claimed that everything would eventually be commodified: "the things which until then had been communicated, but never exchanged, given, but never sold, acquired, but never bought – virtue, love, conscience – all at last enter into commerce."

EDITED by others:
11/9/23 .Even Public goods like air and water  can be subjected to commodification. Commoditizing natural resources enables the dichotomy of human versus nature that exacerbates unequal access to resources. The commoditization of water often uses images from nature to promote their brand while implying that bottled water was safer, cleaner, and overall better than tap water. 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.

Moved from Commodification sandbox.. saving for later. 11/10/23

FROM: COMMODIFICATION OF WATER Article: 11/4/23

Theoretical explanation for commodification
The theoretical reasoning for proposing commodification as an answer to environmental problems can be related back to Garrett Hardin's work "The Tragedy of the Commons". In this he proposed that environmental problems do not have a technical solution because they are common resource problems. Water has historically been classified a "common good" or part of the global commons which has led to overexploitation and poor management. According to Hardins' theory multiple individuals acting both independently and rationally will continue to deplete common resources in the pursuit of self-interest. Concerns surrounding the overexploitation of water created it as a scarce resource prompting commodification as an effort to protect it. For a commodification to be achieved the commons are enclosed into private property which provides the motivating force for conservation and efficient management in the absence of strong collective action. Commodification places an economic value on an environmental resource which seeks to include and internalize the costs of using it within economic calculations. The logic proceeds, if a resource can be valued correctly it can be protected. To ascertain an economic value and produce a tradable commodity, commodification requires the natural object to be removed from its biophysical context thus transforming its identity and value. Through commodification water becomes responsive to market forces which are assumed to be better equipped at allocating resources and regulating environmentally damaging behavior than command and control regulation thus providing justification for the shift in attitude.

FROM COMMODIFICATION of WATER article: 11/6/23

Criticisms of commodification
Although the extent to which water has been commodified is of debate, attempts to do so have led to improvements in biological and chemical water quality as the environment has been prioritised to a greater degree in decision making. The benefits of commodification are well documented by its neoliberal proponents however criticisms concerning commodification and market environmentalism as a solution to environmental problems are less considered. Commodification inherently requires the enclosure of public assets to allow trade within the market place as economic goods. Criticism of this process identifies commodification as a systemic flaw within the capitalist system. Marx's theory of primitive accumulation describes how the capitalist system needs to continually expand into non-capitalist sectors which would have originally taken place through imperialism. Marx's criticism of commodification refers to this reckless addiction to growth and extends to the manner in which it changes a good's materiality so that natural objects lose their use value simply in exchange for a price. He believed that commodification transformed not only goods but relationships previously untouched by commerce, harming society in the process. David Harvey built upon Marx's theory and coined the phrase "accumulation by dispossession" which refers to this notion of expansion but considers it inherent within the capitalist system, which will find ways other than imperialism to achieve its goal. This form of capital accumulation tends to direct wealth away from the poor towards the elite and direct capital from the public to the private sector. This has exacerbated social inequality and directed natural resources away from their geographical context causing damage to ecosystems across the globe.

Public goods items removed- no reference on these sentences. Will look for references and add 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.

Removed from Article 11/11/23:

Controversies (removed from article.. 11/11/23)
Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example, water, education, data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.

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