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Commodity Cultures: The Traffic in Things
Author(syf 3 H W H U - D F N V R Q
Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1999yf S S 8
Published by: Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographersyf
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This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Commodity cultures: the traffic in things
Peter Jackson
Focusing on the commodification of various forms of cultural difference, this paper reviews recent work within the 'globalization' and 'creolization' paradigms,
outlining an agenda for future research. Rather than condemning commodification
as an unwarranted threat to the 'authenticity' of local cultures, the paper argues for
a more complex understanding of people's relationship with the world of goods.
Using a variety of examples, it is argued that the 'traffic in things' is associated with
a wide range of meanings and a diversity of responses. Informed by recent debates
in anthropology and material culture studies, it is suggested that geographical
metaphors (such as distance and displacementyf provide a more productive way of
engaging with contemporary commodity cultures than do visual metaphors (such as
unveiling or unmaskingyf Other means of transcending the distinction between
cultural and economic geographies are also discussed.
key words commodification consumption material culture cultural politics
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN email: [email protected]
revised manuscript received 28 May 1998
Introduction
The globalization of production systems and the
growing international movement of people, goods and services is increasingly acknowledged as hav-
ing complex, geographically uneven and socially differentiated effects, rather than being seen in
terms of an inevitable process of cultural homog- enization, flattening out the distinctiveness of 'local cultures' (compare Featherstone 1990; King 1991;
Massey and Jess 1995yf The emergence of new
cultural forms through processes of creolization or
hybridization denies any simple equation between
globalization and homogenization. According to
Appadurai, for example, 'as rapidly as forces from
various metropolises are brought into new societies
they tend to become indigenized' (1996, 32yf
Significantly for my subsequent argument,
Appadurai talks of this process in terms of a
language of 'deterritorialization', 'displacement' and 'repatriation'. In a similar fashion, recent research on the
geographies of consumption (summarized in
Jackson and Thrift 1995yf has insisted on the
creativity of 'ordinary consumers' in actively shap-
ing the meanings of the goods they consume in
various local settings. With consumption duly
'acknowledged' (Miller 1995ayf however, the bal-
ance is now in danger of tipping the other way,
divorcing consumption from other elements of the
'circuit of culture' (Mackay 1997yf The problem has
been exacerbated by a tendency to equate culture
with consumption, and the economic with produc- tion, despite several recent studies that demon-
strate the merits of taking a more 'economic'
approach to consumption and a more 'cultural'
approach to the workplace geographies of produc- tion (eg du Gay 1996; Peck 1996; McDowell 1997yf
Existing work on the geographies of commodi-
fication has tended to focus on a limited range of
commodities (particularly food and other retail
goodsyf and to restrict analysis to a very literal
definition of the commodity form.2 Moreover, pre- vious studies (of 'exotic' food and 'ethnic' cultures, for exampleyf have tended to treat commodification
as a dirty word, implying that once such cultures
have been commodified, they have inevitably been devalued and degraded. Constance Classen's
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 24 95-108 1999 ISSN 0020-2754 ? Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographersyf 1999
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 96 Peter Jackson
(1996yf study of consumption in the Argentine Northwest presents one such (by no means
extremeyf example. Using biographical evidence
from her own and her family's experience, she
examines 'the influx of foreign consumer goods into the region' (39yf Her examples include some of
the classic indicators of the 'globalization' of con-
sumption, such as Coca-Cola, the commodification
of Christmas and the introduction of North
American-style shopping malls. Her discussion of
the transformation of 'local culture' is couched in a
language of disapproval and nostalgic regret, as
when 'A local fruit [avocado] disappears from the
landscape and reappears ... as a packaged health
food for diet-conscious consumers' or when 'Tradi-
tion is transformed into fast food' (49yf While she
admits in her conclusion that 'imported goods,
images and terms are often reinvented within the
context of their new cultural location to suit local
sensibilities' (53yf the bulk of her argument is much
less nuanced, arguing that 'cultural imperialism' and 'Northern-style materialism' render 'The
home-made, the traditional and the local... debased and undesirable' (52yf While there is much to criticize about contempo-
rary commodity cultures, the complexities and
contradictions of commodification are easily missed by those who adopt a rhetoric of moral
outrage and blanket disapproval. This paper uses a
variety of examples to demonstrate the range of
meanings and diversity of responses associated
with the 'traffic in things'. It aims to outline a more
subtle response to the cultural complexities of
commodification, challenging the shrill language and simplistic assumptions that underlie such
accounts, and unsettling some of their apparent certainties. Having defined its terms and critiqued some of the conventional narratives, the paper
attempts to expand our understanding of commod-
ity cultures to encompass the commodification of
various kinds of cultural difference, as well as the
commodification of specific goods and services. It
challenges the received wisdom (on the Left, at
leastyf that commodification is, always and every- where, a 'bad thing'. Instead, the paper argues that
most of us, most of the time (in modern Western
societiesyf have a much more complex relationship with the world of goods than can be captured by a
simple renunciation of 'consumerism' or by simple
acts of resistance to the power of 'the market'.
Rather than assuming that such issues can be
settled in an arbitrary or a priori way, reference
is made in each case to appropriate empirical evidence.
Commodities and commodification
For some authors, 'commodities' are simply objects of economic value (though this only refers the
question back to what is meant by valueyf Others
prefer a narrower definition, confining the mean-
ing of commodities to products that are intended
for exchange. Some would restrict its meaning still
further, to exchange within particular (specifically
capitalistyf modes of production. Here, the inevi-
table starting point is Marx, who placed his
critique of the commodity form at the beginning of
the first volume of Capital. Arguing that 'a com-
modity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing' (1867, 163yf Marx went on to explore the ramifications of 'commodity fetishism' within
capitalist forms of exchange.3 Marx showed how
commodification involved the conversion of use
values into exchange values (often via monetary
exchangeyf as, for example, when goods are pro- duced for sale rather than for purely personal use.4
Paraphrasing Marx, Don Slater outlines how the
commodification of labour power contributes
further to the process of alienation:
Commodified labour produces commodities, things that are produced for sale and therefore for consump- tion by someone other than the person whose labour
produced it. Instead of being organically and transpar-
ently linked within praxis, the relation between pro- duction and consumption is indirect and mediated
through markets, money, prices, competition and
profit - the whole apparatus of commodity exchange. (1997, 107yf
'Commodification' refers, literally, to the extension
of the commodity form to goods and services that
were not previously commodified. Such a process was particularly characteristic of Britain in the
second half of the nineteenth century, when, as
Thomas Richards has argued, the commodity became and has since remained 'the one subject of
mass culture, the centrepiece of everyday life, the
focal point of all representation, the dead center of
the modern world' (1991, 1yf More recently, the
Thatcherite celebration of 'enterprise culture', the
'free market' and 'consumer choice' led to an
extension of the ideology of the market into
areas that were previously regarded as relatively
uncommodified, including education, healthcare,
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broadcasting and the arts. The process generated a
heated debate about morality as well as economics, a point that is developed below (see also Keat
forthcomingyf While many critics have regarded commodification as inherently 'bad', reducing human relations to an economic logic where every-
thing has its price, others are more ambivalent
about its consequences. Such ambivalence about
the effects of commodification can even be detected
in Marx's writings. As Andrew Sayer (1997, 23yf
argues, quoting from the Communist manifesto, the
levelling effects of the market and the power of
money to transgress cultural boundaries (as 'the
heavy artillery of cheap commodities breaks down
all Chinese walls'yf may be counterbalanced by the tendency of the market to dispel narrow-
mindedness and parochialism ('the idiocy of rural
life'yf leading to a process of cultural enrichment.
Recently, John Frow (1997yf has questioned whether the commodity form is 'necessarily and
always less humanly beneficial than non-
commodified use values' and whether its historical
extension is 'necessarily and under all circum-
stances a change for the worse' (136yf According to Frow,
the commodity form has the potential to be enabling and productive as well as to be limiting and destruc- tive. Historically it has almost always been both of these things at the same time, and the balance of gain and loss has rarely been easy to draw. (1997, 138yf
Following Frow, this paper seeks to trace the par- ticular benefits and disbenefits associated with
specific kinds of commodification, rather than
assuming that they can be mapped in some
abstract and a priori fashion.5
Unsettling conventional accounts
Previous studies of the globalization of consump- tion were often framed within a simple narrative,
whereby a monolithic global capitalism was held
responsible for overwhelming local experience,
contributing to 'the destruction of regional cul-
tures' (Peet 1986yf Though often regarded as the
dominant paradigm and referred to variously as a
process of 'Coca-colonization' (Hannerz 1992yf or
'McDonaldization' (Ritzer 1993yf such an approach is actually increasingly rare. The diffusion of
'global' products and their local 'reception' is
now generally acknowledged to be much more
complex. While products such as Coca-Cola or
McDonald's may strive for an increasingly global reach, their local consumption is mediated by mar-
keting strategies that are carefully tailored for
specific national markets. So, for example, the basic
format of Coca-Cola's 'General Assembly' adver-
tisement was originally recorded in Liverpool in
1987, where a suitably multicultural cast could be
easily assembled. A new version was filmed locally for broadcast in the Philippines, and the advert
was reshot with an entirely Spanish cast assembled
at Machu Picchu for broadcast in Peru. Similarly,
slogans such as 'Can't Beat the Feeling' and 'Coke is It' were found to translate badly when exported to various overseas markets and were replaced with 'The Feeling of Life' in Chile, 'Unique Sensation' in Italy and 'I Feel Coke' in Japan
(Pendergrast 1994, 368yf
Moreover, as Miller and others have pointed out, the 'globalization' of production frequently involves complex local arrangements of franchis-
ing and subcontracting. In Trinidad, for example, Miller (1997yf suggests that companies include
'local globals' - overseas-based transnationals
represented in Trinidad by a local office - and
'global locals' - where local offices of global trans-
nationals are increasingly dwarfed by home-grown Trinidadian companies, originating locally but sub-
sequently emerging as transnationals in their own
right (1997, 60yf Miller insists that 'local' factors
(such as the role of the state and questions of
ethnic identityyf have an increasingly important
bearing even on the Trinidadian branches of truly transnational companies. If the 'global homogenization' thesis is flawed
with respect to the complexities of localized pro- duction, it can also be challenged in relation to the
geography of consumption. In what Howes (1996yf refers to as the 'creolization paradigm', numerous
studies have emphasized how the meaning of
goods has been transformed in accordance with the
values of the 'receiving' culture.6 An outstanding
example is provided by Marie Gillespie's (1995yf
ethnographic study of Southall, which shows that, for young Punjabi Londoners, products such as
Coca-Cola and McDonald's hamburgers have very
specific meanings that may be quite different from
those that are 'intended' by their producers.7 Rather than standing as some undifferentiated
model of 'Americanization', Gillespie shows that
the consumption of these commodities is mediated
by local definitions of what it means to be a Punjabi
teenager in Britain, subject to various cultural
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restrictions on eating meat and other forms of
'Westernization', while simultaneously defining themselves as distinct from parental notions of
culturally appropriate behaviour. Miller's work in
Trinidad also shows how the local popularity of
American soap operas such as The young and the
restless cannot be reduced to any simple under-
standing of the 'Americanization' of Caribbean
culture. Instead, he shows how their meaning is
inflected by specifically Trinidadian idioms, pro-
viding a convenient resource with which to reflect
on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and
other 'local' concerns (Miller 1992yf These studies place a welcome emphasis on
the 'localization' of global products. But the com-
plexities of commodification can be taken further,
as a parallel process of globalization has begun to
affect a range of products that were previously dis-
tinguished by their specific geographical origins. Carol Hendrickson's (1996yf study of the marketing of a range of Guatemalan artefacts in the US
(through various mail-order cataloguesyf provides a
good example. Described as 'Mayan' (or some-
times as 'Indian' or simply 'traditional'yf the
products are typically identified as having been
'hand-made' (or 'crafted'yf as originating from
'high above the Guatemalan rainforests' and as
'unique' or 'one of a kind'. Without discussing how these catalogues are actually read or how
such products are used by actual consumers,
Hendrickson reaches a pessimistic conclusion
about 'the creative capacities of advertisements'
and their 'power over consumers' (1996, 111yf While the 'creolization' paradigm has involved a
renewed emphasis on consumer creativity, most
accounts, especially on the Left, retain an emphasis on the powerlessness and passivity of the con-
sumer. David Harvey provides a much-quoted
example: asking readers to reflect on the world of
social labour that is involved in the preparation of
a typical meal, he argues that:
we can in practice consume our meal without the
slightest knowledge of the intricate geography of pro- duction and the myriad social relationships embedded
in the system that puts it upon our table. (1990, 422yf
The job of social scientists, Harvey concludes, is
to 'lift the veil on this geographical and social
ignorance' (423yf While Harvey's analysis may lead to desirable consequences in terms of the
development of more ethical forms of consump-
tion, a disquieting aspect of the argument is the
implication that academics have a uniquely critical
insight into the social relations and conditions of
production that escape the notice of 'ordinary consumers'. An alternative way forward might be
to explore a range of different metaphors besides
Harvey's insistence on 'unveiling' ('exposing' or
'unmasking'yf what was previously hidden. For
example, in this next instance, Sarah Whatmore
follows Harvey's analysis, but substitutes a geo-
graphical metaphor (of 'distancing'yf for his visual
one (of 'unveiling'yf
Food is a basic condition of human life, but for most
people in the advanced industrial countries of Western
Europe, North America and Australasia today, it has
become a taken-for-granted facet of daily consumption.
Stacking a trolley in the supermarket is an everyday chore; getting a take-away, a commonplace conven-
ience; eating out, an integral part of many business and
leisure routines. (1995, 36yf
Yet, she continues:
These consumer experiences of food are quite pro-
foundly distanced from the social and economic
organization of agriculture and the contemporary pro- cesses of food production. Milk may still come from
cows and apples grow on trees (don't they?yf but how
does farming, the anchor of common-sense under-
standings of food production, fit into the creation of
oven-ready meals; genetically engineered plants and
animals; or synthetic foodstuffs? The prevalent repre- sentation of such experiences as the mark of 'consumer
choice' belies a diminished understanding of, and con-
trol over, what it is we are eating and the social
conditions under which it is produced. (36yf
It is the idea of 'distance' that opens out the
analysis to other interpretations besides those that
cast consumers in an entirely passive role vis-a-vis the (increasingly centralized and powerfulyf forces
and relations of production. The idea of distance
also recalls Simmel's (1907yf work, where he argued that the value of commodities cannot be reduced to
an intrinsic property of objects, but exists in the
space or distance between our desires and our
enjoyment of those objects. There is, then, for
Simmel as for Marx, an inherent spatiality to the
commodity form, though Simmel reverses Marx's
logic to argue that it is demand that endows objects with value, and not, as Marx argued, the labour
power involved in their production. Other metaphors of distance and space have
been taken up enthusiastically by several contem-
porary cultural critics. In his work on the diaspora cultures of the 'Black Atlantic', for example, Gilroy
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(1993yf insists that geographical origins are of lim-
ited relevance to cultural creativity. He goes on
to substitute the geographical metaphor of routes
for the biological one of roots, tracing the active
production of meaning in various processes of
'creolization'. The 'routes' metaphor has also been
employed by Doreen Massey in her search for a
more progressive sense of place than that implied in traditional arguments about stable, inward-
looking communities with impenetrable bound-
aries and a nostalgic concern for an idealized past. While traditional studies of a sense of place were
tainted by their yearning for a lost authenticity, an exaggerated emphasis on memory, stasis and
nostalgia, in Massey's reconceptualization places are constituted through a distinctive articulation of
interconnections at a variety of scales from the
global to the local. Significantly, too, her example of
Kilburn High Road makes reference to several
commodities of diverse origin:
It is a pretty ordinary place, north-west of the centre of London. Under the railway bridge the newspaper stand sells papers from every county of what my neighbours, many of whom come from there, still often call the Irish Free State ... Thread your way through the often almost stationary traffic diagonally across the road from the newsstand and there's a shop which as
long as I can remember has displayed saris in the window. Four life-sized models of Indian women, and reams of cloth ... (1994, 152-3yf
In their recent work on the 'geographical knowl-
edges' that are traded along with specific com-
modities (such as 'exotic' fruits and 'ethnic' foodyf
Ian Cook and Philip Crang also use a highly
spatialized language. Arguing that consumption is
a geographically constituted process, Crang (1996yf
employs the metaphor of 'displacement' to explore the juxtapositions and connections that exist
between displaced commodities and their associ-
ated knowledges, a line of argument that is
pursued in his work with Ian Cook on culinary cultures (Cook and Crang 1996yf Using another
geographical metaphor, Crang (1996yf argues that
consumers make all sorts of 'inhabitations' of com-
modity systems that result not in a simple sense of
alienation but in a series of mutual 'entanglements' between consumers and consumption systems (cf Thomas 1991yf Such arguments offer an attractive
alternative to simple metaphors of 'unmasking' or
'unveiling', which seek to reveal the hidden social
relations of production that are 'disguised' in the
commodity form.
Morality and the market
Those who criticize commodification on moral
grounds frequently do so by contrasting the deper- sonalized and anonymous commodity, at one pole, with the inalienable singularity of human beings, at the other pole. The fact that people have been
treated as commodities at various points in human
history -bought and sold as slaves, for example, either literally or in the form of 'wage slavery' - reinforces the moral conviction of this position. But, as Igor Kopytoff (1986, 75-6yf and others have
argued, even slavery had a range of effects for
those who were subject to its dehumanizing econ-
omic logic. So too, in other contexts, we might wish to inquire why such moral opprobrium attaches to certain kinds of commodification (of sexual services or human genes, for exampleyf rather than to other kinds (such as the sale of food
or animalsyf The condemnation of all forms of commodifi-
cation as immoral frequently rests on a contrast
between commodities and culture. Proponents of
this view argue that, whereas commodification
homogenizes value, culture values difference.
Baudrillard's condemnation of 'consumer society' relies on a distinction whereby the daily dealings of human beings are described as being 'not so
much with their fellow men [sic], but rather ... with the reception and manipulation of goods and
messages' (1998, 25yf For Baudrillard, consumers
experience material objects through advertising in
a thoroughly uncritical way, as a 'miracle' of mis-
recognition. Such distinctions are, however, easily
overplayed. For, as Bourdieu (1984yf demonstrates, cultural or aesthetic judgements are rarely disinter-
ested, frequently serving to sustain social inequali- ties, while various forms of cultural difference are
readily commodifiable. Thus, in Victorian Britain, the extension of overseas trade was justified by a culture (described by McClintock (1995yf as a
process of 'commodity racism'yf that associated
whiteness with cleanliness and purity at home, in
contrast to the associations of blackness with dirt
and pollution abroad. The resulting entanglements between ideologies of domesticity and imperialism underline the artificiality involved in making
any clear distinction between 'culture' and the
commodity form.
By treating commodities as complex cultural
forms, the morality of commodification remains an
open question, subject to empirical investigation
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rather than a question that can be settled a priori.10
Taking a number of examples, the remainder of
this paper seeks to trace the geography of specific
processes of commodification. Despite the inherent
spatiality of commodity exchange (as outlined
aboveyf the geographical constitution of exchange
systems has frequently been neglected, or treated
in a purely metaphorical way. Apart from the
exceptions already noted, some insightful studies
of the 'commodity chains' that are associated
with the internationalization of food production
(Friedland et al 1981; Goodman and Redclift 1991yf Glennie and Thrift's (1992yf work on the emergence of modern consumption and the extended reach of
commodities facilitated by new media technolo-
gies, and the influential 'systems of provision'
approach associated with the work of Fine and
Leopold (1993yf there is relatively little work on the
geography of commodification.11 This is particu-
larly true of the commodification of various forms
of cultural difference, to which we now turn.
Commodifying cultural difference
While there may be nothing intrinsically wrong with the commodification of cultural difference, it
is clear that the ability to commodify other cultures
is not evenly distributed in society or space. For
those with the necessary economic and cultural
capital, it is increasingly easy to enjoy 'a little taste
of something more exotic' (May 1996ayf while those
with fewer resources are more likely to be on the
receiving end of such processes. Jon May's research
in Stoke Newington, a gentrifying district of inner
North London, shows that the ability to com-
modify cultural difference has become a central
feature of the 'lifestyle' choices of members of
the area's 'new cultural class' (artists, designers and other media professionalsyf Such residents
exercise a taste for exotic food as a way of marking out social and cultural distinctions from the
area's other (working-class and ethnic minorityyf residents. As one of May's informants enthuses,
I just love it. I love it because it's different - a little taste
of something more exotic ... Most days I might have
an Indian meal, or a Thai meal or a Chinese meal, or a
vegetarian take-away, or pasta. I never just have a
cheese omelette, never, it's boring ... (May 1996a, 61yf
The African-American cultural critic bell hooks
refers disparagingly to this process as 'eating the
Other' (hooks 1992yf whereby commodity culture
provides an opportunity to consume the products of various different ethnicities in a highly contrived
and controlled way, strictly on the consumer's own
terms. Through 'eating the Other', hooks suggests, consumers assert their power and privilege over
those whose cultures are consumed. May goes on
to show that this desire for difference is powerfully aestheticized, as demonstrated in this extract from
an interview with 'Alex' (a graphic designer in his
mid-30s who moved to Stoke Newington about ten
years agoyf
Coming through Church Street you've got that glorious shot of church spires and the trees and the park, and all that ... it's a real sort of postcardy thing. The only thing that's missing is the cricket pitch ... It's very sort of Englishy ... And, er, I mean I'm English and I do like
England's Englishness I suppose ... So, whilst I accept,
you know, multi-cultural society and stuff like that, I
probably wouldn't if Stoke Newington became sort of
radically Muslim in its feel - then I probably wouldn't feel that comfortable living here anymore, you know?
(May 1996b, 203yf
As Alex's references to 'Englishness' and 'radically Muslim' suggest, such a visual aesthetic quickly
spills over into racialized forms of social exclusion.
For other residents, such as 'Dorian' (another
graphic designer in her 30syf part of the area's
appeal is its ethnic diversity, which makes it feel
'kind of sharp':
It has a feeling of variety, of variety in class and colour and therefore a slight feeling of alternativeness, because there are lots of little cultures - lots of gay little
cultures - which feel fairly safe in terms of violence ... I like the fact that there are lots of races - as long as
they don't make too much noise ... [it's] slightly bohemian, slightly off beat, and I like that very much.
(May 1996b, 208yf
Dorian implies that other cultures can be com-
modified and safely consumed, provided that the
threat of violence is contained and the different
'races' don't get out of hand.12
Studies of this kind raise the thorny question of
'authenticity', defined by Celia Lury as the desire
for cultures that are relatively untouched by pro- cesses of commodification (1996, 179yf The topic has been most fully explored in relation to tourism
(Cohen 1988; May 1996cyf where, it has been
argued, tourists seek an 'authentic' experience of
other places, even when they know such authen-
ticity to have been 'staged' specifically for their
benefit (MacCannell 1989yf or where a new gener- ation of 'post-tourists' may actually delight in
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inauthenticity, willingly suspending disbelief for
the temporary enjoyment of the 'exotic' (Urry 1990;
1995yf
Here, we propose to abandon the search for
'authenticity' and to examine the more tractable
question of 'authentification' (identifying those
who make claims for authenticity and the interests
that such claims serveyf Mary Crain (1996yf provides a useful example from her ethnographic study of the incorporation of 'native' women into the
Ecuadorean tourist industry. Recruited initially for
domestic work in aristocratic households in Quito,
'native' women from the highland community of
Quimsa were able to secure work in one of the
capital city's luxury hotels. They were obliged to
dress in a purified and aestheticized version of
'native costume', including a starched white apron,
signifying compliant servitude. Though undoubt-
edly 'artificial' and shaped by relations of extreme
inequality, such performative constructions of
gender, class and ethnicity allowed these women
access to an employment niche that would not
otherwise have been open to them. By engaging in
a calculated enactment of an essentialized 'native'
identity involving the strategic performance of
'native' identity and the staging of 'authenticity',
they demonstrated their (limitedyf power to reshape the hierarchical and exploitative relations in which
they were placed to their relative economic advan-
tage. While the commodification of difference
was clearly part of the hotel's marketing strategy,
offering tourists a sanitized version of 'native'
hospitality through the visual appropriation of
'Indianness' (specifically via the display of the
'native' female bodyyf the benefits were not entirely one-sided.
Debates about authenticity often imply a shrill
reading of the effects of globalization (as discussed
aboveyf rather than a more subtle reading of the
cultural politics of such 'transnational connections'
(Hannerz 1996yf The shrill reading can be criticized
from various perspectives. First, it exaggerates, romanticizes and reifies the
extent to which any 'culture' is isolated from other
cultures, implying the existence of a 'pure' cultural
essence, from which any departure is a debase-
ment. Instead, we might insist that all cultures are
'commodity cultures' to varying degrees.14 As
James Carrier's (1994yf historical survey confirms, a
clear distinction between commodified products and the exchange of other kinds of goods (such as gift-givingyf is, and always has been, highly
problematic. A more complex view of commodifi-
cation acknowledges the many ways in which
objects become 'entangled' in a web of wider social
relations and meanings (Thomas 1991yf emphasiz-
ing what Appadurai (1986yf calls the 'social life of
things'. Second, the search for untainted 'authentic' local
cultures implies a dangerous curtailment of the
principle of cultural relativity. As Daniel Miller
argues,
Central Africans in suits, Indonesian soap operas, and South Asian brands are no longer [to be regarded as] inauthentic copies by people who have lost their cul- ture after being swamped by things that only North Americans and Europeans 'should' possess. Rather there is the equality of genuine relativism that makes none of us a model of real consumption and all of us creative variants of social processes based around the
possession and use of commodities. (1995b, 144yf
Two further examples of the commodification of
cultural difference help to illustrate the value of a
more complex cultural politics of consumption. The first concerns the development of an inter-
national market for so-called primitive art; the
second examines the production and consumption of so-called 'black music'.
The commodification of Aboriginal art
Howard Morphy's (1995yf analysis of two major international exhibitions of Aboriginal art, Dream-
ings and Aratjara, highlights the complex links
between claims for 'authenticity' and the process of
commodification as 'Aboriginal art' has moved out
of the category of 'primitive art' into the 'main-
stream' international art market. The process has
been beset with contradictions (Michaels 1993yf
Traditionally, Morphy argues, Aboriginal art was
communally owned and integral to the passing of
intergenerational knowledge. Access to such work
was restricted to men of a certain status. According to his analysis, the production of work for sale on
the international art market (for display to un-
known audiencesyf was a direct result of European colonization. Initially at least, the cultural and
economic value of such work lay in its lack of
external 'contamination'. Works that reached the
international art market were almost by definition
of questionable authenticity, since the artist
would have been 'tainted' by the process of com-
modification. Aboriginal artists were therefore
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 102 Peter Jackson
uLADAa-ante-WIMP X?& el?
swifty PTS V IFW OWN Ayf 2 PIPN i L-IKE ABORIGINJAL AR r
't*- r por M otstrod LL SOo Lc~T lAL 4 [cv~zLO10MSCAE C V60k~m- r. pPA o O GAICVUCAIX? cciff mevl~t-/ oWHIT BITH! ili
Figure 1 Ambiguous attitudes towards Aboriginal art Source: Time Out (4-11 August 1993yf reproduced by kind permission of Kipper Williams and Time Out
disadvantaged in selling their work overseas by
European definitions of the 'primitive'.
Aboriginal art later came to play a significant role in the battle for Aboriginal land rights, further
delegitimizing its status as art in the minds of
conservative critics (who sought to maintain a dis-
tinction between culture and politicsyf Aboriginal art has also played a significant role in the move-
ment of Australian nationalism away from its
European roots. In this context, cultural criticism
has gradually moved away from an emphasis on
the work's ethnographic authenticity - stressing its
religious significance and continuity with earlier
traditions - towards a reclassification as 'art', with
greater emphasis on the agency of individual art-
ists. European notions of the 'primitive' have also
been questioned by the intellectual climate of post- colonialism, as well as by a growing insistence
on the diversity of Aboriginal art and artists. The
process has been further contested by those
who have sought to police the boundaries of
Aboriginality, raising doubts about the work of
so-called 'urban Aborigines', for example. Morphy concludes with qualified optimism:
In Australia the changing position of Aboriginal art has
resulted in its incorporation in discourse on Australian
art in general. It tends now to be collected by the same
institutions, exhibited within the same gallery struc-
ture, written about in the same journals as other
Australian art. And in many respects this has come
about because, over many years, Aboriginal people have been struggling to make Aboriginal art part of the
agenda of Australian society. It could be interpreted as the appropriation of Aboriginal art by a white
Australian institutional structure; the reality has been a
much more equal relationship. (1995, 233-4yf
Indeed, European exhibitions of Aboriginal art
now provoke diverse reactions, ranging from
those, such as the Spectator's art critic Giles Auty, who argued that Aboriginal art has declined in
quality 'in direct proportion ... to the amount of
interested input from non-Aboriginals' (1993,
quoted in Morphy 1995, 230yf to more self-
conscious and ironic expressions of ambiguity,
verging on embarrassment, towards the whole
genre (see Figure 1yf
Aboriginal artists have themselves responded to
the dilemmas of 'authenticity' in some creative
ways as evidenced by Jane Jacobs' (1995; 1996yf subtle analyses of the community arts project at J C
Slaughter Falls in Brisbane. In 1993, Brisbane City Council commissioned Laurie Nilsen and Marshall
Bell of the Aboriginal visual arts company
Campfire Consultancy to produce a work to com-
memorate the International Year of Indigenous
People. The walking tour they designed encom-
passed a number of painted images that were
self-conscious copies of artworks to be found at
precontact sites throughout Queensland. Far from
emphasizing the 'authenticity' of their work, how-
ever, the artists chose deliberately to unsettle
conventional notions of Aboriginal authority. The project was executed and ratified by local
Aborigines, but incorporated 'traditional' designs from Aboriginal groups from areas well outside
Brisbane. The site was not previously of special
significance to local Aboriginal groups, but the
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Commodity cultures: the traffic in things 103
City Council made a gesture towards 'authentifi- cation' by seeking permission from the Brisbane
Aboriginal Council of Elders and making a 'copy-
right' payment. The artists also ensured that their
work became a long-term community project by
using materials that required regular repainting,
contrasting its intended ephemerality with the
'timeless' qualities attributed to Aboriginal art in
less self-critical accounts of 'authenticity'.
The commodification of 'black' music
The commodification of 'black' music presents
equally complex issues for anyone interested in the
'traffic in things' and their associated meanings. Here, the evidence is taken from Susan Smith's
recent work on the cultural politics of music, par-
ticularly her discussion of 'race', space and civil
rights in Black America (1997, 515-23yf Despite
being set within a concern for the 'social and
economic construction ... of ideas about race dif-
ference' (515yf the topic is fraught with difficulties.
The terminology for such a discussion is immedi-
ately problematic - whether one writes of black,
'black' or Black music, for example (and similarly of white, 'white' or White audiencesyf Further
difficulties arise when one tries to convey the
significance of the material conditions in which
particular forms of music were produced without
essentializing the social relations of production or denying the individual creativity of particular artists. Such difficulties recur in discussions of the
content and form of different musical styles (where words such as syncopation, rhythm and harmony are scarcely adequate for conveying the nuances of
the music as it is performedyf Many of the issues
are highlighted in debates about how the music is
'heard' by different audiences.
Smith recognizes at the outset that 'black music'
is a contested terrain, 'which gives rise to all kinds
of dubious arguments about authenticity, essential-
ism and appropriation' (1997, 515yf yet she contin-
ues to emphasize the very characteristics of 'black' music that give rise to such arguments. Having discussed the way that music has provided 'a
potent voice for oppressed peoples', she identifies
some 'common elements' that allegedly unite all of
the various forms of 'black' music she discusses, from ragtime and jazz to soul and rap, all of which,
she asserts,
attach importance to the skill of improvisation, empha- sizing performance rather than composition, creation
rather than interpretation, and spontaneity rather than
formality. (1997, 516yf
Focusing on the 'expressivity' of 'black' music and
on its political significance (see Gilroy 1993, 75yf
plays into the hands of those who regard 'black' music as being less intellectually demanding and
less 'pure' an art form than so-called 'white' music
(the 'whiteness' of which is rarely discussedyf
What, for example, is implied about the creativity of individual artists by insisting that 'black' music
must always be related to the material conditions
in which it was produced? Though critics such as
Clarence Lusane may be correct in asserting that,
'From slave town to motown, from Bebop to Hip
Hop, black music has been shaped by the material
conditions of black life' (1993, 42yf this is surely no
more true for 'black' music than for any other kind.
Describing the content and form of 'black' music
is no less fraught. What, for example, is implied by the assertion that 'Black music tells it like it is'
(Smith 1997, 517yf " Is 'black' music to be under-
stood as a simple 'reflection' of the conditions of
black people's material existence, documenting 'the social crisis engulfing Black America in ways that are more obvious and immediate than most
government reports and scholarly texts' (517yf " Or
should it be approached, like other cultural forms, as a creative reworking, a complex representation of those conditions?
Similar arguments apply to the consumption of
'black' music where, as work by Paul Gilroy (1987yf and Les Back (1996yf confirms, there is a world of
difference between listening to music performed live in a communal setting and listening to
recorded music in the privacy of one's home. Such
diverse contexts of consumption highlight the
problem of what Allinson (1992, 447yf calls 'market-
ing ghetto authenticity'. Debates about musical
'authenticity' have often focused on the alleged distance between particular artists and the condi-
tions with which their work may once have been
associated (such as the ghetto environments with
which even the most commercially successful rap artists still seem keen to associate themselvesyf But
these debates are further complicated by contexts
of consumption, which include 'white' middle-
class teenagers listening to 'black' music in the
comfort of their suburban bedrooms.
Claims to 'authenticity' are a crucial aspect of
such music's commercial appeal, suggesting that, in terms of consumption if not production, 'black'
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 104 Peter Jackson
music has largely failed in its attempts to establish
'a space of creativity which whites could not
occupy' (Smith 1997, 518yf It is exactly this paradox that the commodification of (at least some forms
ofyf 'black' music seeks to exploit. Those who
promote such music emphasize the 'authenticity' of its conditions of production, while seeking to
make the 'product' commercially available for con-
sumption by audiences who may be located in
very different conditions, but who at the same time
are drawn by the music's (actively promotedyf claims to 'authenticity'. Controversies over 'offen- sive' lyrics, the attachment of 'parental guidance' labels and debates about the alleged misogyny and
homophobia of rap music all need to be interpreted in these wider contexts (see hooks 1994; Skelton
1995yf rather than in simplistic terms of 'authen-
ticity' and 'appropriation'. As Smith (1997, 519yf concludes: 'black' music contains crucial clues
about the social construction (and I would add, the commodificationyf of difference. Its cultural
politics involve:
the complex intertwinings of dirt-poor roots and middle-class dreams, aesthetic ambitions and social
strivings, the anarchic impulse and the business ethic.
(Guralnick 1986, quoted in Smith 1997, 522yf
Conclusion
Rather than approaching commodification in an
arbitrary and a priori way, adopting a language of
moral outrage or blanket condemnation, this paper has attempted to engage with commodification in
more complex ways, weighing appropriate empiri- cal evidence in each specific case. Taking material
culture seriously involves going beyond the indi-
vidual interpretation of commodities, and reinstat-
ing the importance of social relations with all of
their associated inequalities (Gregson 1995yf It also
requires an examination of the social relations of
production and consumption (through empirical work with actual consumers 'on the ground'yf as
well as a critique of the ideologies and discourses
through which such relations and material arte-
facts are represented. From such a perspective, the
distinction between practices and discourses
begins to dissolve as particular things (specific
commoditiesyf are used to objectify social relation-
ships, serving as a kind of commentary on our
social experience.
As geographers, we might take a lead from the
work of Arjun Appadurai, who sought to trace the
meaning of commodities as they are inscribed in
their forms, uses and trajectories. As Appadurai
argues: 'it is things-in-motion that illuminate their
human and social context' (1986, 5yf Extending
Appadurai's analogy, we might begin to trace the
social geography of things as they move in and out of
the commodity state, with different forms of com-
modification having variable effects on specific social groups in different places. As Appadurai
(1986, 17yf insists: 'the commodity is not one kind of
thing rather than another, but one phase in the life
of some things'.15 As commodification extends its
reach into an ever-widening range of domains, the
commodity form has become increasingly univer-
sal. But the significance that is attached to specific commodities differs markedly from one place to
another according to their contexts of production and consumption:
Where societies differ is in the way commoditization as a special expression of exchange is structured and related to the social system, in the factors that encour-
age or contain it, in the long-term tendencies for it to
expand or stabilize, and in the cultural and ideological premises that suffuse its working. (Kopytoff 1986, 68yf
Where, then, should we look for future directions
in geographical research on commodification? One
possibility is provided by the revival of 'material
culture' studies that is currently taking place in
anthropology and archaeology. Such studies insist
on taking 'the material' in material culture seri-
ously, locating the shifting meaning of things in the
context of consumers' everyday lives via empiri-
cally grounded ethnographic work (Miller 1998;
du Gay et al 1997yf Cook and Crang's (1996yf recent
work on 'commodity circuits' takes a similar
approach, following the physical movement of
particular culinary goods and their associated 'geo-
graphical knowledges' through the chains of mean-
ing that link their production and consumption. Such an approach eschews a search for historical
and geographical 'origins', seeking instead to map the juxtapositions and displacements through which particular goods acquire their specific mean-
ings (Crang 1996yf It is an approach that we hope to extend through future research on the trans-
national flows of food and clothing as part of the
construction of 'diasporic identities'.16
A second possibility seeks to challenge the
distinction between people and things, based on
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Commodity cultures: the traffic in things 105
recent developments in the sociology of science
and technology. Contrary to conventional studies
of the social impact of technology, approaches informed by actor-network theory emphasize the
web of relations through which a variety of human
and non-human actors are interlinked. Such
approaches seek to transcend conventional dual-
isms, exploring how actions are embedded in
materials and extended through time and place
(Murdoch 1997yf Tracing such networks, according to Nigel Thrift (1996yf offers a key means of blur-
ring economic and non-economic boundaries.
Actor-network theory's language of '(quasi-yf
objects' and 'immutable mobiles' has already been
applied in geographical studies of 'cyberspace' (eg
Bingham 1996yf Its potential for understanding the
geographies of other aspects of material culture
and contemporary consumption remains largely
untapped.17 As outlined above, future work might also seek
to extend our understanding of the process of
commodification beyond the classic definition of
particular kinds of manufactured goods and serv-
ices. When reading an advertisement, for example, a variety of meanings are being consumed, only some of which are directly connected to the com-
modity, and which may or may not lead to the
consumption of the product itself (Jackson and
Taylor 1996yf Such meanings are, of course, fre-
quently coded in terms of various forms of social
difference. A geographical understanding of com-
modity cultures should therefore involve both an
exploration of the physical movement of goods and services (the 'traffic in things'yf and an appre- ciation of the commodification of cultural differ-
ence. This is undeniably a broad agenda, but it
provides ample scope for bringing together the
geographies of production and consumption, and
maybe ultimately transcending the unhelpful dis-
tinction between 'the cultural' and 'the economic'.
Notes
1 Such arguments have a long pedigree within cul- tural studies, dating back to Dick Hebdige's (1979yf
pioneering studies of the appropriation and transfor- mation of meaning in various subcultural styles, recalling Paul Willis's (1978; 1990yf arguments about the 'objective possibilities' of cultural items to express the profane creativity of common cultures. 2 The term 'commodification' is preferred to the more common American usage 'commoditization' because
of the latter's implication of a society-wide historical
transformation, akin to other processes such as
urbanization or modernization.
3 Much could be said about the language in which
commodification is commonly discussed. Consider, for example, the implications of describing a culture
as having been 'swamped' by commodities, or of the
commodity 'invading' or 'penetrating' a particular
society. On Marx's use of anthropocentric metaphors such as the 'commodity fetish', see Baudrillard (1981yf 4 As Carrier's (1994yf work has shown, the (essentialistyf distinction between commodities (produced for saleyf and gifts (produced for exchangeyf can be exagger- ated. The model of social transformation it implies, from the 'reciprocal dependence' of social agents
transacting the inalienable objects of a highly person- alized gift economy, to the 'reciprocal independence' of agents transacting wholly alienable objects in an
impersonal economy of commodities, is also highly
questionable (compare Gregory 1982yf 5 Frow's examples focus on the commodification of
information and the person, including studies of the
market in DNA, the trade in human organs and
property rights in 'personality'. 6 Even the language of 'reception' now seems an inad-
equate recognition of the agency of consumers in
actively transforming the meaning of goods as they incorporate them into their lives. As research by Burgess (1990yf and others has shown, the production and consumption of environmental meanings is far more complex than earlier studies of the 'mass media'
implied. 7 The idea that a product has an 'intended' meaning that may be 'subverted' or 'resisted' by consumers is a contested one. The intentionality of the producer can often only be inferred, and consumer creativity is such that a product's range of meanings will always exceed the attempt to impose a single reading. Miller
(1987, 112yf suggests that 'a system of categorization is an inherent attribute' of every artefact and that 'some notion of intention is also usually attributed to their creation'. While some ambiguity of meaning will
always be present (used deliberately in some cases to entice consumersyf all systems of representation require some degree of shared meaning or 'system of
recognition' (cf Hall 1997yf 8 Miller's work on the Caribbean consumption of Coca-Cola reaches a similar conclusion, asserting the
importance of local context (where it is generally drunk in combination with rumyf in defining the
product's cultural specificity. In this context, Miller
(1998yf insists, Coca-Cola should be thought of as 'a black sweet drink from Trinidad' rather than as
unambiguous evidence of the 'globalization' of taste.
9 Appadurai (1986yf makes a similar argument about transcultural flows of commodities and the unstable
distribution of knowledge on which they rest. He
This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:19:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 106 Peter Jackson
concludes that, 'Commodities represent very complex social forms and distributions of knowledge' (41yf 10 Compare Miller's argument that: the remainder of the 1990s will probably see a movement beyond any simple moralizing of com- moditization and mass consumption as either destructive or liberating, concentrating instead on
examining how these processes often differ from the assumptions made in dominant models of modernization. (1995b, 147yf 11 Most of the exceptions are provided by anthropol- ogists rather than geographers. See, for example, the work reviewed in Ferguson (1988yf Gupta and
Ferguson (1992yf and Miller (1995byf 12 This argument is developed at greater length in
Crang and Jackson (forthcomingyf where the case of Stoke Newington is compared with two other neigh- bourhoods in North London (Brent Cross and Wood
Greenyf See also Miller et al (1998yf for ethnographic material in support of this argument. 13 Glennie and Thrift (1992, 436yf suggest that such
'aesthetic reflexivity' is a distinguishing characteristic of modern consumption, where consumers exhibit new attitudes to authenticity, which are more bound
up with aesthetic illusions than with a quest for the real or the deeply spiritual. 14 Compare Appadurai's (1986, 16yf insistence that 'the capitalist mode of commoditization [interacts] with myriad other indigenous social forms of commoditization'. 15 Appadurai is paraphrasing Igor Kopytoff's (1986yf
argument about the 'cultural biography of things' (though the notion of 'biography' as a scripted narra- tive is itself problematicyf 16 The proposed research by Philip Crang, Claire Dwyer and myself is funded by ESRC as part of their current Transnational Communities programme (award number L214252031yf 17 Current ESRC-funded postgraduate research by Paul Stallard at Sheffield is attempting to use actor- network theory and related approaches to explore the cultural geographies of books and book-buying.
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