Beyond commodification

What does it mean to put intimate elements, such as privacy, sexuality, or even body parts, up for sale? Margaret Jane Radin approaches these problems from her point of view as a lawyer, enriched by pragmatic philosophy and economic theory. She has contributed to the dissemination of the notions of commodification (commodification), or even contested markets (contested markets) to address these issues.

His flagship book, Contested Commodities has become an essential reference in the field of commodification studies (commodification studies) – a field that is concerned not with the role of the market in general, but focuses on particular markets that raise ethical, moral or social issues (such as the sale of organs, reproductive services or nature). On the occasion of an interdisciplinary conference devoted to the limits of the market, she devoted this interview to us in which she returns to the main concepts forged throughout her works, and recalls alternative solutions to generalized commodification.

La Vie des Idées: What are the problems raised by the commercialization of certain things?

Margaret Jane Radin: The notion of commodification, as I use it in my book Contested Commodities (1996), refers to the act of transforming something that refers to the very humanity of a person, into a commodity, even though this element does not seem to be made to be put on the market. Today, it is a question of commodification studies (commodification studies); others prefer to talk about “contested markets” to refer to markets whose existence is not known to be desirable – markets like sex work, for example, or the sale of organs. For most things, commodification is not a problem: everything I buy in the supermarket, the clothes I wear, are commodities, things that were not made specifically for me. Everything is a commodity that is bought and sold, which for most things is not a concern. But what we were concerned about, at the time I was writing the book, was the sale of things like sexuality, eggs, organs; the commodification of body parts. These were issues that worried us from a feminist perspective, because it seemed to us that many of the things that were being commodified belonged to women. The debates in which feminist thinkers took part around the question of surrogacy were very lively at the time.

There VDI : How does the existence of these contested markets affect personal identity?

MJA: My approach to the notion of person is mostly philosophical. My idea is that there are things in a person whose loss affects the personality: you are no longer the same without these things. And I thought that giving birth was an essential element of the person that a woman is. I thought the same thing about body parts, and about sex work. But I am not very clear about the question of sex work these days; in fact, I am not writing about it anymore. The problem as it is now is interesting: back then, if you were labeled a “prostitute,” you were at the bottom of the social ladder. Today, some people consider it to be a salaried job like any other, work that must be regulated in terms of health and safety conditions. The people who do it ask to be protected, not to be exploited. I do not know if it is the right solution, but it is a solution. I haven’t written a second volume on this subject, because these things have changed since 1996, when my book was published: questions of commodification have become international, whether it’s body parts, the sale of babies or sex work. But I don’t know enough about how these international markets work; it’s up to others to think about these questions now.

There VDI : How does the concept of inalienability by the market (market inalienability) does it offer an alternative to commodification?

MJA: When an object is a commodity, that it can be put on the market, it is “alienable”, that is to say that it can be sold. But what happens if something can be given but not sold? This status was granted to blood for a long time, in France for example, as well as to babies for adoption – at least in theory, because in practice, you had to pay lawyers and their fees were high. The notion of “market inalienability” therefore refers to these particular things to which we are not supposed to assign a price. I thought we needed this concept; I would just have preferred to find an expression that was easier to pronounce…

There VDI : What about the concept of incomplete commodification (incomplete commodification) ?

MJA: The concept of incomplete commodification refers to being able to market something, but not at the highest price that someone would be willing to pay. For example, if you agree to sell surrogacy, the idea would be to say, “You can’t offer a million dollars for this.” Some people are looking to buy eggs or sperm; they put ads in top universities saying, “If you’re taller than six feet, play basketball, and have a 20 average in all your subjects, I’ll offer you high prices for your eggs.” If you find egg donation acceptable, I think you can offer a certain amount to the donor—because it’s a bit risky, there are sometimes complications—but without setting up the conditions for a market. Otherwise, prices will go up when the eggs are likely to produce quality offspring… which I find a bit hard to imagine. I don’t talk about it in my book because it’s a phenomenon that only started ten years after my book was published. In a similar vein, there are markets where things are sold that should, I think, be free. The price of basic foodstuffs should not increase beyond a certain threshold, otherwise people will starve to death. The same goes for water: you can’t have infrastructure for drinking water and then deprive people of access to water…

There VDI : How does the commodification of big data affect personal identity?

MJA: The reason why I find that the commodification studies are essential nowadays, is the increasing commodification in the field of what is called big data. There are now 3,500 companies working in the field of data brokerage: these companies collect personal data, subject it to computer processing and sell it to advertising agencies, which use this data to target advertising. This phenomenon led me to take an interest in commodification issues again. In my opinion, a large part of this data should be private. We are social beings, we need to exchange with other individuals in private, in order to better understand what is important to us. However, putting all of our private life on Facebook, without realizing that it is a commercial enterprise, is endangering our privacy but also our personal identity. This is why I oppose the idea of ​​considering this data as goods: if these things are goods, it means that we could sell them. But I don’t think these are assets, I think they are elements inherent in being a person.

There VDI : To what extent does the commodification of big data pose a threat to democracy?

MJA: If all this personal information is computerized within a society that is subject to surveillance, it constitutes a threat to people who are protesting, who are demonstrating. For example, tomorrow I have to take a plane. But imagine, if the customs officers, thanks to facial recognition systems, compare my face to the database they have on protesters, and they think that I am an outlaw, they will come to see me, search me, tell me to go to a room… It is quite frightening and dissuasive: it dissuades me from actively participating in the functioning of society. And such participation is essential to the functioning of liberal democracies: we are all supposed to participate in citizenship, but all this surveillance makes that impossible.

There VDI : What does the notion of refer to? boiler plate ?

MJA: This problem is more pronounced in the United States and, to some extent, in Canada. The European Union, on the other hand, is very careful about contracts between sellers and consumers. But take Google, for example: when you sign up for an account for an email address, the site displays a notice saying, “Here is our policy,” followed by many pages to read. The term “boilerplate” refers to these long contracts, thirty pages long, whose purpose is, in essence, to say that the user is in effect agreeing to all the terms of use, simply by using the service. And such a contract is necessarily fallacious: that is not the way to agree to something. You agree by knowing what it is and then accepting; that is how contracts work. And I think the European Union is right: if you are a consumer and you do not agree with something in a contract, you can say, “I did not agree to this.” I think that the spirit of the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) is that agreement implies knowing what is being discussed. But that is not how people are informed in systems based on the common law. Now I wonder how it would be possible to protect users of such services, when their personal data is used for advertising purposes, or even for political propaganda purposes, which has already happened. This subject is at the heart of many debates at the moment, and I have not yet found anyone to propose a satisfactory solution…