Kate: I was speaking of the commodification of experience in an economic sense, though not necessarily a Marxist sense. I didn't necessarily intend a narrow interpretation, but in the Max Haiven interview which started this thread he was complaining about the capitalist commodification of the community gatherings.
The features of "commodification" I would use to apply the term are: 1. An institutional source of the commodity where someone might acquire or exchange one for another. 2. Fungibility. In the case of experience, this would imply that all grief is essentially the same thing. 3. An institutional valuation of the commodity. Religious institutions generally engage in feature 3 by advocating that certain experience have more value than others. The satisfy 1 by claiming to be a source of certain experiences such as devotion, being "born again" or forgiven. And there is a degree of fungibility, in that everyone's forgiveness in some Christian churches are essentially identical in effect, if not affect. So, I can certainly understand the claim that religious institutions commodity experience. In addition to religious commodities, there are certainly political commodities and I would suppose academic commodities as well. Mike Mallory ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] ; [email protected] Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 2:22 PM Subject: Re: "There's more alienation and separation of people in a commodified landscape ... In a message dated 11/13/10 11:14:22 PM, [email protected] writes: Insofar as a Work of Art is intended to communicate an experience (which I have argued is always the case), the commodification of art is the commodification of our experience. You are defining commodification as making some experience into something which can be put into the marketplace. I think you are inadvertently taking the Marxist idea of commodification in the marketplace as the only form of commodification. What is the difference between making an experience into a commodity in this sense and making religious experience into a commodity which is then placed in religious establishments? KAte Sullivan
