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Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work

Colin C. Williams

The author

Colin C. Williams is Professor of Work Organization at the University of Leicester Management Centre, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.

Keywords

Market economy, Capitalist systems, Social economics

Abstract

A widely held supposition is that goods and services are increasingly produced and delivered for monetised exchange by capitalist firms in pursuit of profit. The result of this view of an ongoing encroachment of the market is that there is only one perceived future for work and it is one characterised by an ever more commodified world. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this discourse. Analysing the balance between commodified and non-commodified work in the advanced economies, a large non-commodified sphere is identified that, if anything, is found to be expanding relative to the commodified realm. Rather than reading the future of work as a natural and unstoppable progression towards a victorious, all-powerful and hegemonic commodity economy, this paper thus opens up the feasibility of alternative futures beyond a commodified world.

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Introduction

The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically a

dominant narrative that currently closes off the

future of work. A common assumption amongst

business leaders, journalists, politicians and

academic commentators of all political hues is that

we live in a society that is increasingly organised

around the systematic pursuit of profit in the

marketplace. The prevailing discourse is that

wherever one looks, the overarching tendency is

away from (pre-modern or traditional) non-market

economic practices and towards the production and

delivery of goods and services for monetised

exchange by capitalist firms in pursuit of profit. Yet

despite the commonality of this commodification

discourse, it is somewhat worrying to find that

evidence is seldom if ever presented to validate this

thesis. Perhaps the transition to an ever more

commodified world is so obvious to all that there is

little need to provide any evidence. If so, then

adherents to this commodification thesis should not

be offended by the purpose of this paper which is to

seek verification for such a view. After all, no other

concept is accepted in the social sciences without

detailed corroboration and there is no reason why

this thesis should be exempted from such a process

of substantiation.

To evaluate critically this reading of economic

development that closes off the future to anything

other than a commodified world, firstly, this paper

outlines the commodification discourse that so

dominates, albeit often implicitly, most thinking

about the future of work and following this, the

extent to which commodified economic practices

have displaced non-commodified practices is

assessed. Examining the heartlands of

commodification, namely the advanced

economies, where commodification is assumed to

have penetrated most deeply, this paper will reveal

that non-commodified economic practices not

only persist to such a degree that the same amount

of time is spent engaged in non-commodified as

commodified work but, if anything, these non-

commodified practices appear to be expanding

rather than contracting relative to the

commodified realm. The outcome is that the

future of work that has been popularly portrayed as

characterised by the victorious onward march of

commodification will be shown to be much more

open to alternative possibilities than has been so

far considered the case.

The narrative of commodification

All societies have to produce, distribute, and

allocate the goods and services that people need to

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Volume 6 · Number 6 · 2004 · pp. 329-337

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1463-6689

DOI 10.1108/14636680410569849

329

live. As such, every society has an economy of one

form or another. Economies, however, can be

organised in a multitude of different ways. To

depict the configuration of economies, most

analyses differentiate three modes of producing

and delivering goods and services, namely the

“market”, the “state” and the “community”

(Giddens, 1998; Gough, 2000; Polanyi, 1944).

Analysed in these terms, the widespread consensus

is that most nations are witnessing a common path

so far as the trajectory of economic development is

concerned. A narrative predominates that the

market is becoming more hegemonic, expansive,

totalising and powerful as it encroaches deeper

into each and every corner of economic life and

stretches its tentacles ever wider across the globe to

colonise those areas previously left untouched by

its powerful force.

Indeed, for many academic commentators,

politicians, business leaders and journalists, this

has become something of an indisputable and

irrefutable fact. Even those opposing the

commodification of every crevice of life possess a

certain fatalistic despondence that this is a natural

and inevitable process about which little can be

done. The discourse of an unstoppable shift

towards a commodified world is so accepted that

few consider any other future for work. As Amin

et al. (2002a, p. 60) put it, “the pervasive reach of

exchange-value society makes it ever more difficult

to imagine and legitimate non-market forms of

organisation and provision”. For them, and akin to

most other commentators, the future of work is

cast in stone and it is a future characterised by what

is variously called a process “commercialisation”,

“marketization” or “commodification”.

For exponents of the commodification

discourse, therefore, contemporary economies are

characterised by the increasing dominance of one

mode of exchange that is replacing all others (e.g.

Comelieau, 2002; Ciscel and Heath, 2001;

Harvey, 1982, 1989; Kovel, 2002). In this view of

an increasingly hegemonic capitalism, the

commodity economy becomes the economic

institution rather than one form of producing and

delivering goods and services amongst others. If

this commodification thesis was but an

“academic” theorisation in the most derogatory

sense of the word (i.e. of little or no importance),

then perhaps the way in which so many

commentators seem to accept it would not even

matter. But it takes only a moment’s reflection to

realize that the commodification thesis is much

more than simply an academic theory about the

trajectory of economic development.

To see this, let me take just one example.

Consider how the world is conventionally divided

up into a first, second and third world. The first

world, composed of the supposedly “advanced”

economies of the west, is so defined because it has

commodified to the greatest extent. Based on the

view that commodification is a natural and

inevitable trajectory of economic development that

all nations will and must follow, these first world

nations are thus placed at the front of the queue in

this linear and uni-dimensional vision of

“economic development” while those nations in

the second and third worlds are positioned behind

them due to their slower progression towards

market hegemony. Indeed, so dominant is this

depiction of a universal trajectory of economic

development towards commodification that the

countries comprising the second world of central

and east Europe are now commonly referred to as

“transition” economies because they are seen to be

undergoing a transformation from a state-oriented

economic system to one in which the market is

becoming more hegemonic. The way in which

economies that are more grounded in

“community” or “subsistence” are labelled

“backward” compared with economic systems that

are market-orientated, meanwhile, is nowhere

better seen than in those countries aggregated

together under the banner of the third world.

Labelled “developing”, “undeveloped” or “under-

developed” countries precisely due to their

slowness in moving towards commodification,

these name-tags denote that there is only one

possible trajectory available to them and a singular

route to progress, and it is towards a commodified

world.

The commodification narrative, nevertheless,

does not only lead to a hierarchical ordering of

countries according to the degree to which they are

commodified. This economic discourse also serves

to shape thinking about the actions required by

supra-national institutions, national governments,

economic development agencies and individuals

themselves in the name of progress. Take, for

example, western governments. Grounded in this

grand narrative about the trajectory of economic

development that views the market as the

increasingly dominant sector of their societies,

governments of western nations have tended to

concentrate on developing this sector and viewed

the state and community sectors as at best, playing

a supporting role and at worst, deleterious to

development and something to be commodified so

as to allow this development path to be

implemented. It is similarly the case in the ex-

socialist bloc of central and east Europe where the

whole thrust of economic policy has been focused

upon how a market system can be introduced so as

to facilitate the “transition” to a market economy.

In the third world, it is again the pursuit of

commodification that sets the economic policy

Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work

Colin C. Williams

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Volume 6 · Number 6 · 2004 · 329-337

330

agenda. One has only to consider the structural

adjustment programmes applied to these countries

to realize that a strong normative view exists that

progress lies in encouraging a successful

transformation towards an economic system where

the market becomes an increasingly dominant

mode of producing and delivering goods and

services. Throughout the world, therefore, the

process of commodification whereby the market

replaces the state and community sectors is not

only a theory that believes itself to be describing

the trajectory of economic development but also a

thesis that is shaping the actions taken in the name

of economic development.

The commodification thesis, in other words, is

not just an abstraction seeking to reflect reality

but also an economic discourse used to shape the

material world. As Carrier (1998, p. 8) puts it,

there is a “conscious attempt to make the real

world conform to the virtual image, justified by

the claim that the failure of the real to conform to

the idea is a consequence not merely of

imperfections, but is a failure that itself has

undesirable consequences”. In this virtualism,

economic thought and practice thus shape each

other in an ongoing recursive and reflexive loop

“driven by ideas and idealism [and] the desire to

make the world conform to the image” (Carrier,

1998, p. 5). This is nowhere more finely shown

than in the seminal work of Escobar (1995) who

displays how so-called third world economies

became viewed as a problem due to their lack of

“development” (i.e. commodification) and then

charts the ways in which a whole range of

institutions and practices were constructed to

make them conform more to the desired image of

a commodified society.

The outcome of such a commodification

discourse, therefore, and whether it is the first,

second or third worlds that are under the spotlight,

is that the future for work is closed. There is only

one future so far as the story of economic

development is concerned and it is one in which

economies pursue a linear and uni-dimensional

development path towards a commodified world.

Until now, however, one of the most worrying

and disturbing aspects of this commodification

discourse is that few have sought to corroborate it.

For example, when Rifkin (2000, p. 3) asserts that

“The marketplace is a pervasive force in our lives”,

Ciscel and Heath (2001, p. 401) that capitalism is

transforming “every human interaction into a

transient market exchange” and Gudeman (2001,

p. 144) that “markets are subsuming greater

portions of everyday life”, no supporting data of

any kind is offered. Similarly, the assertion by

Carruthers and Babb (2000, p. 4) that there has

been “the near-complete penetration of market

relations into our modern economic lives” is

justified by nothing more than the statement that

“markets enter our lives today in many ways ‘too

numerous to be mentioned’” and the spurious

notion that the spread of commodified ways of

viewing particular spheres of life signal how

commodification has stretched its tentacles ever

deeper into daily life. Watts (1999, p. 312), in the

same vein, supports his above-stated belief that

although “commodification is not complete . . . the

reality of capitalism is that ever more of social life is

mediated through and by the market” merely by

avowing that subsistence economies are

increasingly rare. The thin evidence offered by

these authors is by no means exceptional. Few, if

any, commentators attempt to move beyond what

Martin and Sunley (2001, p. 152) in another

context term “vague theory and thin empirics”.

Here, therefore, this thesis is subjected to critical

investigation.

Before doing so, however, it is first necessary

to be clear what is meant by commodified and

non-commodified work. Here, commodified

work refers to the production and delivery of

goods and services for monetised exchange by

capitalist firms in pursuit of profit. As such,

commodified work has three constituent

components all of which must be present for it to

be defined as commodified: goods and services

are produced for exchange; exchanges are

monetised, and monetary transactions take place

for the purpose of profit.

Non-commodified work, by definition, is thus

composed of all economic practices that do not

possess one or more of these characteristics.

Here, therefore, the non-commodified sphere is

split into three distinctive types of work. Firstly,

there is non-exchanged work (sometimes known

as subsistence activity, domestic work or self-

provisioning) which is unpaid work undertaken

by a household member either for themselves or

for some other member of the household.

Secondly, there is non-commodified work where

goods and services are exchanged but no money

changes hands. This non-monetised exchange

(sometimes known as unpaid community work,

voluntary work, mutual aid or community self-

help) involves a household member conducting

unpaid work for members of households other

than their own. Third and finally, there is non-

commodified work where monetised transactions

take place but the profit-motive is absent. This

covers a whole range of economic activities, as

will be shown, but particularly those taking place

in the public sector as well as what is variously

referred to as the “not-for-profit sector”, “third

sector”, “social economy” or “social

enterprises”.

Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work

Colin C. Williams

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Volume 6 · Number 6 · 2004 · 329-337

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A commodified future? A critical evaluation

To determine whether there is a displacement of

non-commodified work by a colonizing

commodified realm, the component parts of the

commodification thesis will be here investigated. If

this thesis is correct, then firstly, monetised

exchange should be expanding relative to non-

exchanged work and non-monetised exchange and

secondly, this monetised exchange should be

conducted for profit-motivated purposes.

Subsistence (non-exchanged) work

To evaluate the prevalence of non-exchanged

work, it is in theory possible to estimate the volume

and value of either the inputs or outputs

(Goldschmidt-Clermond, 1982). In practice, it is

the volume and value of the inputs that have been

measured using time-budget diaries (e.g.

Gershuny, 2000; Murgatroyd and Neuburger,

1997; Robinson and Godbey, 1997). Participants

fill in diaries indicating the activities in which they

engage in each segment of the day and from this,

the time spent on various types of work is then

calculated.

As Table I indicates, the finding of these studies

conducted throughout the advanced economies is

that subsistence work has far from disappeared.

Indeed, so far as work schedules are concerned,

subsistence work occupies roughly the same

amount of time as paid work. The reach of

commodification, in consequence, does not appear

to be quite so extensive as many perhaps previously

imagined. This finding however, is not

unexpected. When Polanyi (1944) portrayed “the

great transformation” from a non-market to a

market society, he went to great lengths to

emphasize that this was merely a shift in the

balance of economic activity. He never suggested

that it was total. Even if some have since

interpreted this transformation as rather more

complete than Polanyi ever wished to portray (e.g.

Thrift, 2000; Harvey, 1989), Table I displays that

Polanyi was quite correct not to over-exaggerate

the reach of the market.

Over the past 40 years, moreover, by no means

all countries have witnessed a shift of work from

the unpaid to the paid sphere. Indeed, in many

nations, quite the opposite has occurred. In

countries such as Denmark, Finland, France, the

UK and the USA, subsistence work has occupied

an increasing proportion of people’s total working

time. However, this is not due to an absolute

growth in the time spent on such work. The

aggregate number of hours spent on subsistence

activity has declined. Nevertheless, the time spent

in paid work has decreased faster than the time

spent in subsistence work (e.g. Gershuny, 2000;

Robinson and Godbey, 1997). The result is that

work schedules do not display that an increasing

proportion of working time is being spent in the

commodified sphere but quite the opposite.

Relatively more time is now spent working on a

subsistence basis than 40 years ago.

One interpretation of these shifts in time use is

that over the past four decades, a so far

unidentified second “great transformation” has

occurred in some western nations whereby there

has been a shift towards the subsistence sphere and

away from the monetised realm. An alternative

interpretation, looking wider than solely these

shifting work practices, is that the growing time

spent on non-work activities, such as recreation

and leisure, coupled with the on-going

commodification of such consumption (see

Gershuny, 2000), displays the advent of a market-

based consumer culture. However these data are

interpreted, the important point here is that

working life is not becoming more monetised, as

propounded by exponents of the commodification

thesis.

These time-budget studies, therefore, reveal

how the commodity economy has not only failed to

fully colonise working life (cf Harvey, 1989; Thrift,

2000) but is very far from even approaching such a

situation. Indeed, these time-budget data might

even be exaggerating the extent to which the

advanced economies have become commodified.

This is because they over-estimate the time spent

in paid work and under-estimate the time spent in

subsistence work. They exaggerate the time spent

in paid work because respondents add up the total

time that they spend in activity related to the

employment-place (e.g. meal and coffee breaks,

associated travel and socialising) as time spent in

paid work. Time-budget studies under-estimate

the time spent in non-commodified work,

meanwhile, in three ways. Firstly, they measure

only time commitment to concrete activity,

Table I Subsistence work as a percentage of total work time, 1960-present

Country 1960-1973 1974-1984 1985-present

Canada 56.9 55.4 54.2

Denmark 41.4 – 43.3

Francea 52.0 55.5 57.5

The Netherlands – 55.9 57.9

Norway 57.1 55.4 –

UK 52.1 49.7 53.9

USAb 56.9 57.6 58.4

Finland – 51.8 54.5

20 countries 43.4 42.7 44.7

Sources: a Chadeau and Fouquet (1981), Roy (1991) and Dumontier and Pan Ke Shon (1999). b Robinson and Godbey (1997). Other countries derived from Gershuny (2000, Tables 7.6, 7.12, 7.16)

Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work

Colin C. Williams

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Volume 6 · Number 6 · 2004 · 329-337

332

excluding the time and effort involved in planning

and managing one’s own and others’ activities.

This might occur when watching television, lying

in bed or undertaking some leisure pursuit or

indeed when engaged in employment (Haicault,

1984). The result is that this unpaid work might be

classified as sleep or leisure for instance. Secondly,

the emotional and affective activity involved in

much subsistence work is either ignored

completely, or is portrayed as leisure and

socialising (Chabaud-Richter and Fougeyrollas-

Schwebel, 1985). Third and finally, they fail to

differentiate between profit-motivated and not-

for-profit monetary exchange. This is important

when it comes to assessing commodification. If

non-profit motivated paid work is shifted out of the

paid sphere to the de-commodified realm,

commodification will be shallower than suggested

when all paid work is viewed as commodified.

Unpaid exchange

For commodification advocates such as Rifkin

(1990, p. 30), “What we have lived through in the

rich world has been the accelerating passage of

non-monetised activity into the formal economy,

its colonization by market transactions”. It takes

only a moment’s reflection, however, to realise that

this is not the case. Throughout the advanced

economies, what is variously referred to as

voluntary work, unpaid community exchange or

mutual aid persists in bountiful amounts. Take, for

example, the UK. A 2001 UK government survey

(Prime et al., 2002) found that some 3.7 billion

hours of volunteering occurred in the previous 12

months. This is the equivalent in hours to the total

work of just over 2 million people employed on a

full-time basis (i.e. at 35 hours per week). Or put

another way, for every 14 hours worked in formal

employment in the UK (assuming 27 million

people working an average of 35 hours),

approximately one hour is spent working on a non-

monetised basis. Constituting 7 per cent of the

total time people spend engaged in formal

employment, such work is thus far from some

marginal leftover.

Similar results are identified elsewhere. A

survey in South Australia (Ironmonger, 2002)

finds that in 2000, volunteers donated the

equivalent of an additional 11.5 per cent of gross

state product (GSP) to other households, both

directly on a one-to-one basis and through

organisations and groups. These donations are

additional to actual donations of money made

directly to other households or through charitable

organisations. Alternatively, measuring total

volunteer time in relation to the total wages earned

by South Australian employees, such activity was

found to represent an additional 21.7 per cent of

the total value of the wages paid to employees in

employment in South Australia in 2000.

Moreover, there is little evidence that such non-

monetised exchange is diminishing in importance

over time. As Ironmonger (2002) finds, as a

proportion of GSP, non-monetised work is

growing. South Australian volunteers donated an

additional 7.8 per cent of GSP in 1992 but an extra

11.5 per cent of GSP in 2000 to other households.

Put another way, total volunteer time was

equivalent to an additional 14.1 per cent of the

total value of the wages paid to employees in

employment in South Australian in 1992 and 21.7

per cent in 2000. In sum, and contrary to the

tenets of the commodification discourse, the

evidence on non-monetised exchange intimates

that this sphere of economic practice is growing in

size relative to the commodified sphere. As such, it

is difficult to accept the view that the commodity

economy is penetrating deeper and wider,

especially when these results which display the

growth of on non-monetised are combined with

the earlier data displaying the expansion of non-

exchanged work.

Not-for-profit paid work

The view that monetary exchange marches hand-

in-hand with the profit-motive runs deep across

economic discourse ranging from neo-classical to

Marxist thought. As Jessop (2002) points out,

depicting monetised exchange as always profit-

motivated serves the interests of not only neo-

liberals whose belief is that this must be met with

open arms and radical theorists who use this as a

call to arms to resist its further encroachment. The

outcome is a perpetuation of a crude view of

monetised exchange. This is further reinforced by

a formalist anthropological tradition that reads

exchange mechanisms in advanced economies as

less embedded, thinner, less loaded with social

meaning and less symbolic than in pre-industrial

societies (Mauss, 1966).

Recently, however, this profit-motivated

representation of monetised exchange has started

to be contested by a range of commentators.

Inspired by Polanyi (1944), the formalist

anthropology approach that assumed profit-

motivated markets to be the universal economic

mechanism in western economies has been

challenged from a “substantivist” anthropological

position which attempts to display the messiness

and diversity of exchange relations in advanced

economies (e.g. Crang, 1996; Crewe and Gregson,

1998; Gibson-Graham, 1996; Lee, 2000).

Numerous studies of what Leyshon et al. (2003)

term “alternative economic spaces” such as car

boot sales (Crewe and Gregson, 1998), second-

hand and informal retail channels (Williams and

Beyond commodification: re-reading the future of work

Colin C. Williams

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Volume 6 · Number 6 · 2004 · 329-337

333

Paddock, 2003), inflation-free local currency

experiments such as local exchange and trading

schemes (Lee, 1996; Williams et al., 2001), sweat-

equity money projects such as time dollars (Cahn,

2000; Seyfang and Smith, 2002) and gift-giving

(e.g. Carrier, 1990) have all uncovered how

monetary exchanges are not always and necessarily

imbued with the profit-motive.

These studies, however, can be easily dismissed

as examinations of minor and trivial economic

practices on the “margins” of the mainstream

economy (cf Martin and Sunley, 2001). To more

forcefully challenge the supposedly inextricable

relationship between monetary transactions and

the profit motive, it is necessary to analyse larger

spaces of paid work. Here, in consequence, three

spheres are analysed: the public sector; not-for-

profit sector, and private sector enterprises.

The public sector

If goods and services were being increasingly

delivered by the public sector that by definition is

not orientated towards profit, then one would be

able to conclude that monetised exchange is by no

means becoming increasingly dominated by the

profit motive. However, trends such as

privatisation and quasi-privatisation of the public

sphere, the contracting out of goods and services

previously provided by the state directly, and

various public-private finance initiatives (e.g.

Tickell, 2001) all strongly intimate a transfer of the

mode of delivery of goods and services from the

state to the market.

Nevertheless, before racing to the seemingly

inevitable conclusion that the transfer of

production and delivery from the state to the

market suggests the advent of profit-motivated

monetary exchange, the crucial issue that needs to

be understood is that not all goods and services are

being transferred to the private sector. Many are

being transferred to not-for-profit organisations

(Amin et al., 2002b; Birchall, 2001) and this

suggests a weaker relationship between the profit

motive and monetised exchange. And even when

they are provided by the private sector, it is by no

means certain that profit is the sole motive in

attendance.

Not-for-profit organizations

The not-for-profit sector is here defined as

organisations that are private, not profit

distributing, self-governing and voluntary in that

membership in them is not legally required and

they attract some level of voluntary contribution of

time or money. Using this common definition, the

John Hopkins Comparative Non-Profit Sector

Project, has provided a baseline assessment of its

size and nature in 26 countries (Salamon et al.,

1999).

The findings provide strong evidence that this

sector is not some insignificant backwater but is in

fact a major “third prong” in the mixed economies

that constitute the western nations. In the 26

countries studied, they identify that the

transactions of non-profit organisations

represented 4.6 per cent of GDP on average across

these nations, and that there were some 31 million

full-time equivalent workers (or 6.8 per cent of the

non-agricultural workforce) including 19.7 million

full-time equivalent paid workers and 11.3 million

full-time equivalent volunteer workers. The not-

for-profit sector in consequence, is a large sphere

of activity that cannot be dismissed as being of only

limited or marginal importance and nor can it be

assumed that the transfer of responsibility for

delivering goods and services away from the state

has resulted in a universal shift to the market rather

than the not-for-profit sector.

Indeed, and as this project reveals, this sector is

growing relative to the wider formal economy over

time. Examining the changes in non-profit sector

full-time equivalent (FTE) employment relative to

overall employment, in all eight nations analysed

(with the exception of Israel), the pace of job

growth in the not-for-profit sector was identified as

outstripping total job growth. In the USA, for

example, although there was an overall increase in

FTE employment of 8 per cent between 1990 and

1995, the growth in FTE employment in the not-

for-profit sector was 20 per cent. In the four EU

nations considered (France, Germany, the UK

and The Netherlands), meanwhile, the 24 per

growth in overall FTE employment in the not-for-

profit sector far outstripped the 3 per cent growth

in the economy as a whole, thus accounting for 40

per cent of total employment growth (3.8 million

new FTE jobs). In the three other developed

countries for which there were employment data

(Israel, Japan and the USA), the increase averaged

21 per cent, though this accounted for a somewhat

smaller 11 per cent of the 16 million new FTE

jobs.

The only conclusion that can be reached is that

the not-for-profit sector is a large and growing

sphere of activity. Indeed, the inference is that the

relationship between monetised exchange and the

profit motive might well be growing weaker rather

than stronger.

The private sector

It might be assumed that whenever the private

sector partakes in monetary transactions, the

motive of profit is always to the fore. Yet numerous

studies have displayed that private sector

enterprises are not all, and always, driven by a

common imperative of profit. There is now a vast

literature that displays that the motive of profit is

by no means always to the fore in private sector

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Colin C. Williams

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businesses. Other goals that might be pursued

include growth of sales, securing control over a

field of transactions, maximizing their own

management payments, such as expense accounts

and superior accommodation, or preserving

corporate reputation (e.g. Lee, 2000; Morel, 2003;

O’Neill and Gibson-Graham, 1999;

Schoenberger, 1998).

To consider just one example, O’Neill and

Gibson-Graham (1999) unravel the role of

competing discourses of management in shaping

the fluid entity that is unproblematically

represented as the “profit-seeking capitalist firm”.

Examining an Australian minerals and steel

multinational, they produce a disruptive reading

that emphasizes the de-centred and disorganized

actions taken in response to multiple logics

circulating within and without the corporation.

Uncovering the enterprise as an unpredictable and

potentially open site, rather than as a set of

practices unified by a predictable logic of profit

maximisation, the enterprise becomes no longer

tethered to a pre-ordained economic logic but,

instead, recognisable as an ordinary social

institution; one that often fails to enact its will or

realize its goals or even fails to come to a coherent

conception of what these might be.

Hence, even in the commercial sphere, so

dominantly perceived as the embodiment of the

profit motive, enterprises are not always tied to the

motive of profit and profit alone.

Discussion and conclusions

Until now, the widely held view that the

commodity economy is reaching ever further into

every crevice of daily life has led many to conclude

that the future of work is closed. There is only one

future and it is one in which the commodified

world stretches its tentacles ever wider and deeper

into every nook and cranny of contemporary life

throughout the world. However, the identification

in this paper of a large non-commodified sphere in

the advanced economies that, if anything, appears

to be growing rather than contracting relative to

the commodified realm, disrupts this reading of

the commodity economy as victorious, colonizing

and all-powerful and opens up the feasibility of

alternative futures for work beyond a commodified

world.

For some analysts, the findings of this paper

might be seen in a positive manner as

demonstrative of the possibilities for the creation

of post-capitalist futures for work. Firstly, and for

non-market social democrats, the persistence and

growth of non-commodified work will be read as

evidence that it is wholly feasible to construct

alternatives to capitalism and in non-commodified

work, they will view the seeds of a post-capitalist

future for work (e.g. Archibugi, 2000; Beck, 2000;

Gorz, 1999). Secondly, this is also the case for

radical ecologists for whom the recognition and

fostering of economic pluralism resonates strongly

with this overarching desire for more localized,

self-reliant and sustainable economic development

(e.g. Dobson, 1993; Henderson, 1999; Mander

and Goldsmith, 1996; Robertson, 1991). Third

and finally, post-structuralist theorists who argue

that there is a need to recognize, value and create

non-capitalist economic practices that are already

here and emerging so as to shine a light on the

demonstrable construction of alternative

possibilities and futures (e.g. Byrne et al., 1998;

Escobar, 1995; Community Economies

Collective, 2001; Gibson-Graham, 1996;

Williams, 2002, 2003) will view this

deconstruction of the commodification thesis as

allowing the articulation of alternative regimes of

representation and practice in order to imagine

and enact alternatives to a commodified world.

Indeed, reading these non-commodified

economic practices as what Harvey (2000) calls

“spaces of hope” is not without foundation.

Recent studies of people’s motives for engaging in

such work, especially affluent populations, display

that they choose to engage in non-commodified

economic practices rather than externalising the

work on a commodified basis (see Williams and

Windebank, 2003), thus reinforcing the view of

Urry (2000, p. 146) that “a largely unintended

effect of a highly individualized and marketized

society has been the intensification of social

practices which systematically ‘evade the edicts of

exchange value and the logic of the market’”.

Such a view of non-commodified work as a

“chosen space” and site of resistance to a

commodified world, however, is not the only

reading of this process of de-commodification. For

lower-income populations, non-commodified

work is not a matter of choice. For them, it is a

result of a lack of choice (see Williams and

Windebank, 2003). As such, explanations

grounded in human agency need to be

complemented by more structural economic

explanations, especially in relation to lower-

income populations, if non-commodified work is

to be fully understood.

In this regard, an emergent view is that the

growth of non-commodified work is the product of

a new post-Fordist regime of accumulation that is

off-loading social reproduction functions from the

commodified sphere back onto the non-

commodified realm (Amin et al., 2002b; Castells

and Portes, 1989; Portes, 1994). In this reading,

the breakdown of the post-war economic

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regulations and welfare states through a general

trend of deregulation and flexibilisation of social

relations of production and the transferring of

social services to private and communal hands has

led to a practice of de-commodification. Non-

commodified work is re-colonising spaces of

production (and reproduction) previously covered

by market relations and state subsidies.

As such, the contradictions inherent in the

commodification process have led to the de-

commodification of some spheres of social

reproduction. To compete in the global

marketplace in realms where goods and services

can generate external income, advanced

economies have reduced social costs by re-

imposing activities associated with social

reproduction onto the non-commodified realm.

This is reflected in the decrease in expenditure on

social protection as a percentage of GDP

throughout the 1990s, even in regions such as the

European Union that is comparatively supportive

of comprehensive formal welfare provision

(European Commission, 2001). Those no longer

of use to capitalism, in this view, are thus being off-

loaded onto the non-commodified sphere to eke

out their living. Read in this manner, especially in

relation to lower-income populations, non-

commodified economic practices are more “spaces

of despair” than “spaces of hope”.

Before reading the above findings as a positive

sign that it is wholly feasible to pursue post-

capitalist futures for work, therefore, and racing

ahead with attempts to cultivate such non-

commodified work, this more economistic reading

suggests that caution is required. Indeed, unless

exercised, then those seeking to develop

alternatives to capitalism may well find themselves

merely aiding and abetting this very order by

creating depositories into which those excluded

from the market can be abandoned.

If this paper ends on such a cautionary message

for those seeking post-capitalist futures,

nevertheless, this should not obfuscate the overall

finding. For those who have believed that there is

only one future and it is one in which there is an

inevitable and natural shift towards an ever more

commodified world under the market-driven

search for corporate profit, this paper provides a

potential source of renewed optimism. A

commodified world has been widely held to be the

one and only future available, not least by those

with a powerful vested interest in the further

encroachment of the market. In this paper,

however, it has been revealed that buying into this

future is not the only option available. It is wholly

feasible to imagine and enact alternatives to a

commodified world.

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