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A recurring assumption across the social sciences is that non‐commodified work has been increasingly replaced by the commodified sphere in which goods and services are produced and delivered for monetary exchange by capitalist firms for profit‐motivated purposes. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this thesis critically.

A review is conducted of the extent of commodified and non‐commodified work in the advanced economies.

Analyzing the extent of commodified and non‐commodified work in the advanced economies, the commodified sphere is shown to be far from hegemonic and, if anything, to have receded rather than penetrated deeper during the last four decades. This is here explained in terms of both the existence of resistance cultures to market‐ism and the contradictions inherent in the structural shift towards commodification.

The outcome is a call to transcend the representation of commodified work as victorious, all‐powerful and hegemonic, and for greater discussion of the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures beyond a commodified world.

It contests the dominant narrative that we live in an ever more commodified world.

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.

Using new empirical data from the UK focused on mutual aid and reciprocity, the purpose of this paper is to offer robust challenges to the logic and dominance of the commodification thesis. In finding mutual aid to be a significant coping strategy to get household tasks completed, in both affluent and deprived communities, the paper addresses the important question as to “why” mutual aid is so pervasive. Using qualitative insights as to “why” respondents engaged in mutual aid and reciprocity a considered response to this question, revolving around the instinctive and social nature of reciprocity, is made.

The research draws on previous Household Work Practice Studies, which have been influential in exploring the geographies of community self‐help. An in‐depth semi‐structured questionnaire, which adapts and develops previous successful approaches focused on mutual aid and volunteering, was employed across 100 households in two neighbouring wards in Leicester, UK.

The research found that the non‐commodified sphere of mutual aid was employed as a central coping strategy within the two communities investigated. The suggestion is that the extent of mutual aid in both deprived neighbourhoods and affluent neighbourhoods has been underestimated in previous research. However, the strength of the methodology resides with its understanding of the rationales being participation in mutual aid. This suggests that the natural and instinctive nature of reciprocity, and the social role that mutual aid plays within kin and non‐kin relations, helps explain its pervasiveness in the advanced economies.

The methodology and methods were designed to explicitly harness a deep qualitative understanding of the relationship and attitudes that households adopt toward their informal coping strategies, and mutual aid in particular. Thus though this approach has uncovered rich qualitative data to inform the key arguments, the quantitative findings must be treated as speculative rather than conclusive.

In undermining the commodification thesis, the paper concludes that alternate and better approaches toward harnessing “the economic” in society must be pursued by policy makers. Crucially economic policy which promotes co‐operation over competition within society should be seen as earning the qualification of “advanced” economic practice.

This is the first paper which explicitly looks at the pervasive nature of mutual aid within the advanced economies, using primary data from Leicester. The value is seen on three levels: first, the original arguments made which highlight the pervasiveness of this informal coping strategy; second, the manner with which these contemporary insights are then contextualised with reference to the wider literature; third, the way in which this research adds to the calls to fundamentally re‐think our dominant attitudes (and policies) toward the commodified and non‐commodified spheres of work in the advanced economies.

This chapter presents a case of the adoption of the Bologna Process (BP) outside the boundaries of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) – in Cameroon. The adoption of the BP lines of action has triggered higher education (HE) reforms in Cameroon including reforms to enhance graduate employability. In Cameroon, graduate employability is promoted through ‘professionalisation’ of degree programmes – which seeks to prepare students with employment-ready skills and competences capable of adapting to the fast and highly competitive global economy either as job seekers or job creators. With the use of policy documents, existing literature and interviews with policymakers and university officials, this chapter examines the framing of employability from the perspective of social justice and neoliberal discourses. The analysis highlights the idea that while the overall goal is to promote social justice by enhancing the employability skills of all graduates to gain employment through a diverse set of employability pathways, some of the pathways are dominated by neoliberal ideologists discussed in this chapter via mode of governance, commodifying training and commodifying access. The different focuses and operationalisation of social justice and neoliberalism reveal tension as social justice emphasises training for all while neoliberalism emphasises training only for those students with the purchasing power.

In this chapter, I analyze universities’ present context of commodification by suggesting a typology of market universities based on Levín’s three types of capital enterprises: the simple purpose, technological, and enhanced universities. The simple purpose university mainly commodifies teaching. On the contrary, the technological and enhanced universities, even if they may also commodify teaching, are focused on the commodification of research. The main difference between the technological and the enhanced universities is the capacity of the latter to enjoy the profits of its commodified research activity, while the former exchanges research results and sells its research capacity in a subordinated way, losing (at least part of) those benefits. These three proposed types also differ regarding financial autonomy and academic freedom.

This paper explores the workplace experiences of aesthetic labour among racially diverse frontline women workers in a fashion retail store.

This qualitative study is based on an ethnographic study, drawing on findings from participant observation and interviews with frontline workers at a fashion retail store in the UK.

This paper explores how the embodiments of aesthetic labour are perpetually produced and commodified through the discipline of management in a fashion retail store. It challenges the notion of phenotypical Whiteness as the beauty standard within fashion retail and demonstrates how embodiments differ according to race. While White women are continuously scrutinised by their appearance, the aesthetic demands for women of colour tend to focus on speech and racialised bodies to provide “authentically” exotic experiences for customers. Additionally, this study highlights how the mobilisation of aesthetic labour can create work humiliation and work alienation.

Despite this study being based on an ethnographic study at one British fashion retailer, this paper seeks to give voices to an underrepresented group by exploring the lived experiences of racially diverse women workers.

This paper contributes to the intersection between aesthetic labour and race from an embodiment perspective, exploring the workplace experiences of racially diverse women workers in fashion retail and how their various forms of embodiment are racialised and commodified.

In this paper we explore potential barriers for commodification of academic research in emerging countries.

We carried out an exploratory study employing a mixed-method sequential exploratory design. Initially, qualitative interviews were performed to identify cognitive, structural, and ideological barriers associated with commodification. Subsequently, we administered a survey at three universities in Kazakhstan to gather quantitative data. The quantitative insights served to complement our qualitative findings and facilitate the interpretation of the observed patterns within the broader population.

We found that a too rapid shift toward commercialization exacerbated concerns among faculty members and created obstacles to commodification. The obstacles identified through inductive clustering of themes from exploratory qualitative interviews were grouped into three intentionally broad categories: cognitive, structural, and ideological barriers. We argue that in emerging economies, the path to commodifying academic research should start with developing local infrastructure to address identified structural, cognitive, and ideological barriers. This, in turn, will lead to more successful commercialization and redefine the role of academics in society.

Our study has several limitations related to its empirical scope. We concentrated solely on one country, Kazakhstan. For future research, it is crucial to broaden the investigation to include more studies from the Central Asia region and other emerging economies. We believe that while there may be some minor institutional differences, the findings are generalizable to all post-socialist countries. However, incorporating a diverse range of institutions, particularly those with foreign ownership or private capital, would enhance the comprehensiveness of the findings. Furthermore, collecting a more extensive and balanced sample of responses from industry partners, academics, and students would have provided more valuable insights. By including a broader representation of stakeholders, we could have gained a more nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding commodification in higher education. Given the exploratory nature of this study, it is essential to regard the findings as a source of inspiration rather than empirical confirmation.

Our research has practical implications for managing universities in emerging markets, as well as important policy implications, both for international actors and local governmental bodies.

Our findings carry implications for policymakers. The focus that international institutions place on the matter of commodification and commercialization of knowledge is a positive step. Challenges emerge when this matter is approached with a narrow perspective. Drawing on the empirical context of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a country often overlooked in the literature on emerging markets, we find evidence that knowledge has indeed transformed into a commodity. The rapid shift toward commercialization, driven by substantial institutional pressures, may have occurred too precipitously in this particular context. In light of these findings, we advocate for a more balanced and contextually nuanced discourse concerning both the commodification and commercialization of knowledge.

This study represents one of the few endeavors into exploring commodification within the context of emerging economies. In recent decades, universities have faced substantial pressures to commodify academic research. While there has been a significant volume of research discussing and documenting the success of commodification in developed country universities, those in emerging economies have faced similar pressures without achieving comparable success. This paper delves into the reasons why.

In an era of global economic expansion, the harsh underside of capitalism clearly affects human subjectivities and consciousness.¹ Emotions, which both express and structure subjectivity and consciousness, reflect and manifest the social reality of human life in its various globalized dimensions. My argument in this chapter thus concerns the ways in which the contradictions as the harsh underside of capitalism affect the subjectivities of racial minorities. For this reason, the relationship between emotions and commodity capitalism is an especially pressing concern for the formation and expression of racial identity in the United States today. To understand the social reality of race in the U.S. capitalist system is to take seriously the affects that express and constitute the critical social thought of racial minorities. As African Americanist scholars such as Cornel West (1994, p. 42) have argued, the ideology of unregulated capital in corporate consumerism creates market moralities and market mentalities that “erode civil society.” The critical thought of black Americans, West (1992, p. 42) avers, suffers irreparable damage by images that relentlessly commercialize the so-called good life:These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others – and thereby edge out nonmarket values – love, care, service to others – handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America.Corporations thus capitalize on civil rights gains while commodifying the activist politics of communities and governmental organizations. In effect, the “status quo” of government that promotes economic justice and civil rights protections is fragmented and replaced by corporate domination and the rule of the free market. Instead of turning to non-commercial avenues of civil society to change oppressive relations of power, Americans opt for consuming social change in a laissez-faire economy that equates individualism and free choice with purchasing merchandise. In her powerful critique of class privilege and consumption-based individualism, Bell Hooks (2000, p. 81) explains how the media's use of race to promote a “shared culture of consumerism” vitiates community values and deflects attention from class antagonism. Such consumerism, Hooks maintains, promotes ambitions for lifestyles of conspicuous consumption and celebrity that renders incoherent and undesirable a democratic sensibility that made civil rights gains for women and minorities possible in the first place (Bell Hooks, 2000, p. 77).

In this chapter, I uncover the jail diaries of a revolutionary woman of the 20th century Pakistan, Akhtar Baloch. Although feminism in Pakistan has oscillated between liberal and postcolonial camps, through reading Akhtar's diaries, compiled as Prison Narratives (2017), I center Akhtar's own struggles for Sindh, along with the resistance of the women she met in the prison convicted for the murders of their husbands, to better theorize Marxist Feminism in Pakistan that overturns the structures that commodify women through love and revolution. My article will show the commodification of women's bodies; the “sale” of women through marriage as the goal of this commodification; the lovelessness and alienation women experience in commodified marriages; the unexpected fall in love with someone whom it is subversive for the commodified wife to love; the subversion of this unexpected event that leads to the attempted resolution of this tension through murder; the separation of the lovers through the incarceration of the woman by the capitalist-patriarchal state; and finally, the unexpected outcome (albeit the most common one) that the male lover abandons his female lover once she's jailed, but the defiantly brave female lover finds platonic love in jail through close female friendships with other women who are similarly brave in both love and in revolution. Through this exposition, I show that Akhtar's diaries provide a way for us to build on Marxist Feminist theory through a theory of love and revolution from a Sindhi feminist perspective.