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Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization and art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of art is doubled in the sale, marketing, display, distribution and mass production of “art works”. Making art is intimate, personal and individual; selling art requires public display, pleasing the all important customer(s) and dealing with many sorts of in-betweens. What commodification is on the artist/art work level is doubling on the I/me, self/persona, private/public and in-group/out-group level. This paper aims to examine the commodification and doubling in the case of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers. The quilts foreshadowed the modernist aesthetic and are of the highest aesthetic quality. But, they were made in a traditional rural society by very poor, uneducated black women. The quilts were not made to be sold but were dedicated to familial remembrance and to immediate aesthetic pleasure. But now that they are on display: is escape from commodification possible?

Reprint for special issue.

Doubling, in the original article below, was tendentious but artistically and politically to be overcome; doubling currently seems much more ominous, omnipresent and out of control. Signifyin(g) has become bomb throwing. Present day doubling apparently produces terror and not just commodification.

Invited for publication.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue the themes of feminine identity, doubling and (in)visibility; first in terms of “signifyin(g)” as a cultural and literary strategy, and second, in terms of quilting seen from the fiction of Alice Walker to the quilting of Gee's Bend. In the background, there plays the relationship between art and commodification.

The paper examines “commodification” and “doubling” in the case of the Gee's Bend quilt makers. The quilts foreshadow the modernist aesthetic and are of the highest aesthetic quality. They were made in a traditional rural society by very poor uneducated black women. The quilts were not made to be sold, but were dedicated to familial remembrance and to immediate aesthetic pleasure.

Commodification doubles self and work, life and object, uniqueness and standardization, art and management. For the artist, the unicity, beauty, inspiration and creativity of art is doubled in the sale, marketing, display, distribution and mass production of “art works.” Making art is intimate, personal and individual; selling art requires public display, pleasing the all‐important customer(s) and dealing with many sorts of in‐betweens. What “commodification” is on the artist/art work level, is “doubling” on the I/me, self/persona, private/public, and in‐group/out‐group level.

The author proposes, from the example of quilt‐making, a wide‐ranging interrogation: “Is escape from commodification possible?”

The entry into tourism markets by international development practitioners aligns goals of economic development and cultural preservation in indigenous communities. The purpose of this paper is to look into ways that community‐level participation can simultaneously contribute to both economic and cultural sustainability.

It takes a qualitative interdisciplinary approach to the literature on cultural tourism and commodification to develop a discussion of the implication and the application of interrelated policy measures since the early 1990s. Analysis then proposes a set of key variables challenging the capacity of both policy makers and marginal indigenous entrepreneurs to achieve potential benefits.

Ideological tensions arise with the effort to balance the preservation of cultural integrity with the selling of marketable wares. The ongoing issues of market realities, political will, and tourism demographics create new questions that require further interdisciplinary research to develop an understanding that supports the long‐term sustainability of indigenous communities. A community‐based approach has potential to be very effective in negotiating the balance and undeniable trade‐offs between economic reward and cultural preservation.

Socio‐economic statistical data does not always exist for marginalized indigenous/ethnic minority communities that are not recognized by their own governments. This makes comparative case research and future monitoring very difficult to achieve. Also, existing discourse is currently dominated by non‐indigenous voices and Western tourism motivations, which need amelioration to better support the community‐based approach.

This paper provides policy makers, practitioners, researchers and indigenous communities with a multidisciplinary perspective on areas requiring further consideration and research. The analysis of current discourse when undertaken across disciplines confirms that policy directives cannot be broadly generalized.

The purpose of this paper is to find out if there is any convergence between the Third Way in Europe and the Conservative Democracy in Turkey in their politico‐economic strategies for dealing with the social question with the thought that both the political identities have come into existence as a consequence of a similar initiative to reformulate their egalitarian cores according to the realpolitik of contemporary capitalism, and uncover the consequences of the so‐called strategies specifically in the realm of welfare and labour policies.

This inquiry has been contextualised into the evolutionary cycles of the socialism → social democracy → the Third Way in Europe and the Just Order → Conservative Democracy in the Ottoman‐Turkish territory. Initially focusing on the first cycle, the paper then turns to examine the second cycle in a comparative and synchorised perspective with the first.

It is concluded that the Conservative Democracy and the Third way have an unmistakable convergence in terms not only of their evolution but also of their strategic policy options to deal with the social question. Their convergence originates in the initiative to find a middle ground between the contemporary capitalism and their egalitarian cores. Such a reconciliative attempt by the both models ends up in a stalemate that triggers recurring conciliative initiatives rather than yield to stable and sustainable policy options which enable their practitioners to deal with the social question in an efficient way.

The paper touches on the general points of convergence between the Conservative Democracy and the Third Way in the political economy of social question. The next step should, hence, be to further this argument by means of specifically dealing with the welfare and labour policies in separate in‐depth research.

This paper is the first in its inquiry as stated above in the purpose and its comparative methodology to deal with this inquiry.

This chapter develops analytical and comparative approaches on the advance of the sexual exploitation industry in Eurozone countries, addressing specific regulations and norms on what is called sex work (when regulated by the state) or prostitution (countries with abolitionist normative frameworks). Indeed, in scenarios of economic and health recession due to Covid-19, this issue is controversial and of urgency in the public agenda due to the scarcity of statistical records that can account for the impact of the sexual exploitation market on women and feminized bodies and in relation to gender equality and equity indexes, as well as public policies. As a working assumption, it is proposed that there is a “sociological erasure” on the impact of the sexual exploitation industry on populations of high social vulnerability. Methodologically, on the one hand, a comparative analysis of indicators relevant to gender equality and human rights is developed, using second-order data to compare European countries with antagonistic legal regulations on the sex market. On the other hand, the perceptions, discourses and representations of experts in the field and key informants related to the sex market are analyzed. Finally, it is concluded that coercive prostitution affects feminized corporalities, especially migrant and poor women. Therefore, prostitution should be considered a violation of human rights and should be evidenced as an emergent of gender violence. Information and analysis regarding this industry are required to know how to intervene and contribute to reach new levels of gender equality, and to provide timely assistance to those who need it, according to the objectives for the Eurozone established in agreement with UNICEF’s global Goal 5.

Since the arrival of mass production, commodification has been plaguing markets – none more so than that for music. By separating production and consumption in space and time, commodification challenges the very conditions underlying economic exchange. This chapter explores authenticity as the institutional response to the commodification of music, rekindling the relationship between isolated market participants in the increasingly digitized world of music. Building upon the “Production of Culture” perspective, we unpack the commodification of music across five different institutional realms – (1) production, (2) consumption, (3) selection, (4) appropriation, and (5) classification – and provide a thoroughly relational account of authenticity as an institutional practice.

The starting point of the paper is the meteoric rise of care and care work upon the societal and sociological agenda. Referring to Polanyi, the authors argue that this is the manifestation of a new phase of capitalist societalisation (Vergesellschaftung) of social reproduction in the form of an economic shift. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the societal organisation of care and care work and questions of inequality and justice.

The first part of the paper illustrates some facets of the economic shift in the field of care and care work. The second part reconstructs the societal organisation of care and care work in the private sector, state, third sector and private households from the mid-twentieth century in the context of questions of inequality and justice. The third part draws on the institutional logics perspective and French pragmatic sociology and the own case studies on home care agencies (HCA), residential care communities (RCC) and early child care (ECC) in Austria and Germany and shows how conflicting demands give rise to new questions of justice. The paper ends with a short conclusion.

The paper shows how the commodification and de-commodification of care and care work have changed over time and how the economic shift – illustrated in the case of HCA, RCC and ECC – is accompanied by conflicting demands and questions of justice.

A Polanyian perspective on the relation between market and society is combined with the neo-institutionalist and pragmatic idea that orientations rooted in the “logics” of the market, the state, the family and the profession influence how conflicting demands in elder and child care are dealt with and how questions of inequality and justice arise.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the symbolic and practical impacts of demateriality in two areas that are emblematic of the way the modern world operates. Firstly, finance via currency, and secondly, trade via the relationship between trading firms and their customers. The article also addresses the current role played by so-called “information” technologies, exploring the double embedding of society within trade and trade within finance.

A multidisciplinary approach which mobilizes available knowledge in finance, technology, marketing and sociology.

The overall social power of the state of demateriality is that it reinforces the double-embedding.

A multidisciplinary approach which mobilizes available knowledge in finance, technology, marketing and sociology to comprehend the role of a state, beyond the process creating that state.