 The commodification of nature, a review in social sciencesJacob Smessaert, Antoine Missemer and Harold Levrel Ecological Economics, 2020, vol. 172, issue C Abstract: The commodification of nature, through privatization, marketization, monetary valuation and other associated processes, has become a central topic in social sciences to examine the conditions and effects of the economic approaches for supporting conservation policies all around the world. The aim of this contribution is to delineate the current state of knowledge, within and beyond ecological economics, and to see, with some historical perspective, how commodification has been systematized in the literature. The results are as follows: (i) studies of commodification processes remain essentially critical, with a central role played by economists, political ecologists and geographers; (ii) over the past 15 years, we have seen more fragmentation than consolidation of the field; (iii) researchers avoid analytical shortcuts, but do not always well define what they mean by commodification. The construction of visual representations – we propose a ‘commodification chain’ – and the identification of decommodification opportunities are future lines of research that would be promising, particularly for the community of ecological economists. Keywords: Commodification; Economic imperialism; Privatization; Market-based instruments; Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:172:y:2020:i:c:s0921800919316337 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106624 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.