In this article, I maintain that the social process of labour commodification, through which the individual capability to uphold a decent welfare is bound to participation in the labour market, poses a problem of justice from the republican prospective on freedom as non-domination. I first discuss the reasons we might hold that capitalism brings a form of systemic domination by virtue of one of its intrinsic features: unequal access to the means of production. Then, I argue for a minimum (...) de-commodification of labour power as a criterion of justice, adding that it should be conceived as a cosmopolitan proviso because states unfairly suffer from their limited economic capacity to neutralize capitalist systemic domination. Lastly, I compare the normative account of global justice that I am proposing in this article with sufficientarianism, with the capability approach, and with Thomas Pogge’s ‘Global Resources Dividend’. (shrink)

This paper takes the view that compensated donation and altruism are not incompatible. In particular, it holds that the arguments against giving compensation stand on weak rational grounds: the charge that compensation fosters “commodification” has neither been specific enough to account for different types of monetary transactions nor sufficiently grounded in reality to be rationally convincing; although altruism is commendable, organ donors should not be compelled to act purely on the basis of altruistic motivations, especially if there are good (...) reasons to believe that significantly more lives can be saved and enhanced if incentives are put in place, and offering compensation for organs does not necessarily lead to exploitation—on the contrary, it may be regarded as a necessity in efforts to minimise the level of exploitation that already exists in current organ procurement systems. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview on the processes of commodification and de-commodification of goods and services as a background for analysing developments in the emerging information society. It contributes to the current discussion on intellectual property rights in terms of political economics by connecting it to technology and law. Finally, as an illustration of the proposed view, selected trendsetting Internet-based companies are studied with respect to their strategies in making profit.

A private, for-profit company has recently opened a pair of plasma donation centres in Canada, at which donors can be compensated up to $50 for their plasma. This has sparked a nation-wide debate around the ethics of paying plasma donors. Our aim in this paper is to shift the terms of the current debate away from the question of whether plasma donors should be paid and toward the question of who should be paying them. We consider arguments against paying plasma (...) donors grounded in concerns about exploitation, commodification, and the introduction of a profit motive. We find them all to be normatively inconclusive, but also overbroad in light of Canada’s persistent reliance on plasma from paid donors in the United States. While we believe that there are good reasons to oppose allowing a private company to profit from Canada’s blood supply, these concerns can be addressed if payment is dispensed instead by a public, not-for-profit agency. In short, we reject profiting from plasma while we endorse paying for plasma; we therefore conclude in favour of a new Canadian regime of public sector plasma collection and compensation. (shrink)

This piece uses a feminist approach to explore various aspects of ‘commodification’ in the lives and work of those teaching and researching in UK universities, and in particular its gender dimensions. After setting a historical context for the radical transformation of UK universities during the 1980s, it considers how this transformation was experienced by academics in terms of alienation, anxiety and accountability. Key features of that experience are loss of autonomy and control to the external power of competition and (...) managerialism, insecurity and casualization in employment, and exposure to increasing judgemental scrutiny. For women academics job insecurity and discrimination continue to be disproportionately important, although some of the challenges to old established academic convention and practice have opened up real possibilities to progress more pro-women agendas. In the future they will confront quite depressing developments in the reconstruction of academic identities and labour, but have the legacy of the gains/insights of feminist analysis and politics over the last twenty years with which to do so. (shrink)

La mercantilización se define como «la transformación de los bienes, servicios, ideas y personas en objetos de comercio estandarizados». Este artículo presenta una visión de la mercantilización como un proceso que se aplica no sólo a la naturaleza sino también a los bienes, al trabajo, al propio cuerpo, las experiencias y las relaciones. El artículo reflexiona sobre papel clave de la tecnociencia.El camino hacia la reconciliación —con la naturaleza, con el otro y con nosotros mismos— pasa por reconocer y apreciar (...) lo que en ellos es único e irremplazable. El artículo concluye con algunas ideas iniciales sobre cómo la tecnología puede utilizarse como una herramienta. Dar marcha atrás en el proceso de mercantilización es esencial si deseamos establecer una economía sostenible y una sociedad más humana. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically examine the dual processes of responsibilizing and de-responsibilizing corporations through ethical considerations translated into regulatory frameworks, particularly Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It follows the trajectory of CSR in the Indian context, highlighting both moral and legal responsibilities assigned to corporations, and new trends that emerge under the label Corporate Socio-Spiritual Responsibility (CSSR). Drawing upon CSR and CSSR discourses within academia, the paper highlights the tensions between the economization of morality and the moralization of the economy, (...) and how the former came to dominate business-society and state-society relations on a global scale under neoliberalism. The paper concludes that the emergence of CSSR literature in India suggests new technologies of the self that align with the rising commodification of spirituality within the global capitalist market, and further depoliticize society's expectations of businesses, while aligning with contemporary state agendas. (shrink)

(A chapter in the book edited by Ine Gevers, Robot Love: Can We Learn from Robots About Love?) Similarly to the method employed by Marx in his analysis of the capital and to de Saussure’s structuralist explanation of language, I suggest we conceive the categories in question as materially conditioned while resulting into full abstraction in the process of analysis. Thus, instead of theorising in terms of the anthropologically (and philosophically) conditioned phantasm of a “digital subjectivity” or a “cyborg self,” (...) let us radicalise and absolutise the concepts of the material and the ideal (or the mind understood in opposition to the material), arriving to physicality, regardless of whether organic or synthetic, and the automaton of signification as our main two categories of analysis. Therefore, let us also note that the category of “automaton” implies we are not dealing with a form of cognition but rather of language or signification. It is through operation with these categories that we shall postulate the sociopolitical and economic relevance of the cybernetic development for the post-human society and for the post-humanist self. The statement just made refers to a de facto political project, and it is impossible to arrive to results that would represent a fundamental change in relation to the humanist history of civilization/s without resorting to philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Embryo screening technologies offer important benefits to individuals who use them and society. These techniques can expand the reproductive options of many prospective parents and can contribute to reducing the burdens of disease and disability. Nonetheless, embryo screening techniques present individuals and societies with important ethical challenges. Here, I explore some of them. In particular, I discuss the costs for prospective parents of increased reproductive choices, as well as concerns about sanctioning problematic social norms, increasing social injustice, limiting the ways (...) societies can tackle diseases and disabilities, and promoting the commodification of children. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and barter to (...) market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

State derecognition, defined as the withdrawal of recognition from a putative state, has been more impactful as a diplomatic subculture in the last decades than is often assumed. Recent practice suggests that when states engage in derecognition, they do not mechanically assess whether a state no longer fulfils the traditional criteria for statehood, but rather employ derecognition as a tool of foreign policy, tailored to enhance their own economic and geopolitical interests. The bargaining dynamics of derecognition and “rental recognition” policies (...) adopted by a range of smaller states create a precarious hostage-like situation for the targeted entities who helplessly watch their international status being traded in a recognition market. As the success of some claims to statehood risks beings reduced to a matter of pricing, a process of commodification emerges: state recognition is granted to the “highest bidder” regardless of factual reality or legal considerations. With this backdrop, the present paper seeks to clarify how international law conceptualizes derecognition and its hypotheses of legality, offering an overview of contemporary events of derecognition and expedient shifts in recognition to clarify the role and deficiencies of international law as it stands before the emerging phenomenon of “statehood commodification”. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific understandings of compassion converge, both stressing its necessity for the moral life and human flourishing. I conceptualise a dynamic and frangible account of professional virtues, including compassion, and propose that mechanistic organisational systems of care and the biomedical paradigm create a strong risk of dehumanisation and the obliteration of compassion in healthcare. Additionally, the neoliberal market ideology, with its instrumental approach to individuals and commodification of healthcare creates a corrosive influence that alienates clinicians from their patients (...) and severely curtails the scope for compassionate practice. The tension between efficiency and patient orientated care – although they need not be mutually exclusive – has become more acute in the current economic climate, at a time when the boundaries of medicine have broadened and expectations for healthcare have risen. This has created an unsustainable dynamic within which alienated healthcare professionals struggle to fulfil their healing roles and patients experience abandonment and more anxiety. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that patents are a driving force for innovation through research and development. But the university's involvement in patenting is problematic as well. In particular, it is in tension with the idea of a university itself. If patents entail a restriction on the accessibility of the scientific knowledge that has been patented, and if the main purpose of universities is to produce and disseminate knowledge to the public, then, there is a tension: when universities patent their research (...) innovations, they are making the scientific knowledge they produce less accessible to the public. The paper argues that university patenting contradicts the very idea of a university as an institution whose mission is fundamentally to disseminate the knowledge it produces to the public. The practice of university patenting involves an un-academic attitude thus: by inciting an attitude towards knowledge that is not consistent with the proper attitudes and goals of a university, university patenting hurts university's integrity. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific understandings of compassion converge, both stressing its necessity for the moral life and human flourishing. I conceptualise a dynamic and frangible account of professional virtues, including compassion, and propose that mechanistic organisational systems of care and the biomedical paradigm create a strong risk of dehumanisation and the obliteration of compassion in healthcare. Additionally, the neoliberal market ideology, with its instrumental approach to individuals and commodification of healthcare creates a corrosive influence that alienates clinicians from their patients (...) and severely curtails the scope for compassionate practice. The tension between efficiency and patient orientated care – although they need not be mutually exclusive – has become more acute in the current economic climate, at a time when the boundaries of medicine have broadened and expectations for healthcare have risen. This has created an unsustainable dynamic within which alienated healthcare professionals struggle to fulfil their healing roles and patients experience abandonment and more anxiety. (shrink)

This paper explores the disruptive impact of digitization on cultural heritage preservation, focusing on the challenges posed by intellectual property rights, access, and enforcement. It emphasizes the need to balance innovation and preservation in the digital landscape, addressing issues such as copyright complexities, the commodification of cultural knowledge, and the Western-centric bias in policy shaping. By fostering global cooperation, cultural sensitivity, and public awareness, we will aim at achieving an inclusive and sustainable approach to safeguarding our diverse cultural heritage (...) in the digital era. (shrink)

The concept of the "linear model of innovation" was introduced by authors belonging to the field of innovation studies in the middle of the 1980s. According to the model, there is a simple sequence of steps going from basic science to innovations - an innovation being defined as an invention that is profitable. In innovation studies, the LMI is held to be assumed in Science the endless frontier , the influential report prepared by Vannevar Bush in 1945. In this paper, (...) it is argued that: the LMI was introduced with critical purposes, as part of the questioning of the conception of science and the proposals for science policies put forward in Sef; at a first level of analysis, the LMI appears as a straw man, defended neither in Sef, nor anywhere else; the LMI is a weapon against the importance attributed to basic science in Sef, and its defense of the financing of basic research by the state; the LMI is a component of the process of commodification of science promoted by neoliberalism. The last section of the paper presents a qualified defense of basic science and basic research. (shrink)

Our food and farming system is not socially, economically or ecologically sustainable. Many of the ills are a result of market competition driving specialization and linear production models, externalizing costs for environmental, social and cultural degradation. Some propose that market mechanisms should be used to correct this; improved consumer choice, internalization of costs and compensation to farmers for public goods. What we eat is determined by the path taken by our ancestors, by commercialization and fierce competition, fossil fuels and demographic (...) development. Based on those, governments and the food industry are the choice architects who determine what we eat; consumer choice plays a marginal role. Using market mechanisms to internalize cost and compensate farmers for public goods has been proposed for decades but little progress has been made. There are also many practical, ethical and theoretical objections to such a system. The market is not a good master for a sustainable food system. Instead we need to find new ways of managing the food system based on food as a right and farming as a management system of the planet Earth. The solutions should be based on relocalization of food production and de-commodification of food and our symbionts, the plants and animals we eat. (shrink)

This study examines the extent to which Community Development Banks can challenge traditional market-driven commodification by promoting community-oriented commoning. The existing literature associates the experience of commoning in market society with a decoupling from commodification and presents commoning as inherently communitarian. This article draws on data from the case of community banks in the south of Brazil to demonstrate how commons can emerge from economic forms encompassing diverse institutions and exist alongside market exchange rather than being anchored solely (...) in community. The organizations examined in this study were actively co-created with the participation of the authors as part of a project driven by critical performativity in disadvantaged Brazilian neighborhoods. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, we show how the two domains—market-driven commodities and community-oriented commons—coexist within different modes of economic integration. We conclude that while these organizations facilitate the construction of alternative futures by reinforcing social institutions that are not contingent on the market, the implications of this should be considered with caution. The study contributes to the existing literature on commons by highlighting the complexity of economic motivations within coexisting institutions and by providing a compelling empirical example of how to methodologically engage with the Polanyian framework from a substantivist perspective. (shrink)

“Education as a Tool for Combat. From Socrates to Paulo Freire”. In this paper, without seeking to be exhaustive, we intend to take a journey which will enable us to see what a concept of education closely linked to the independence of the “voice of reason” has meant in different historical contexts; we understand this independence, very broadly speaking, as a critical capacity which enables us as human beings to be sufficiently free and, if necessary, to be able to construct (...) autonomously our own judgments in the face of the inertial weight of tradition and the force of the social consensuses which structure the common sense of our time. We can trace this “enlightened tension” through the history of Western thought from Plato to Condorcet, from Kant to Paulo Freire. In this sense, and to conclude, it will be appropriate to assess what role the educational process is taking on in the contemporary era, where the intensive processes of commodification have also come to permeate all aspects of knowledge. (shrink)

This foreword gives an overview of ethical perspectives on the question of economization and commodification. Major theories are reviewed and linked to the overarching (and seemingly inevitable) idea and leitmotif of the "market" as the driving force of societal action and organization.

Critics of commodification object to sales but not gifts of some goods, such as human blood or human organs, on grounds that such trade wrongly coerces, morally corrupts, and crowds out altruism. This essay takes issues with each of these claims. It disputes Micheal Sandel’s claim that voluntary exchange coerces, arguing that he confuses what is unfair with what is unfree. It argues, where trade does create moral costs, that these costs should be weighed against the moral costs of (...) trade bans, such as the loss of human life, and the harms endemic to illegal markets. The essay also quarrels with Richard Titmuss’s The Gift Relationship, arguing that compensation for blood need not crowd out blood donation, that compensation does not preclude a charitable impulse, and that some important gift relationship posses elements of altruism and exchange.Ceux qui critiquent la marchandisation sont contre la vente mais pas contre le don de certains biens comme le sang ou les organes humains parce qu’un tel commerce exercerait une contrainte, corromprait morallement, et ne laisserait pas de place à l’altruisme. Ce papier traite de chacune de ces affirmations. Il consteste l’affirmation de Micheal Sandel selon laquelle l’échange volontaire exerce une contrainte, en suggérant qu’il confond ce qui injuste avec ce qui n’est pas libre. Si le commerce entraîne des coûts moraux, cet essai suggère que ces coûts devraient être comparés avec les coûts moraux associés aux interdictions de commerce tels que la perte de la vie humaine et ceux associés aux maux endémiques des marchés illégaux. Il critique aussi l’ouvrage de Richard Titmuss, “The Gift Relationship” en suggérant que les compensations monétaires en échange d’un don de sang n’évincent pas nécessairement le don de sang, qu’elles n’empêchent pas les impulsions charitables, et que d’importants actes de don comportent des éléments d’altruisme et d’échange. (shrink)

This article examines the notion of the `scientist as a moral person' in the light of the early stages of the commodification of science and the transformation of research into a big enterprise, operating on the principle of the division of labour. These processes were set in train at the end of the 19th century. The article focuses on the concomitant changes in the public persona and the habitus of scientific entrepreneurs. I begin by showing the significance of the (...) professional networks that were built up and maintained to further a group's research ideas and the careers of its members, thus demonstrating one condition on which depended their practice of science and their ability to earn a living. This leads to a characterization of the changing styles of work, thought and life, and to a consideration of public perceptions and of the ways in which a new self-image of scholarship and science was fashioned. A critical discussion of the public role of these mandarin scientists follows in order to highlight the strains created by the commodification of science at a time of international tensions and conflicts, when shared beliefs in scholarly cosmopolitanism were subverted by appeals to science and scholarship to work in the service of one's own nation as its `courtiers'. Various considerations of peculiar analogies between national styles of research and the style of social organization are then noted. In the final section, the article queries the long-term impact of these developments on the ideal of the scientist as a `moral person'. Taking a cue from Max Weber and pursuing reflections by Zygmunt Bauman on `science moralized', I argue that the emergence of a type of `specialists without spirit' was an unintended but fatal consequence of the changes in research practices promoted by scientific entrepreneurs such as Du Bois-Reymond. I conclude that the temptation to sever the ties to a general ethos of civil virtues lay in the rationalization, specialization and potential de-humanization of the objectifying scientific outlook once advocated for its efficiency. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book analyses the process of labour commodification, through which the individual’s ability to earn a basic living becomes dependent on the conditions of the market relationship. Building on the premise that the separation of a group of individuals from the means of production is an intrinsic element of capitalism, Fausto Corvino theorises that this implies a form of domination in a neo-republican sense. Proposing an original theory of global justice denoted as a minimum de-commodification of labour (...) power, this book explains the ways in which this cosmopolitan principle resists the criticisms that are commonly advanced against classic theories of global justice and charts a theory falling between the neo-republican and labour republican approaches. It stimulates the debate on, and moral critique of, capitalism and the obstacles it poses to individual freedoms, with a focus on exploitation and domination. Global Justice, Markets and Domination will be a key resource for students and scholars researching capitalism and analytical Marxism, political economics and human rights. It will also be of benefit to those interested in theories of global and distributive justice and the economic implications of the neo-republican theory of freedom as non-domination. (shrink)

To grasp what might exist beyond neoliberalism, we need to rethink the history of development before neoliberalism. This article makes two arguments. First, for poorer countries, processes of commodification which are highlighted as evidence of neoliberalism often predate the neoliberal era. Third World development policies tended to make social and economic life more precarious as a corollary to capital accumulation before neoliberalism as an ideology took hold. Second, the intense theoretical and discursive focus on neoliberalism has obscured a tangible (...) shift towards de-commodification in much of the global South. The most salient examples today are state-led social assistance programs that have been implemented across the former Third World. These emerged not out of technocratic fixes from above but often out of political and social struggles from below. The rise and spread of these programs are not only in stark contrast to popular conceptions of a neoliberal reinforcement, but are also specifically targeted at social strata whose precarity commonly originated in developmental policies before the neoliberal era. Utilizing a database of 183 active flagship social assistance programs in 84 developing countries, we present macro-level quantitative evidence of the rise and spread of social protection policies over the past two decades in the global South. We then detail these programs for four middle-income countries—China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. To those who lament that the 2008 crisis has produced no Polanyian double movement, we argue that these state-driven social assistance policies are such a mechanism. (shrink)

It is widely claimed that UBI has the potential to contribute to the de-commodification of labor, by reducing workers’ exit costs of leaving their jobs. In this paper I argue that the housing need may challenge the effectiveness of UBI as an exit option for workers. This is due to the combination of a possible income gap between the UBI amount and lower income level offered by the labor market (according to the modest UBI amounts generally proposed in the (...) literature), high housing prices, and some specific difficulties that housing expenditures might imply in readjusting them to the UBI amount. These difficulties include: fixed prices; contractual obligations; limited consumption alternatives; search and seek efforts; logistical costs; community ties; identity considerations; relational costs; and hurdles associated with returning to a prior living situation. Thus, when attempting to implement UBI, as an exit option for workers, the need for housing should be considered as a possible feasibility constraint. (shrink)

Rousseau’s writings are far from the current developments of the capitalist economy, but they do foreshadow many of its consequences. The link between his philosophy and degrowth thinking illuminates both his approach and the genealogy of this economical tradition. Rousseau, by promoting a lifestyle of small and self-sufficient property owners, tries to avoid the logic of a commerce. His desire to tendentially suppress trade seems to have the primary aim of freeing human relationships from the constraints of selfish exchange so (...) as to promote non-alienated relationships. We intend to show the link between Rousseau and contemporary degrowth theory by considering Émeline De Bouver’s expression “fewer goods, more relationships” as Rousseauan. The principle of “voluntary simplicity against the myth of abundance” animates the degrowth movement. The aim of the degrowth thinkers is to promote gratuity, non-commercial relationships against the logic of consumption and the commodification of all aspects of life and human relationships. Jean-Jacques Rousseau similarly seeks to reduce commercial exchange and promote a certain form of economic autarky. He does so not because he wants to suppress these exchanges, but in order to maintain intact the relations of confidence, friendship and intimacy, which he argues will be perverted if they are invaded by a logic of commercial exchange. (shrink)

These recent years, despite significant advances for the rights of homosexuals and lesbian couples, surrogate motherhood is still prohibited for gay couples under French Law. This is justified by the rejection of the exploitation of women’s bodies, the rejection of the commodification of children—both linked to the “unavailability” of human body and in order to respect “human dignity”—and the rejection of “King Money” which is said to be behind this double exploitation and commodification of human bodies. However, expressions (...) such as “contrary to dignity” and “degradation” are terms with primarily moral connotations that have been reintegrated afterwards into the legal sphere. This highlights, through this lexicon, the porous boundaries between legality and morality. Aren’t we transforming a state governed by the rule of law into a moral state through legal moralism and paternalism? The aim of this article is to show how legal moralism has gradually been constructed around surrogate motherhood, by outlining the history in French law of the judicialization of the current concept of “dignity”, and by highlighting the paradoxes and contradictions that arise when this concept of dignity is used today to prohibit certain practices such as surrogacy, insofar as this leads to the reinforcement of social inequalities. (shrink)

The Resistible Commodification of Labour The article argues that the renewed commodification of labour – the primary aim of neo-liberal policies aimed at the destruction of long-established and hard-won social rights – has played a major role in the commodification of a growing number of social practices. The process of commodification is examined by way of a number of concepts drawn from the Marxist tradition, which are then reappropriated within the current phase of the neo-liberal counter-reform. (...) The article concludes by way of an examination of this process in relation to the issues raised by the anti-globalisation movement and, more specifically, from the standpoint of the critique of commodity put forward by Naomi Klein. (shrink)

In this article, based on a critical metaphor analysis, we identify and describe multimodal metaphors involving the human body and its conceptualizations in five auteur films of the 2010s. Studies on the human body in cinema have documented how it changes according to underlying ideologies. Our research focuses on the role of image schemas and metaphors as they embody meanings and sociocultural paradigms. Metaphors also frame how the body is conceptualized according to dominating ideological practices such as (a) commodification, (...) (b) the integration between artificial and organic, (c) dissatisfaction, (d) dynamics of beautification and idealization, and (e) politicization of the human body. We show how metaphors are creative tools to reframe meanings and representations of the body and how the body is a construct refashioned within the cinematic discourses of these films. (shrink)

This work explores the intersection of environmental ethics, indigenous rights, and socio-political resistance in the context of gentrification in Gandoca-Manzanillo, Costa Rica. It revisits the legacy of the iconic environmental novel La Loca de Gandoca by Anacristina Rossi, contextualizing its themes in the current sociopolitical landscape where development pressures, tourism, and political silence continue to threaten ecological balance and Indigenous territories. The study critiques the continued marginalization of Indigenous and coastal communities whose lands are increasingly targeted by tourism-driven development. While (...) Costa Rica is internationally recognized for its environmental policies as a green, peaceful country, this work argues that the commodification of nature and the silencing of grassroots environmental defenders reflect deeper ethical contradictions. Through a philosophical lens rooted in bioethics and Latin American critical thought, the project engages with the concept of cuerpo-territorio, the precautionary principle, epistemic injustice, and decolonial ethics to question dominant narratives of sustainable development. The lack of official sources and active marginalization of affected voices underline the urgency and necessity of ethical academic intervention. The project seeks to highlight how forgotten narratives like La Loca de Gandoca remain painfully relevant and how ignoring them perpetuates historical violence under the guise of “green” economic development. (shrink)

Despite many obvious differences, the ruins of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and at the post-9.11 World Trade Center generate a number of shared characteristics concerning struggles over the reconstruction, commodification of memory, and the contestations over historical knowledge with which to explain what led to such violence. The paper discusses the politics of memory in these two sites of victimization, but also contrast it with emerging discourse on yet another lesser known instance of violence against women of Asia (...) and Pacific who fell victim to the wartime Japanese military sexual enslavement. In so doing, the paper begins to explore some of the elements that generate boundaries of compassion and amnesia toward violence against the racialized, colonized, gendered bodies. (shrink)

According to Husserl, the mathematization of the lifeworld involves reducing it, as object of knowledge, to what is measurable, as well as excluding other forms of knowledge of it. This has important implications in relation to the modern conception of rationality, and, significantly, of practical rationality. More precisely, it issues in an impoverishment of the notion of reason. This article examines the idea that the process of commodification associated with the consolidation and expansion of capitalism has motivated another aspect (...) of the mathematization of nature to which Husserl alludes: the mathematization of value. Born from capitalist economy and from practical attitudes, this mathematization of value is a tendency to reduce all value to use value. In such context, this article offers a phenomenological reflection on the crisis of modern rationality, especially in relation to the difficulty to undertake collective actions that follow logics that are different from that of the accumulation of capital, based on the examination of this other aspect of the mathematization of the lifeworld. (shrink)

Marxian Paradoxes of the Commodity He sketches a succinct interpretation of the paradoxical legacy of the Marxian legacy concerning the market. His formal distinction between market and capitalist market. His dialectical, i.e. realistic conception, of both fonctionnal and contradictory relations between market, law and State, between wage-earning and market. And the light this approach throws on the ongoing processes of commodification and on the way the fight goes on.

O presente trabalho expõe algumas investigações acerca da mercantilização da educação brasileira e a perda (ao nosso ver) do caráter emancipatório que a educação deve possuir. A proposta atual de captura da educação pelo capital ocasiona o distanciamento das esferas públicas, quando não a sua condescendência, na deterioração de uma proposta formativa contrária aos projetos de conformação, passividade e de hedonismo que orientam a educação especialmente escolar no mundo atual. Para acompanhar essa crítica, nos valemos da economia conceitual aberta por (...) István Mészáros, uma das inúmeras vozes que, na atualidade, construíram críticas contundentes para uma revalorização dos processos formativos, mais humanos e empáticos aos outros. Os mecanismos de contrainternalização na lógica formativa deve produzir uma educação efetivamente aberta às diferenças humanas, que reposicionem os valores cidadãos para que dialoguem, decisivamente, a fim de uma emancipação das inteligências e instauração de equidades ou igualdades, acenando para a cunhagem de sujeitos livres e que se entendam como atores ético-políticos. Assim, essa proposta de pesquisa intenta argumentar junto à recortes de realidades que nos interpelam a uma decisiva análise e crítica frontal quanto a necessidade de se reposicionar a formação humana no século XXI. Palavras-chave: Emancipação; Liberdade; Contrainternalização. Education as a real practice of freedom from István Mészáros Abstract: The present work exposes some investigations about the commodification of Brazilian education and the loss (in our view) of the emancipatory character that education must have. The current proposal to capture education by capital causes the distancing of the public spheres, if not their condescension, in the deterioration of a formative proposal contrary to the projects of conformation, passivity and hedonism that guide education, especially school in the current world. To accompany this criticism, we make use of the conceptual economy opened by István Mészáros, one of the many voices that, today, have built strong criticisms for a revaluation of formative processes, more humane and empathetic to others. The mechanisms of counter-internalization in the formative logic must produce an education that is effectively open to human differences, which reposition citizens' values ​​so that they dialogue decisively, in order to emancipate the intelligences and establish equities or equality, waving to the coinage of free and independent subjects. understand themselves as ethical-political actors. Thus, this research proposal intends to argue with the cuts of realities that challenge us to a decisive analysis and frontal criticism regarding the need to reposition human formation in the 21st century. Keywords: Emancipation; Freedom; Counterinternalization. L'éducation comme véritable pratique de la liberté de István Mészáros Résumé: Le présent travail expose quelques investigations sur la marchandisation de l'éducation brésilienne et la perte (selon nous) du caractère émancipateur que l'éducation doit avoir. La proposition actuelle de capter l'éducation par le capital provoque l'éloignement des sphères publiques, sinon leur condescendance, dans la détérioration d'une proposition formative contraire aux projets de conformation, de passivité et d'hédonisme qui guident l'éducation, notamment scolaire dans le monde actuel. Pour accompagner cette critique, nous nous appuyons sur l'économie conceptuelle ouverte par István Mészáros, l'une des nombreuses voix qui, aujourd'hui, ont construit des critiques fortes pour une revalorisation des processus formatifs, plus humains et empathiques envers les autres. Les mécanismes de contre-intériorisation dans la logique formative doivent produire une éducation effectivement ouverte aux différences humaines, qui repositionne les valeurs des citoyens pour qu'ils dialoguent de manière décisive, afin d'émanciper les intelligences et d'établir des équités ou des égalités, saluant les monnaie de sujets libres et indépendants se comprennent comme des acteurs éthico-politiques. Ainsi, cette proposition de recherche entend argumenter avec les coupures des réalités qui nous interpellent à une analyse décisive et une critique frontale quant à la nécessité de repositionner la formation humaine au 21e siècle. Mots-clés: Émancipation; Liberté; Contre-intériorisation. Data de registro: 03/03/2022 Data de aceite: 17/05/2022. (shrink)

L’article explore les rapports entre l’espace, les publics, l’argent et le temps à travers une évolution de divers lieux de rassemblement à Saint-Pétersbourg dans les années 1990-2010. Prenant leur essor durant la période de « l’entre-deux » systèmes, les clubs émergent tels une expérience « underground », un temps continu vécu par une communauté dans un lieu régulier affranchi des impératifs de rentabilité. Durant les années 2000, les clubs subissent une marchandisation, irrégulière et décalée, qui les amène à passer à (...) une ouverture quasi-permanente en diversifiant l’offre de programmation et de consommation. Une partie des clubs, des bars, ainsi que les « time-cafés » émergeant dans les années 2010, visent dès lors à se constituer des noyaux de publics fidèles, à les maintenir longtemps sur place en soignant un « entre-soi », des sociabilités à la fois ouvertes et exclusives, protégées par certains mécanismes de sélection. Cette composante « sociabilité » l’emporte progressivement sur la composante artistique, elle suspend le principe de maximisation du profit et tend à privilégier un usage libre du temps. Cette tendance semble être reprise par certains établissements culturels d’Etat en quête de modernisation, se positionnant dès lors comme des lieux de rassemblement de proximité. (shrink)

Dr Christopher May. Commodifying the « Information Age » : Intellectual Property Rights, the State and the Internet Information and communication technologies are seen as one of the key catalysts of the compression of space and time which globalisation has heralded. However, only the reification of the market makes plausible an argument for a significant decline in the efficacy of the state, or the claim that we have entered some new phase of global economic organisation. Reifying the market obscures the (...) underlying supports on which information age capitalism continues to rest, most importantly the continuing centrality of commodification for capitalism’s global reproduction. In this article I examine the commodification of the « new economy » which has emerged across the Internet. Drawing on Marx work on the role of law in capitalism I stress that the centrality of intellectual property rights to the « new economy ». This suggests we need to recognise the continuing processes of capitalist commodification, not celebrate a new epoch of economic organisation. (shrink)

The shortage of available organs for transplantation, organ tourism and illegal kidney transplantations put the question of paid organ donation and commercialism high on the agenda. Ethicists as J. Radcliffe-Richards and R.Veatch have reopened the debate. Therefore it is necessary and useful to check the main arguments pro and con. The advocates of paid organ donation refer to autonomy and pragmatic considerations. Why not regulate an ineradicable practice? The opponents rely on the dignity and integrity of the human body and (...) on justice. They are afraid of exploitation of the poor. A thorough analysis of the debate reveals that the arguments pro and con are incompatible and that the ethical debate leads nowhere. Furthermore, paid organ donation will stimulate the instrumentalisation and commodification of the human body. It brings about a further medicalisation of society where the wishes of the patient and the ‘cure’ prevails over the ‘care’, prevention of organ failure and scientific research . On the basis of the ethical impasse and especially on the basis of these implicit sociological considerations we make a plea against paid organ donation. Altruistic donation and solidarity must remain the basis of organ transplantation. Solidarity is fed by charity and fraternity , the two great sources of western culture and morality. These also must remain the basic inspiration of medicine in general and of organ transplantation in particular. (shrink)

This article examines Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s contributions to the women’s pages of the newspapers Correio da Manhã and Diário da Noite between 1959 and 1961. While Lispector’s fictional output has spawned a steady flow of scholarly and academic studies from a wide array of disciplines and fields of study, her journalistic production, in particular the women’s pages she crafted under a pseudonym, has hardly received any critical attention. The “women’s page” is a fixed section in magazines and newspapers entirely (...) dedicated to women, addressed specifically to a female readership, and generally authored by a woman or a female persona. The purpose of this article is to redress this critical oversight and complement the only study so far of this corpus – Aparecida Maria Nunes’s Clarice Lispector Jornalista – by arguing that, in Lispector’s hands, these pages become spaces of potential cultural and political intervention. Through their nuanced parody of other comparable discursive spaces and their overemphasis on what is culturally constructed as feminine, Lispector’s pages perform a transvestite gesture that unsettles normative models of femininity and dislodges a heteronormative temporality predicated upon birth, marriage, reproduction, and death. (shrink)

En un momento de gran efervescencia feminista, se entremezclan las reclamaciones políticas del movimiento con las peligrosas reapropiaciones que de sus núcleos de lucha hace el neoliberalismo. Las tensiones que se presentan en este contexto son muchas y variadas, algunas evidentes y otras invisibles, pero todas contribuyen a la torsión actual del feminismo. En el presente artículo se abordarán algunas de estas tensiones que nacen en la intersección entre feminismo y neoliberalismo: desde la publicidad como posible herramienta feminista hasta los (...) discursos sobre el emprendimiento y el empleo, pasando por el diseño de políticas públicas, y la mercantilización de los cuerpos femeninos. También se abordarán algunas de las posibles rearticulaciones y respuestas políticas feministas ante esta realidad, mostrando la complejidad de los retos a los que tienen que hacer frente los feminismos hoy.In times of great feminist effervescence, the political claims of the movement are intermingled with the dangerous reappropriations that neoliberalism makes of its struggle nuclei. The tensions that appear in this context are many and varied, some obvious and some invisible, but all of them contribute to the torsion of feminism. This article will address some of the tensions that arise from the intersection between feminism and neoliberalism: from advertising as a possible feminist tool, to speeches on entrepreneurship and employment, through the design of public policies, and the commodification of female bodies. Some of the possible re-articulations and feminist political responses to this reality will be addressed, showing the great complexity of the challenges that feminisms face today. (shrink)

In an evolving global market of procreation, surrogacy is increasingly practiced and raises many ethical issues in terms of respect of the dignity of women, their bodily integrity and the consideration of the best interests and kinship of the unborn child. Faced with such ethical questions, the legal response in international law was tepid, while that of the States was fundamentally disparate, varying between systems of prohibition or legal framing of this practice and others that tolerate surrogacy but do not (...) regulate it. This article seeks to analyze the different ethical issues raised by surrogacy, then focuses on the various legal trends prohibiting or totally or partially authorizing this practice, and studying the legal treatment reserved by international law to this question. (shrink)

Building on Hannah Arendt’s insights, storytelling is presented not merely as a literary form, but as a fundamental mode of human existence and meaning-making. However, as Yuval Harari and Byung-Chul Han suggest, contemporary digital culture has led to a crisis of narration through de-narrativization (the fragmentation of narratives into algorithmic data) and story-selling (the commodification of personal narratives). In response to this crisis, this paper proposes the concept of Self-Narrative Resistance, which examines how individuals actively challenge and reshape their (...) own narratives against imposed structures. Rather than passively conforming to algorithm-driven representation and performative self-branding, individuals navigate and reconfigure their self-narratives as a mode of resistance. Finally, the paper turns to Donna Haraway’s fictional imagination as a way to transcend traditional master plots and rethink self-narration. Speculative modes of identity construction are further explored through fictional imagination, hybrid media, and AI-based reflective interaction—enabling forms of self-narrative that move beyond normative narrative frames, toward figures such as the chimera and the cyborg. By positioning Self-Narrative Resistance as an existential-phenomenological practice, the paper proposes a renewed understand- ing of self-narration—as a fundamental mode through which human beings critically engage with the world, move beyond internalized narrative structures, and create new meaning in life. In this light, self-narration becomes not only a gesture of surviving the digital present, but also a way of imagining the otherwise. (shrink)

A timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t (...) been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light. Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts. (shrink)

Precision livestock farming (PLF) is the management of livestock using the principles and technology of process engineering. Key to PLF is the dense monitoring of variegated parameters, including animal growth, output of produce (e.g. milk, eggs), diseases, animal behaviour, and the physical environment (e.g. thermal micro-environment, ammonia emissions). While its proponents consider PLF a win-win strategy that combines production efficiency with sustainability goals and animal welfare, critics emphasise, inter alia, the potential interruption of human-animal relationships. This paper discusses the notion (...) that the objectification of animals by PLF influences the developmental pathways of conventional industrial farming. We conduct a conceptual analysis of objectification by comparing discussions in feminist ethics and animal ethics. We find that in animal ethics, objectification includes deontological arguments regarding instrumentalisation, de-animalisation, alienation, commodification and quantification of animals. The focus on socio-political context and relationality connects these debates to central ideas in care ethics. We adopt a care ethics perspective to assess the implications of the objectification of animals in livestock farming. The basic claim is that sensory knowledge symbolised by the farmers’ unity of hand, head and heart would make it harder to objectify animals than abstract and instrumental reasoning where the pursuit of knowledge is intertwined with the pursuit of control, as in mainstream PLF. Despite of what can be considered as a good caring relationship between farmers and animals that is mediated by PLF, people involved in conventional industrial farming still seem to become further detached from farmers and animals, because the PLF system itself is objectifying. PLF redefines the notion of care, in terms of data transparency, standardisation of methods for analysis, real-time collection and processing of data, remote control, and the use of digital platforms. This creates new expectations and requires a redistribution of responsibilities within a wider scope of relations in the value chain. (shrink)

O artigo analisa a reconfiguração da ciência no contexto da tecnoglobalização, marcada pela influência de dinâmicas digitais e lógicas capitalistas. Discute-se como a hiperconectividade e a ascensão de influenciadores digitais desafiam a autoridade epistêmica tradicional, favorecendo a disseminação de pseudociências e desinformação. A pandemia de Covid-19 acelerou a dependência de plataformas digitais, expondo paradoxos como alienação tecnocognitiva e deterioração da saúde mental. A mercantilização da ciência, subordinada a interesses corporativos, reforça assimetrias globais na produção do conhecimento, marginalizando regiões periféricas. Teorias (...) críticas (Adorno, Horkheimer e Foucault) fundamentam a análise da instrumentalização da ciência pelo capitalismo de vigilância e a erosão da autonomia científica. Trata-se da urgência de políticas interdisciplinares para conciliar democratização do saber, integridade metodológica e resistência a oligopólios tecnocientíficos. Conclui-se que a ciência, em diálogo com filosofias emancipatórias, deve reafirmar seu papel social contra a espetacularização midiática e a fragmentação gerada pela tecnoglobalização. Palavras-chave: Alienação Tecnocognitiva; Capitalismo de Vigilância; Epistemicídio; Mercantilização do Conhecimento; Tecnoglobalização. Science in the “Age of Technoglobalization” and New Paradigms Abstract: This article analyzes the reconfiguration of science in the context of technoglobalization, marked by the influence of digital dynamics and capitalist logics. It discusses how hyperconnectivity and the rise of digital influencers challenge traditional epistemic authority, favoring the dissemination of pseudosciences and misinformation. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the dependence on digital platforms, exposing paradoxes such as technocognitive alienation and the deterioration of mental health. The commodification of science, subordinated to corporate interests, reinforces global asymmetries in knowledge production, marginalizing peripheral regions. Critical theories from Adorno, Horkheimer, and Foucault underpin the analysis of the instrumentalization of science by surveillance capitalism and the erosion of scientific autonomy. The urgency of interdisciplinary policies is addressed to reconcile the democratization of knowledge, methodological integrity, and resistance to technoscientific oligopolies. The article concludes that science, in dialogue with emancipatory philosophies, must reaffirm its social role against media spectacularization and the fragmentation generated by technoglobalization. Keywords: Commodification of Knowledge; Epistemicide; Surveillance Capitalism; Technocognitive Alienation; Technoglobalization. La Ciencia en la “era de la tecnoglobalización” y nuevos paradigmas Resumen: El artículo analiza la reconfiguración de la ciencia en el contexto de la tecnoglobalización, marcada por la influencia de dinámicas digitales y lógicas capitalistas. Se discute cómo la hiperconectividad y el ascenso de los influenciadores digitales desafían la autoridad epistémica tradicional, favoreciendo la difusión de pseudociencias y desinformación. La pandemia de Covid-19 aceleró la dependencia de las plataformas digitales, exponiendo paradojas como la alienación tecnocognitiva y el deterioro de la salud mental. La mercantilización de la ciencia, subordinada a intereses corporativos, refuerza las asimetrías globales en la producción del conocimiento, marginando a las regiones periféricas. Las teorías críticas (Adorno, Horkheimer y Foucault) fundamentan el análisis de la instrumentalización de la ciencia por el capitalismo de vigilancia y la erosión de la autonomía científica. Se aborda la urgencia de políticas interdisciplinarias para conciliar la democratización del saber, la integridad metodológica y la resistencia a los oligopolios tecnocientíficos. Se concluye que la ciencia, en diálogo con filosofías emancipatorias, debe reafirmar su papel social contra la espectacularización mediática y la fragmentación generada por la tecnoglobalización. Palabras clave: Alienación Tecnocognitiva; Capitalismo de Vigilancia; Epistemicidio; Mercantilización del Conocimiento; Tecnoglobalización. Data de registro: 31/01/2025 Data de aceite: 20/08/2025. (shrink)

‘The Debauched Commons: A Dark Parable’ summarizes issues regarding intellectual property rights and immaterial culture through a nuanced reading of how First Nations Peoples worldwide have been forced by forms of neoliberal-capitalist exploitation of the knowledge commons to ring-fence and/or commodify their lived traditions, in many cases dating back 100,000 years and clearly predating any and all Western (First World) concepts of ownership. The intention of the structuralist-inspired reading of this enforced defensive position is to emphasize and clarify issues concerning (...) prior art and moral rights, two of the most ambiguous and gamed elements of copyright and patent law. Drawing upon the international context of the _Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples_ (2007) and the _Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Heritage_ (2003), this essay will focus, in part, on the travails of Aboriginals in Australia as representative of First Peoples worldwide and their long-exploited and long-expropriated traditions, inclusive of land, but foremost _lived knowledge_, but also their often compromised position _vis-à-vis_ various Australian state and Commonwealth legislation concerning recognition of their copyright, moral rights, and intellectual property rights. In this complex dance between tradition, heritage, and law, the so-called public domain often also becomes a de facto warehouse for the eventual conversion of intangible rights to collectively held and stored cultural property, which is then leveraged and/or converted to cultural capital by both public institutions and private companies. The primary premise of the analytic to be applied is that commodification of knowledge is more or less co-equal to the digitization of culture and the regimes of expropriation and/or outright theft associated with platform cultures. Platform culture, in turn, implicates otherwise benign, or apparently benign institutions (for example, academia and the art world) claiming to advance understanding and resolution of the twin nemeses of post-contemporary cultural politics—diversity and justice. The subtle machinations of what has come to be called the art-academic industrial complex will thus be analyzed for implicit and explicit practices that are reducible to the appropriation of native rites and rights, and laws and lores, for self-serving reasons inclusive of radical-chic posturing and politically correct tokenism. (shrink)

Drawing from the online fitness instruction of fitness influencers on “Bilibili.com,” the article examines how bodily performance on Chinese social media platforms shapes and influences contemporary body aesthetics. The developments in media visual technology and virtual interaction triggered by the proliferation of social media platforms have fundamentally changed how the body is gazed at and the way individuals imagine the shape of the body. Through the analysis of textual and visual data from the top 9 rated fitness influencers from February (...) 2020 to May 2021, the empirical aim of the paper is to examine how fitness influencers “naturalize” the body ideal, once considered “unnatural” in the Chinese context, by re-aligning two opposing discourses on the body and beauty that coexist in Chinese society and creating the “performative scripts” that legitimize the objectification of the body. Drawing on iconic theory, which takes celebrities as typical aesthetic forms that encapsulate profound meanings and purposes, the article brings in the aesthetic dimension of the body and identifies twofold bodily performative scripts used by fitness influencers, the glamorizing script and the moralizing script. The article jettisons the critical-constructivist approach in the literature that describes the commodification and objectification of the body as a process of de-meaning and exploitation. Instead, the paper advocates a cultural sociological perspective that takes the marketing and commodification of the body as a meaning-making process in which the discourse of body aesthetics is purposefully reconstructed. (shrink)

The paper critically engages with Simone de Beauvoir’s promising claim that reproductive technology is the emancipatory tool for women and the Indian problem of surrogacy. Beauvoir believes in voluntary motherhood in which reproductive technologies play a significant role in empowering women. Although in India, surrogacy is seen as a choice-based job, surrogate mothers are subjected to exploitation, commodification, poor living conditions, and unethical treatment. I argue that Beauvoir’s description of technology and motherhood needs further revision in today’s world where (...) surrogacy is not only disempowering women but also crushing their maternal self by viewing them merely as machines for fulfilling societal values. Recently, the Indian government has taken strong majors to regularise surrogacy will be further explored. In doing so, an attempt will be made to critically analyse the meanings of women’s choices in relation to the use of reproductive technologies within the existentialist framework of Beauvoir. (shrink)

Harbin is a city in Northeast China that rose to prominence as a result of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway in a context of Russian imperial expansion. Affectionately known as “the Moscow of the East,” Harbin’s history, architecture, food, and language bear strong Russian/Soviet influences. Given the joint Chinese and Russian/European influences, Harbin represents a dynamic, hybridized, and liminal space. Adopting the conceptual lenses of “chronotope” and “polyphony,” this study explores the linguistic and semiotic landscape of the famous (...) Saint Sophia Cathedral (an Eastern Orthodox church) and Zhongyang Street/Central Street (a Russian-style pedestrian street) in Harbin. Historically, these areas once featured highly Russified linguistic/semiotic landscape, which later saw significant de-Russification as many Russians left and a Chinese identity was emphasized. In recent decades, Russian linguistic and semiotic elements are deliberately foregrounded and strategically employed in a context of tourism, commerce, and business. Drawing on a corpus of photographic data, the study examines the combination and orchestration of multilingual signs (i.e., Chinese, English, and Russian), investigates issues of translation, and explores how the multilingual signs, various architectural styles (of Russian/European origins), various products (e.g., Russian-style khleb, kvass, and Matryoshka dolls) and spatiotemporal elements give rise to dynamic semiotic assemblages. Its findings reveal how such multimodal and multisemiotic ensembles construct a sense of authenticity and exoticness and importantly contribute to the commodification of Harbin. These lead to a diverse and cosmopolitan image, a hybrid East-meets-West urban identity and a layered urban palimpsest. This interdisciplinary study contributes to scholarship in multilingualism, linguistic/semiotic landscape, the commodification of language, multimodal discourse analysis, urban studies, urban geography, and sociolinguistics. (shrink)