Anti-commodification theorists often complain that putting certain things up for sale violates the meaning of those goods or expresses certain negative attitudes towards those goods. As part of our response, Jaworski and I argue that the meaning of money and market exchange is a contingent social construct. (We then argue that this allows us to judge different codes of meaning by their utility.) Here’s an excerpt from the book version:

…we present a range of sociological and anthropological evidence that there is no essential meaning to money or market exchange. Instead, the meaning of money is a contingent social construct. In the absence of non-semiotic objections to markets, the social meaning of money, of markets, and commodification, is relative, not objective. Note that we are not saying that morality is relative or a social construct, but, rather that the meaning we attach to market exchanges is.

Sandel, Anderson, or Carol Pateman claim in contrast that some markets necessarily signal disrespect—that it is not a mere contingent social convention that such commodification signals disrespect—even when these markets do not involve exploitation, harm, and so on, and even when market agents do not have any bad attitudes.[i] Debra Satz describes Patemen and Anderson as advocating an “essentialist thesis”, that is, that “reproductive labor is by its nature something that should not be bought or sold.” They might be right; we will consider their essentialist semiotic arguments in more depth later. But for now, we want to examine some sociological and anthropological evidence that the meaning of markets is contingent and socially constructed.

There are facts about what symbols, words, and actions signal respect. But—when there are no worries about exploitation, harm, rights, and so on—these facts appear to vary from culture to culture. Consider that King Darius of Persia asked the Greeks if they would be willing to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. The Greeks balked. Of course, the right thing to do was to burn the dead bodies on a funeral pyre. To eat the dead would disrespect them, treating them like mere food. Darius then asked the Callatians if they would be willing to burn their fathers on a funeral pyre. The Callatians balked. The thing to do was to eat one’s father, so that part of the father was always with the son. Burning the dead would treat them like mere trash.

The Greeks and Callatians agreed about what their obligations were. They agreed that everyone has a moral obligation to signal respect for their dead fathers. Each group had developed a system of linguistic and cultural norms within which they could fulfill this obligation. They had developed rituals that signified respect for their fathers. The issue here is just that the Greeks and Callatians were, in effect, speaking different (ritualistic) languages. The Greeks and Callatians may have been mutually horrified. However, it is not obvious that there is any universal fact about what it takes to express respect or disrespect for the dead. Asking whether the Greek or Callatian practices are the correct way to express respect is, at first glance, a bit like asking whether English or French is the correct language. While it is not a mere social construct that we should we express respect for one another, it appears at first glance that the symbols and rituals we take to express respect are mere social constructs.

Sandel complains that giving money instead of a non-monetary gift communicates a lack of concern. Yet there is evidence that this is merely a construct of current Western culture. For the Merina people of Madagascar, monetary gifts carry no such stigma of being impersonal or thoughtless.[ii] For the Merina, giving what Sandel calls “thoughtful” non-monetary gifts expresses no greater concern or thoughtfulness than giving cash of equal value. Just as in some cultures giving a person the middle finger will not be interpreted as expressing disrespect, in the Merina culture, a “thoughtful” gift will not be interpreted as being more thoughtful than a cash gift.

In Western cultures, we are now more likely to view gifts of money or gift certificates as impersonal or thoughtless, but even this is just a recent cultural development. For Americans, monetary gifts used to have a different meaning. Sociologist Viviana Zelizer says that in the 1870s-1930s United States, monetary gifts were seen as especially thoughtful:

“Families, intimate friends, and businesses likewise reshaped money into its supposedly most alien form: a sentimental gift, expressing care and affection. It mattered who gave gift money and who received it, when it was given, how it was offered and how spent. Defying all notions of money as neutral, impersonal, and fungible, gift money circulated as a meaningful, deeply subjective, nonfungible currency, closely regulated by social conventions. At Christmas, weddings, christenings, or other ritual and secular events, cash turned into a dignified, welcome gift almost unrecognizable as market money and clearly distinguished from other domestic currencies.”^[iii]

 

Thus, from a sociological standpoint, the distinction between “thoughtful” and “unthoughtful” gifts appears to just be a contingent, culturally-relative, social construct. Indeed, Zelizer’s extensive work on the meaning of money and exchange, work spread out over multiple books, seems to shows us that the supposed “profanity” of commodification or cash is not a deep fact about market economies as such, or about money as such, but a peculiarity of our own culture at this particular time. In her work, Zelizer uncovers many other instances where different cultures at different times do not impute the meaning to money or to markets that Sandel thinks we should impute.[iv]

Sociologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Perry concur:

 

“The problem seems to be that for us money signifies a sphere of ‘economic’ relationships which are inherently impersonal, transitory, amoral and calculating. There is therefore something profoundly awkward about offering it as a gift expressive of relationships which are supposed to be personal, enduring, moral and altruistic. But clearly this awkwardness derives from the fact that here money’s ‘natural’ environment — the ‘economy’ — is held to constitute an autonomous domain to which general moral precepts do not apply (cf. Dumont 1977). Where it is not seen as a separate and amoral domain, where the economy is ‘embedded’ in society and subject to its moral laws, monetary relations are rather unlikely to be represented as the antithesis of bonds of kinship and friendship, and there is consequently nothing inappropriate about making gifts of money to cement such bonds.” [v]

 

Bloch and Perry write this to summarize the findings of anthropologists and sociologists of money and markets. Like Zelizer, they conclude money and markets do not have the same meaning everywhere that it has here. Instead, the reason commodification seems so repugnant to us Westerners is because we Westerners tend to regard the sphere of exchange and money as a “separate and amoral domain”. Bloch, Parry, and Zelizar say that we then mistakenly assume that this is just a “natural” or essential fact about money. We could think of money a different way, just as the Callations could think of burning the dead a different way.

Similarly, it’s tempting to hold that when a man gives a woman money for having sex with him, this must mean, as a matter of logical necessity, that he is treating her like a prostitute, with whatever disrespect this characteristically imputes. But where philosophers see logically essential meaning, sociologists and anthropologists see contingent, socially-constructed meanings. There are cultures in which monetary exchanges in intimate relationships are normal. Among the Merina people, men are expected to give cash after sex. Failure to do so is seen as disrespectful. The Merina do distinguish between marital relationships and prostitution, and they do not believe cash exchanges for sex treat wives like prostitutes. Cash simply does not mean for them what it means for us. For them, the thing that separates wives from prostitutes is not the exchange of money for sex, but whether the relationship is formal or informal, loving or impersonal, serious or casual.[vi] For Zelizar, the Merina men are in a sense buying sex, but they do so in order to express respect for their wives.[vii]

One might be tempted to object that this practice is just an expression of patriarchy. On the contrary, sociologist Kirsten Stoebanau, in summarizing the work of Gillian Feeley-Harnick, explains that in Madagascar, sexual relationships were “open and easy: a young man will propose to have sex with a young woman who, if interested, allows the man into her home/living quarters. Traditionally, the man will place a small amount of money under the pillow to show respect to her for giving the power of her body (as representation of fertility) to him”.[viii] To fail to give such a gift would express profound disrespect to the woman. Stoebanau argues that patriarchal attitudes towards female sexuality in Madagascar were in fact introduced by French missionaries. The practice of exchanging money for sex pre-dates these attitudes toward sex.

One might also object that the Merina’s practice of men paying their wives for sex doesn’t count as a market, because the men are not 1) indifferent to their wives’ subjectivity, 2) the men intend to express respect, 3) the men do not regard the value of sexual relations with their wives to be fungible with money, and so on. But, as we said above, anti-commodification theorists should be careful to avoid this kind of objection. If they decide to define “markets” as spheres of impersonal exchange in which participants care only about themselves and in which the participants regard the things exchanged as only having instrumental value, it follows trivially that markets in certain goods and services will express disrespect or fail to express respect. But then it remains an open question whether it is permissible to buy and sell those same goods and services, because it becomes an open, empirical question whether this instance of buying and selling is done on schmarkets rather than markets. Schmarkets, recall, function just like markets, except that people don’t have whatever deplorable or amoral attitudes some anti-commodification theorists want to say are essential to markets.

Now consider what practices signal and symbolize closeness and estrangement. What signals estrangement or closeness can vary greatly from people to people, from culture to culture, or can vary greatly over time within a particular culture. So, for instance, in some parts of India, friends and family do not say “please” and “thank you” for something that is an expected part of the relationship. If you were Indian, you would cause offense if you started saying “please” and “thank you” to your loved ones for normal behavior. In certain parts of India, by expressing gratitude, you signal that you do not really consider your mother a friend or family member, that you regard her like you would some stranger. The same is generally true of introducing financial payments into our Western relationships. We offend because we signal estrangement from our family or friends.

We can at least imagine a healthy marriage in which the partners decide to pay each other for a wide range of services, even though they love each other deeply and have as firm a commitment as any other married couple. Imagine both spouses are economists, in particular the kinds of economists who favor information markets. Suppose they have a strong understanding of the role of money and prices in revealing confidence, sincerity, and the strength of preferences. They agree to commodify many aspects of their relationship because it is an efficient, more effective method for them to communicate their needs with one another. They decide to commodify their exchanges in part because they accept the large body of economic literature showing that forcing people to put prices on things penalizes them for insincerity. This literature shows that talk is cheap, but putting one’s money where one’s mouth is is not cheap. So, for instance, in a money-less relationship, partners may exaggerate the extent to which the other partners’ behaviors bother them. But if, in a monetized marriage, a partner realizes she is not willing to put up even $5 to stop the behavior, then she might thereby realize that the behavior does not bother her nearly as much as she was letting on. (Note that this holds even if one thinks one is entitled to be rid of the behavior for free.[ix]) Thus, our economist couple might rationally choose to commodify parts of their relationship in order to ensure they remain honest with one another and themselves.[x] So, in principle, a thoroughly commodified marriage between two economists could be as healthy as a typical marriage. There is nothing wrong with this kind of marriage; it’s just a contingent fact about the rest of us that we prefer a different style of marriage.

In fact, NBC News recently ran a story about a couple, computer scientists Bethany Soule and Daniel Reeves, that commodified their relationship in just this way for just this reason.[xi] (Soule and Reeves are alumni of the University of Michigan’s Strategic Reasoning Group.[xii]) The couple uses the tools of computer science, behavioral economics, and game theory to improve their marriage. As they put it, they have replaced resentful “But I did the dishes last time” with “But I did the dishes last time and I got paid $40 for it, so that was kind of awesome!”[xiii] If this works for them—and it does so far—we do not find anything morally objectionable about it. Soule and Reeves live by a different code of meaning from Sandel or Anderson, and we do not see why Soule and Reeves have a duty to adopt Sandel’s or Anderson’s code of meaning.

Sandel asks you to imagine that on your wedding day, your best man’s speech brings you to tears. But he then asks you to imagine you discover your best man didn’t write that beautiful speech. Instead, suppose your best man paid a professional speechwriter to write it for him. Sandel says you would probably think the bought speech has less value than one the best man wrote himself. To prove this, Sandel offers a test—would you feel uncomfortable telling the person you’re giving the item to that it was purchased, rather than something you made yourself? If so, Sandel says, there’s “reason to suspect it’s a corrupt version of the real thing.”[xiv] He says that wedding toasts are “an expression of friendship,” and so should be written oneself.[xv]

Let’s think a bit more about this case by asking some questions. Why is it okay to buy a Hallmark card on Valentine’s Day, but not to buy a toast? Why is it okay to take your spouse out to dinner on her birthday, rather than cooking it yourself, but then it seems somewhat more appropriate to bake her a birthday cake yourself than to buy one? Why is it fine to buy your children presents on the holidays, rather than having to carve these presents out of wood by hand? Why is it permissible to buy your spouse flowers rather than have to grow them yourself?

In each case, it looks like a contingent phenomenon of our culture that we find one acceptable but not the other. Things could have turned out the opposite. There’s no deeper truth here.

Consider a case like that of the wedding toast: imagine that it’s your father’s funeral. Hundreds of people gather to mourn his passing. Now, suppose your recently widowed mother learns that many of those mourners are not friends, family, or acquaintances, but strangers whom you paid to be there. How might she react? Well, if she’s Romanian, or Chinese, or lived in England during the time of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, she might thank you for being a dutiful son or daughter. In some cultures, it’s normal and expected that one will hire professional mourners for a funeral.[xvi] In these cultures, hiring people to mourn simply does not have the same meaning it has here and now. In the U.S., hiring professional mourners would seem offensive, given people’s sensibilities, but we Americans don’t have to think that way.

Imagine there is a Twin Earth with a Twin America. Twin America’s culture is much like real America’s. However, in Twin America, it’s the norm for best men to buy their speeches. In Twin America, imagine, best men usually spend lavish amounts of money to buy the fanciest, most eloquent speech from the most famous speechwriters they can. In Twin America, suppose, to write one’s own speech would be seen as cheap and uncaring. Also, suppose that it’s expected in that culture that the father or mother of the bride must bake the wedding cake, rather than buying it from a bakery, as is the norm in the real America. Suppose, also, that in Twin America there’s a Twin Harvard with a political theorist Twin Michael Sandel. Twin Michael Sandel recently wrote a book describing how awful it is that some parents on Twin Earth are choosing to pay professionals to bake the wedding cake, rather than baking it themselves. However, he doesn’t blink an eye at the best men buying speeches, which he sees as normal and appropriate.

What’s really going on here is that there are general cultural expectations that there are some things one should do oneself and some things one may buy. We imbue the first set of things with certain meaning. But all of this is highly contingent, as the professional mourners or the Twin Sandel case shows. In fact, it can and does vary from culture to culture and from person to person whether making something oneself is seen as meaningful, neutral, or cheap and uncouth.

Westerners now see monetary transactions as impersonal, instrumental, and selfish.^[xvii] Sandel’s, Walzer’s, Anderson’s, and others’ semiotic complaints reflect this Western view. But, Parry and Bloch say, it appears we can almost always find real life examples where people of different cultures buy and sell something Westerners find repugnant to buy and sell, but for the people in those cultures, buying and selling has very different meaning than what it has for us Westerners.[xviii] We Westerners could attach different meanings to markets than we do.

So, we have dilemma here. On one hand, we have philosophical arguments from prominent theorists telling us that we can determine, a priori, that certain markets essentially signal disrespect. On the other hand, we have sociological and anthropological work that seems to show that extant markets in those very goods often have an entirely different meaning from what we Westerners attribute to them. We can side with the philosophers, in which case we must conclude that the people in these other cultures are just plain wrong. Merina men in fact disrespect their wives; they just fail to see it. When the Chinese give gifts of money in red envelopes on New Years’ Day, they are impersonal and distant; they just fail to see it. Or we can side with the sociologists, and then conclude that people in these other cultures are doing nothing wrong when they buy and sell certain goods and services. Anti-commodification theorists who rely upon semiotic arguments have not discovered an essential meaning to money; they are instead reifying contemporary Western mores. But this comes with the implication that we Westerners could think differently about the meaning of money and exchange, and thus opens up the possibility that we should think differently.

[i] Satz 2012, 117-119 describes Pateman and Anderson as advocating an “essentialist thesis”, that is, that “reproductive labor is by its nature something that should not be bought or sold.”

[ii] Carruthers and Ariovich 2010, 68.

^[iii] Zelizar 1997, 202-3.

[iv] Zelizar 2013; Viviana Zelizar 1994, Zelizar 2007.

[v] Bloch and Parry 1989, 9.

[vi] Carruthers and Ariovich 2010, 68.

[vii] Zelizar 1995, 84.

[viii] Stoebenau 2011, 111.

[ix] Consider: I think my neighbor should quiet his barking dogs for free, but he refuses to do so. Now, suppose a genie offers to cast a spell ridding me of the noise for $10, but—even in a cool moment—I refuse to pay. This is evidence I do not care as much about the barking as I let on.

[x] E.g., Hanson 2013, 151-178.

[xi] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/couple-pays-each-other-put-kids-bed-n13021

[xii] http://web.eecs.umich.edu/srg/?p=1508

[xiii] http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/couple-pays-each-other-put-kids-bed-n13021

[xiv] Sandel 2012, 98.

[xv] Sandel 2012, 98.

[xvi] Thanks to Vlad Tarko for this example.

^[xvii] Mitchell and Mickel 1999, 569.

[xviii] Bloch and Parry 2003, 19-33.