Globalization and Commodification - Essay Example

? Globalization and Commodification Muhammad Emaduddin Research-Academia Globalization and Commodification Globalization has now become a mature phenomenon. We have already started to see the repercussions of globalization in our daily lives. Globalization, unlike any other social change, has been able to modify almost every social structure that was ever evolved throughout the history of mankind. The term globalization means the insignificance of geographical boundaries, their respective cultures on people belonging to these regions. Events, news, ideas, socio-economic conditions and lifestyles of people belonging to one region of the world have an impact over almost all of the populated regions of the planet. Technology has transformed our world in such a way that words like national identity, local news, local economy, local culture and isolated catastrophe or calamity are fast becoming meaningless. Though Globalization has been defined by many in their own perspectives for political, traditional and intellectual motives, we will only consider the popular understanding of globalization. Packaging, pricing, marketing and ultimately selling something that was never a sellable commodity is generally known as a process of commodification. Commodification has its roots in the far spread capitalism around the world. Capitalism according to a popular belief (Gamble, 2001), is one of the ramifications of globalization. The phenomenon of commodification mines the commonly found objects, ideas, resources, culture and experiences in our daily lives and creates a monetary value for the previously un-commoditized entity. Such a process triggers a hunt for entities that can be commoditized since it entails profits. In a capitalist world where the accumulation of wealth is prevalent, such a hunt can mean exhaustion of minable entities for commodification. Exhaustion of commoditize able resources is succinctly outlined by Jeremy Rifkin (2001), If the capitalist system continues to absorb large parts of the cultural realm into its sphere in the form of commodified cultural products, productions, and experiences, the risk is very real that the culture will atrophy to the point where it can no longer produce enough social capital and thus support an economy (p. 245). Online Multiplayer Gaming over the internet is fast becoming a commodity of a globalized world. Though internet experience in itself is a commodity but socializing over the internet via chat rooms, voice chat, social networks and emails has not been a commodity for some years now. The online multiplayer gaming today is charged from pay per hour to pay per year payment models. There exist more clever ways of commodifying the gaming experience that we will look into detail in the coming paragraphs. The commodity harvesters of the internet economy are quickly realizing the money making potential of Social Gaming, the internet games that involve players from around the globe. The very core of internet gaming experience involves real human interaction where the players may know each other; this adds a social dimension to the mix. The growing trend in size of internet gaming, amount of time people spend playing such games and lastly the viable business model that backs any internet application, are major factors that has helped commodification grow in online multiplayer gaming world. Advertisement is an essential step in commodifying something. One such example can be land commodification in over populated countries like China (Xu et. al, 2009), where masses are implanted with a dream of owning a lavish house at attractive locations thus creating a hyped value for irrigable or unused land which otherwise has a lesser value. Such a concept when applied to online multiplayer games, yields astounding value for otherwise a very cost technology. A comprehensive example that has stretched the concept of commodification and globalization to its maximum is called “Second Life”. The game has its own economy that runs through a currency known as “Linden Dollar” which is exchangeable for US dollars or other currencies (Randolfe, 2007). Remarkably, before 23 June, 2003, Linden Dollar never existed virtually, yet today Linden Dollar has an average value of 0.004 US Dollar that has not changed much over the last 3 years (Randolfe, 2007). In 2010, the size of the Second Life economy stood at US$956 million (Nelson Linden, 2011) which is roughly 45 percent of the entire U.S. virtual goods market (Smith & Hudson, 2011). The economy of the game based on the users of the game which can buy, sell goods and services in a free market. The game is a virtual world that lets users buy and sell virtual and physical properties and services including virtual land. Users can experience virtual gatherings and an almost complete alternate life where they represent themselves as an avatar to other avatars controlled by other online users. The company which controls the finances and management of this game is known as Linden Labs. As such, before the advent of High Speed Internet, experiences introduced by Second Life were limited to small geographical neighborhoods which utilized Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity. There exists no doubt that internet has transformed our world to global meeting places via such games. Half a million active monthly users spending 0.55 million hours annually, transacting almost 119 Million USD annually, these volumes speak for the power of the commodification of the virtual world (Nelson Linden, 2011). The strength of commodification lies in how well an un-commoditized entity is proved to be a means for getting something that already has a high valued commodity status. For example the owners of Second Life, Linden Labs, have intentionally created media hype citing examples of people who got jobs (Benner, 2007) or improved productivity at their jobs (Kirkpatrick, 2007) using Second life or started their own virtual business (Tiffany, 2007) using Second Life. Such publicity was spread via extremely popular media icons like CNN and Entrepreneur.com. The simple semi-commoditized ideas having local reach were taken to a global audience using Second Life. Examples include activities like group discussions, exhibitions, lectures, seminars, concerts, poster displays and backyard sale. Such activities when taken to a virtual world were multiplied in significance thus touched higher levels of commercial success. Some experiences in Second Life were created from scratch and appealed to the users thus gained a value of being a commodity. Such features include custom designed avatars which can be attired and decorated by the users to create a desired look, the ability for these avatars to fly and experience flight over the virtual city, buy expensive pieces of land, homes and shops in posh localities of the virtual city, etc. The dynamics of business in Second life are as real as these are in real life since business is governed by real life people and all the communication happening between avatars is happening between real people. Commodification is sometime better when it is done to conserve a fast depleting resource for example fresh drinking water, since this puts limits on to the usage of such a resource (Barlow, 2001). In case of virtual commodities, which more often than usual have no bound when it comes to their production for example Linden Dollars, the phenomenon of commodification provides unrealistic and undue worth to virtual merchandize. Linden Dollars as a virtual merchandize have some inherent flaws (i) The exchange rate of Linden Dollars is not set by true supply and demand since virtual goods can be created unchecked by Linden Labs. (ii) Linden Dollar is built on micropayment token model, the token detaches itself from the currency once exchanged and attaches its value to the virtual goods in this case. In other words the token is attached to theoretical entities which have a limited demand and an unlimited supply. In a globalized world, a game Second Life is a direct means of cultural interaction. However it has been observed by authors like Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 2001) and Jeremy Rifkin (Rifkin, 2001) that culture shrinks as a result of globalization and only more commodifiable cultures dominate other cultures. This statement proves to be true since Second life widely features attires and lifestyle belonging to only one region in the world. The users from around the world have to restrict their choices in terms of the cultural lifestyles they want to follow in their alternate life. Though this claim does not fit well by the amount of languages the game supports. Considering a scenario where experiences within Second Life were not commoditized and a global user base had an opportunity to interact via free seminars, exhibitions, meetings and university forums, the learning value and richness in expression would have been considerably higher and should have had greater impact. Ten years ago, commodification of a multiplayer game, restricted over a LAN could not have imagined the number of benefits and size of business today’s online multiplayer games are reaping. Today advertisers and marketers are targeting insanely high number of audiences somewhere between 50 to 200 million people and they are able to do so because of the deep internet and cable network penetration. Moreover as a result of globalization the advertisers find it easy to get their message across using minimal number widely understandable languages like, English, Simplified Chinese, French and Arabic. References Barlow, M., (2001). “The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply”, The Council of Canadians, Revised Edition, pp. 1-3. Benner, K., (2007). “I got my job through Second Life”, Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/22/magazines/fortune/secondlife_recruit.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007012310 Bourdieu, P.& L. Wacquant, (2001). “NewLiberal Speak- notes on the new planetary vulgate, Radical Philosophy”, 105, January-February, pp 2-5. Gamble, A., (2001). “Neoliberalism, Capital and Class”, 75, pp127-134. Kirkpatrick, D., (2007). “Second Life: It's not a game”, Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/22/magazines/fortune/whatsnext_secondlife.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007012211 Lindon, N., (2011). “The Second Life Economy in Q4 2010”, Retrieved from http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-Q4-2010/ba-p/674618. Randolfe, (2007). “The Linden dollar Game”, Capitalism 2.0, Retrieved from http://randolfe.typepad.com/randolfe/2007/02/intersecting_tr.html. Rifkins, J., (2001), “The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where all of Life is a Paid-For Experience”, Tarcher, pp254. Smith, J., & Hudson, C., (2011). “Inside Virtual Goods”, Retrieved from http://www.insidevirtualgoods.com/us-virtual-goods. Tiffany, L., (2007). “Starting a Second Life Business”, Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/article172768.html. Xu, J., Yeh, A., & Wu, F., (2009). "Land Commodification: New Land Development and Politics in China since the Late 1990s", International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Blackwell Publishing, 33(4): 890-913, December. Read More