Bodies for Sale – Whole or in Parts

Abstract

This article introduces the topic of body and commerce commodification as an effort to return sociological and anthropological thinking to a consideration of bodies as tangible, palpable and real material objects as well as semi-magical and symbolic representations. It argues for an enlarged conception of commodification as encompassing all monetized relations in which human bodies (whole or in divisible parts) are the token of economic exchanges that are often masked as something else love, pleasure, altruism, kindness.