The Limits of the Markets - Commodification of Nature and Body, reviewed in OEconomia

 The journal OEconomia has a review of the book 

Élodie Bertrand, Marie-Xavière Catto and Alicia-Dorothy Mornington (eds), Les limites du marché - La marchandisation de la nature et du corps / The Limits of the Markets - Commodification of Nature and Body, Paris: Mare & Martin, 2020, 320 pages

(From the publisher's page:

"How to limit the market, when its progressive ex tension is now gaining fields which until recently escaped it, such as the body and nature? This question is at the heart of Commodification Studies, studies that focus on the ethical, moral or social problems posed by certain particular markets (surrogacy, organs, environmental services, etc.). Can we escape certain forms of commodification when technical advances have allowed new “objects” to circulate?")

Here is the (16 page) review in OEconomia:

Christian Bessy, “Addressing Moral Concerns Raised by the Market”, Œconomia [Online], 11-2 | 2021, oeconomia/10975 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/oeconomia.10975

It opens as follows:

"This collective work, which brings together some fifteen contributions, is the result of study days whose main purpose was to debate the commodification of the body and of nature, by crossing disciplinary (philosophy, law, economics) and cultural (Anglo-Saxon and continental) perspectives. Its main interest is to propose a sort of progress report on what is known as commodification studies, which developed in the English-speaking world in the 1980s, largely inspired by the book Contested Commodities by the jurist Margaret Jane Radin (1996). In particular, this stream of research was a reaction to the Law and Economics approach (the Chicago School), which championed the free market. An emblematic example is the article by Elizabeth Landes and Richard Posner (1978), in which they suggested introducing market incentives into the process of adopting new-born babies in order to deal with a baby shortage. The controversies surrounding the emergence of particular markets help to explain the issues involved in regulating these markets and the sometimes alternative solutions that are finally adopted but which may evolve, particularly as a result of globalization.

"Other economists have contributed to this reflection, such as Alvin Roth (2007) with his characterization of so-called “repugnant” or “toxic” markets.

"In France, the commodification studies movement has been developed by lawyers specializing in the law of nature (notably MarieAngèle Hermitte, 2016) and by sociologists who have introduced the notion of “contested markets”, in the sense of markets that provoke strong moral controversies. The book Marchés contestés - Quand le marché rencontre la morale (Contested Markets: When the Market Meets Morality), edited by Philippe Steiner and Marie Trespeuch (2014), is a reference, following on from Viviana Zelizer’s original research (1979) on the development of life insurance. The commodification studies movement must also be linked to philosophical reflections on what is a “good”, reflections explored in depth here by Emmanuel Picavet, with a contribution in which he raises the question of freedom and justice.

"It is precisely the intention of The Limits of the Market to start from the most debateable transactions in order to address more generally the relationship between ethics and economics. In so doing, the book deals with the place of law in these exchanges, or with the different conceptions of the legal human person underlying them."