2016. Global Development Institute, Manchester University.
The contemporary trajectory of global development, sometimes glossed "neoliberal," is said to be characterized by the expansion of markets, and the extension of the commodity form to more domains of life.
Nature, ideas, debt, risk, genes, carbon, pollution: anything, it seems, can be commodified and circulated in order to generate profit. Pushed too far, the commodification of everything puts human life at risk.
This lecture from Professor Tania Li re-examines movements for and against commodification of land and labour from the perspective of Southeast Asia, and re-centres capitalism as a key term of analysis.