ABSTRACT
Philosophers concerned with over-commodification tell us that prices and markets are a kind of ritualistic language, a kind of social meaning system. The chapter presents a range of sociological and anthropological evidence that there is no essential meaning to money or market exchange. Twin Michael Sandel, Elizabeth 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. Anti-commodification theorists who rely upon semiotic arguments have not discovered an essential meaning to money; they are instead reifying contemporary Western mores. 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.
