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well as on the many dimensions with which we can analyze them: labor, professional,

material, technological, political, economic, symbolic, textual, bodily, historical, educational’

(Dumit 2014, p. 350).

By following wheat, Head et al. (2012, p. 3) illustrate the importance of exploring

what is beyond the reified product – from production through to consumption – and pay

attention to the visible and non-visible, the material deconstruction and transformation of

things on their way to becoming commodities. Such a framing moves away from a Marxist

focus on the commodity. Karl Marx’s (1983) theories of the commodity in capitalist contexts

and certainly his ideas of exchange value and power remain relevant to the capitalist

conditions through which products circulate today, including products with sustainability

credentials. Likewise the notion of commodity fetishism is still an important reminder of the

social relationships that make possible and value, but become obscured in, the commodity.

However, if we limit our research parameters to the exchange or maybe stretch them as far as

the labour required to create a commodity, then we miss an important part of a commodity’s

life cycle. Appadurai offers a step towards opening up the unit of study to consider a

commodity as a particular situation of a thing where things come in and out of the commodity

state (1986, p. 13). He proposes that ‘the commodity situation in the social life of any “thing”

be defined as the situation in which its exchangeability (past, present, or future) for some

other thing is its socially relevant feature’ (Appadurai 1986, p. 13).

Even though products that make environmental claims (e.g. Coles eco tin) enter the

commodity system, they also challenge a simple commodity analysis. Such products demand

an evaluation of things – ecosystems, non-tuna species – that exist outside of exchange value.

These products urge us to consider elements (marine species and ecosystems) that might

never be part of the commodity itself but are nonetheless implicated in the activities of

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