Commodity pathway diversion

A commodity pathway diversion is the ability of an object to move in and out of the "commodity state" over the course of its use life. Diversions can occur when an object is removed from its commodity pathway for its protection and preservation, or when a previously removed object is commoditized through reentry into the commodity pathway after having gained value through its absence. Diversion is an integrated part of the commodity pathway.

Rather than emphasize how particular kinds of objects are either gifts or commodities to be traded in restricted spheres of exchange, Arjun Appadurai and others began to look at how objects flowed between these spheres of exchange. They refocussed attention away from the character of the human relationships formed through exchange, and placed it on "the social life of things" instead. They examined the strategies by which an object could be "singularized" (made unique, special, one-of-a-kind) and so withdrawn from the market. A marriage ceremony that transforms a purchased ring into an irreplaceable family heirloom is one example; the heirloom, in turn, makes a perfect gift. Singularization is the reverse of the seemingly irresistible process of commodification. They thus show how all economies are a constant flow of material objects that enter and leave specific exchange spheres. A similar approach is taken by Nicholas Thomas, who examines the same range of cultures and the anthropologists who write on them, and redirects attention to the "entangled objects" and their roles as both gifts and commodities. This emphasis on things has led to new explorations in "consumption studies."

Appadurai, drawing on the work of Igor Kopytoff suggests that "commodities, like persons, have social lives" and, to appropriately understand the human-ascribed value of a commodity, one must analyze "things-in-motion" (commodity pathways)—the entire life cycle of an object, including its form, use, and trajectory as a commodity. The reason for this kind of analysis, Appadurai suggests, is that a commodity is not a thing, rather it is one phase in the full life of the thing. According to anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, "the flow of commodities in any given situation is a shifting compromise between socially regulated paths and competitively inspired diversions."

At the heart of Appadurai's argument is the idea that commodities are "things in a certain situation." This idea requires that an object be analyzed from production, through exchange/distribution, to consumption to identify in which phase of its life an object is considered a commodity. Appadurai defines a commodity situation as "the situation in which [an object's] exchangeability for some other thing is a socially relevant feature."

In his introduction to The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Appadurai references the work of Nancy Munn and Igor Kopytoff as influential to the discussion of commodity pathways and diversions. Both scholars advocate analyzing the entire trajectory or "social life" of a commodity to understand its full value.

In her article The Spatiotemporal Transformations of Gawa Canoes, anthropologist Nancy Munn, argues that "to understand what is being created when Gawans make a canoe, we have to consider the total canoe fabrication cycle which begins…with the conversion of raw materials into a canoe, and continues in exchange with the conversion of the canoe into other objects." Here she helps lay the foundation of commodity pathway analysis. Similarly influential is Munn's study of the Australian Gawan Kula, in which she describes "strong paths." These are sequences of exchange relationships forged by Gawa men in order to circulate objects, namely shells. Because shells are imbued with value through the process of circulation, the forging of object pathways is necessary for Gawa men to control circulation and, in turn, shell value. According to Munn, "kula shells may arrive on path, or are obtained from partners or non-partners in off-path transactions and later put on a path or used to make new paths.", suggesting that diversion is an integral part of the commodity pathway because it is a means of "making new paths."

In The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process, Igor Kopytoff argues that, while commodities are often thought of in Marxian terms as things which are produced and then exist, in fact, "commoditization is best looked upon as a process of becoming rather than as an all-or-none state of being." He conceptualizes commoditization as a process which is both cultural and cognitive:

…commodities must be not only produced materially as things, but also culturally marked as being a certain kind of thing. Out of the total range of things available in a society, only some of them are considered appropriate for marking as commodities. Moreover, the same thing may be treated as a commodity at one time and not at another. And finally, the same thing may, at the same time, be seen as a commodity by one person and something else by another. Such shifts and differences in whether and when a thing is a commodity reveal a moral economy that stands behind the objective economy of visible transactions.