A Book Review Forum on Politicising Commodification

Most scholarly research espouses the following low-risk formula, which usually promises decent research results. First, academics situate themselves in a specific disciplinary field and then approach their research subject from a particular angle, for example, European public policymaking. Then, they pick a questionable argument from the most recent literature. Finally, academic writers usually present critical empirical evidence in their publications that ought to force the authors’ intellectual sparring partners to change their argument. This pattern of academic writing frequently leads to robust results, which explains why PhD supervisors usually encourage their PhD students—for very good, practical reasons—to follow it. As noted by our critics, however, the underlying pattern of Politicising Commodification differs from that path in terms of both its broad interdisciplinary focus and its bold, and thus also very risky, intellectual ambition. Our research is indeed an example of the “high risk–high gain” approach, which the European Research Council (ERC) is sponsoring to achieve either paradigm-shifting breakthroughs in basic research, or great failure. To mitigate any grandiose failure in achieving any paradigm-shifting breakthroughs, in our six-year ERC research project we have gathered empirical evidence that might prompt scholars from various disciplinary and theoretical approaches to reconsider their arguments in their fields, as our critics, who come from a variety of disciplines, have acknowledged.