Suspended commodification: assetization and the politics of silobolsa in Argentine soybean agriculture

Based on a rich empirical description of processes of soybean commodification in Argentina, the article puts a neglected technological device at the centre of the analysis: “silobolsas”, allowing farmers to conserve their harvest in plastic bags with specific properties. Rather than mere commodities, soybeans stored in “silobolsas” become temporary assets, resources having/gaining value as property. The politics of silobolsa exhibits that commodities and assets nestle beside each other, but also incorporate each other’s characteristics, change into each other, or confuse different actors about their commodity-versus-asset identities. Three particular contributions to the existing literature on commodities can be singled out: first, immobility can be as illuminating as movement to make sense of the sociotechnical context of commodities. Second, the lack of exchange is a form of politics that participates to the social practices configuring the value of commodities. Third, complex temporal processes of commodification and assetization can significantly mark the social life of the same ‘thing’. These findings speak to the most recent mutations of contemporary capitalism that is itself increasingly characterized by the (re)configuration of a range of things as assets or capitalized property.