Decouplement

Commodity Geography of the Corpse

Bibliographic Data

ID19230675
AuthorsMark Shtanov (0000-0001-9769-7526, Manchester School of Architecture, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume58
Issue3
Publication date2026-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntipode (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.70166
OpenAlexW7161648584
LanguageEN
References cited36

This article examines the commodification of the human corpse from the point of view of its disposal. Whilst offering some analysis on the circulation and harvesting of repurposed human tissues, existing literature does not discuss how these are discarded. Drawing on ethnographic findings from clinical waste incinerators, I evaluate the technologies' and desensitised labour's role in stripping a dead body of its moral and legal status. Evaluating the resulting necropolitical divisions across the corpse's commodity geographies, I argue for the importance of industrial machinery and labour for the overall capitalist operation of scientifically and financially benefitting from commodified bodies. Using drawings by the author and by waste workers, the article visually pieces together this multi‐stage operation, referred to as decouplement. In examining how industrial technologies and alienated work across dispersed localities are instrumentalised to decouple dead bodies, the article offers a radical geographic perspective on human tissue commodification

Capitalism · Circulation (fluid dynamics) · Commodification · Commodity · Commodity chain · Ethnography · Perspective (graphical) · Point (geometry) · Work (physics) · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Organ Donation and Transplantation

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