Selected References & Why They Matter

The Commodification of Self — Hedgehog Review

Explores how personal lives and relationships are reorganized under market logic; gives language and history to the idea of the "self as commodity," directly aligning with the conceptual core of HumanStock.

The Hedgehog Review

Personal Branding and the Commodification of Reflexivity (S. Gorbatov et al., 2018)

Documents how "personal branding" has evolved into a widespread career/organizational behavior, demonstrating empirically that identity is often treated as a marketable asset.

PMC

The Making of Data Commodities: Data Analytics as an Industry (A. Aaltonen, 2021)

Shows how personal data — behavior, habits, digital traces — is treated as a commodity: turned into tradable data goods. Supports the portion of your project about datafication and human-stock.

Taylor & Francis Online

Balancing Self‑Representation and Self‑Commodification (R. Li, 2025)

Engages with how social media and influencer culture blur authenticity with commodification — relevant to your critique of "value as visibility."

CityU Scholars

Wearing Many (Social) Hats: How Different are Your Different Social Network Personae? (Zhong et al., 2017)

Empirical study showing how individuals present different "selves" on different platforms — illustrating the instability and multiple-version problem of identity under social / digital pressure.

arXiv

Under the Influencer: Participatory Culture and the Rise of the Digital Persona (Jones, 2025)

Shows how participatory culture and influencer-led economies treat identity, visibility, and social presence as commodities — contemporary real-world evidence of the phenomena your art addresses.

ScienceDirect

The Quantified Body: Identity, Empowerment, and Control in Smart Wearables (Wang, 2025)

Explores how biometric tracking and wearable devices turn biological human data into quantified, surveillable, and governable inputs — paralleling your project's themes of self-surveillance and data value.

arXiv

Key Patterns These Works Illustrate

  • Identity as Commodity — People increasingly treat themselves (or are treated) as marketable assets; personal branding is normalized.
  • Datafication of Self — Behavioral, biometric and social data about individuals become tradeable, commodified, and often beyond personal control.
  • Multiplicity & Fragmentation of Self — Platform-specific personas, shifting selves over time, and context-dependent identity expression highlight the instability of self under modern pressures.
  • Systemic Devaluation & Control — Value becomes conditional, tied to visibility, adaptability, consistency — exposing how support and acceptance are transactional, not human.