Counterfeit Commerce: Relations of Production,Distribution and Exchange

Abstract

Study of the consumption of counterfeit products casts consumers as reflexive agents who knowingly break the law (through the consumption of illegal commodities). Because this analysis is pitched at the level of meaning rather than structural constraints, it produces a misleading view of reflexive counterfeit consumption as being motivated by resistance or the wish to escape from normative coercion. This article contrasts this with approaches that prefigure meaning in explaining counterfeit commerce by treating the trade as an unavoidable structural feature of capitalism. That is, the structural logic of capital accumulation inevitably creates a black market of counterfeit commerce. It is a parasitic form of illegal consumerism which mirrors conventional capitalist organization, reproducing familiar dynamics of status differentiation.