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Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the...

La crise actuelle révèle des tensions fondamentales entre capitalisme et démocratie. L'orthodoxie occidentale, centrée sur les programmes d'ajustement, s'avère incapable d'affronter ce défi à la frontière de l'économie, du social et du politique. Il est temps de se tourner vers d'autres approches. S'appuyant sur l'oeuvre singulière de Karl Polanyi (1886- 1964) qui a décelé la dérive totalitaire de la société de marché, cet ouvrage soumet de nouvelles clés pour penser certains des problèmes...

A análise da economia enquanto processo instituído, proposta por Polanyi, concretiza-se no estudo dos padrões institucionais que esta pode assumir empiricamente: reciprocidade, redistribuição e troca mercantil. Esta última – corporizada num sistema de mercados autorregulados – apenas se assume como forma de integração dominante nas sociedades capitalistas modernas. O estudo das formas de integração – assim como a sua extensão lógica à análise dos conceitos de comércio, dinheiro e mercado –...

A “port of trade” is a theoretical concept developed by Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) to describe the phenomenon of a particular kind of trading post.

Using the work of Karl Polanyi as its axis, this study attempts to sketch a criticism of economicism and of the society that produces it, a society launched on a historical cultural path that may well be understood as a gradual economic totalization of human life. That is the critical path which will be posed here, if only in an embryonic manner.

Nature and Power is to be understood not only as human power against nature but also as power by nature in the sense of Michel Foucault's biopouvoir (biopower) or Francis Bacon's "Naturae non imperator nisiparendo" (Only by obeying nature may we dominate nature). The fragile human attempts to get power over nature and by nature have a long history, reaching back over millennia until prehistoric times, and much of world history may be explained in part by the unstable relationship between...

Against a backdrop of rapidly evolving crisis management in the European financial and sovereign debt crisis this essay aims both to explore and to re-consider the role of law in the EU integration process: What did law accomplish? Where did it fail? What is law going to endure? What kind of future can it envisage? The essay traces back the evolution of the law-politics relationship in both EU legal scholarship and practice from the foundational period of ‘integration-through-law’ to the...

The problem of the governance of economic transactions arises from the fact that they are sequential. This creates uncertainty regarding the fulfilment of implicit or explicit contracts. Institutional economics understands this uncertainty as arising from opportunism and seeks a solution in specialised contract enforcement institutions. Economic sociology understands the uncertainty as a result of misunderstanding and finds a solution in mechanisms of governance that, in addition to...

The problem of the governance of economic transactions arises from the fact that they are sequential. This creates uncertainty regarding the fulfilment of implicit or explicit contracts. Institutional economics understands this uncertainty as arising from opportunism and seeks a solution in specialised contract enforcement institutions. Economic sociology understands the uncertainty as a result of misunderstanding and finds a solution in mechanisms of governance that, in addition to...

La nouvelle économie institutionnelle est devenue populaire dans la recherche de l’économie antique depuis une dizaine d’années. Pourtant la notion de « croyances culturelles », qui joue un rôle central dans l’œuvre de Douglass North et dans les analyses du changement institutionnel par Avner Greif, a été largement ignorée. J’affirme qu’une approche néo-institutionnelle qui utilise cette notion de « croyances culturelles » offre une meilleure voie pour comprendre l’influence des idéologies...

This paper examines the relationship that prevails between the state, economics, and freedom according to the works of Friedrich Hayek and Karl Polanyi. Hayek, who was one of the most important contributors to the development of the modern market economy and liberalism, formulated a concept of freedom that includes economic and negative freedom as significant components; his objective was to demonstrate the superiority of liberal capitalist societies over all other forms of organizing a...

This essay identifies a contradiction between the flourishing interest in the environmental economics of the classical period and a lack of critical parsing of the works of its leading representatives. Its focus is the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. It offers a critical analysis of their contribution to environmental thought and surveys the work of their contemporary devotees. It scrutinizes Smith's contribution to what Karl Polanyi termed the "economistic fallacy," as well as his...

This article proceeds from the field of tension between the synchronical approach of the economics of convention and the diachronical approach of economic anthropology (in the tradition of Karl Polanyi). It is argued that the economics of convention remain problematic to historians in that they fail to capture the long term transformations traditionally referred to as the emergence of modernity and the coming about of homo economicus. As a possible solution, the use of concepts and insights...

This paper proposes an analytical framework using the regulation approach and consisting of explanations of some concepts and a simple way of modeling; the concepts and modeling are developed by focusing on the distributive aspect of environmental issues and using environmental costs as key indices. As a basis for the framework, we refer to the ideas of Polanyi and the surplus approach, and we recognize the socio-economic system as interlinked triple reproductions of the economy, humans, and...

A literary criticism of the book "Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science," by Mary Jo Nye is presented. The author discusses the significance of Michael Polanyi in the history of science studies and provides insight on his life and his relationship with his brother Karl. He analyzes how the book presents the origins of science studies, Polanyi’s activities as an economist, and his fight against Communism.

This article explores the interrelation of gentrification and public policies in the neighbourhoods of Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin) and Harlem (New York City). It draws on Karl Polanyi’s concept of a ‘double movement’ and argues that gentrification is fundamentally a political process. Thus, while demise in the face of market forces, or even an active support of gentrification, is clearly visible in both neighbourhoods, the relation between public policies and gentrification is also highly...

Severe addictions to drug use and to countless other habits are causing enormous harm around the globe. Massive expenditures and dedicated efforts of police, doctors, addiction therapists, and self-help groups have failed to bring the problem under control, although many individual addicts have been helped. What can society do when our best efforts continue to fail and a menacing problem continues to grow? This paper proposes that a major paradigm shift is required. The currently dominant...