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In their new indictments of global neoliberalism and the economic profession's culpability in its harms, Dani Rodrik and Joseph Stiglitz press the case for reconstructed globalization that generates benefits for all and not just for corporate and financial elites. Both books are deeply consistent with the insights of Karl Polanyi, who had identified the inherent contradictions of the project to create what he called a self-regulating economy. Like Polanyi, Rodrik and Stiglitz are attentive...

In this contribution we offer a broad overview of the technological, institutional and policy dynamics associated with the great transformation--borrowing Karl Polanyi (1944) expression--leading from traditional, mostly rural, economies to economies driven by industrial activities (and nowadays also advanced services), able to systematically learn how to implement and eventually how to generate new ways of producing and new products under conditions of dynamic increasing returns. Such a...

The “plowing of the half-acre” episode in Langland’s Piers Plowman includes a chilling passage in which Piers summons Hunger to force able but unwilling laborers to work the land. This chapter approaches the episode by way of the economic history of Karl Polanyi, whose critiques of free-market ideology are receiving renewed attention in the context of globalization and the international economic crisis. One of Polanyi’s key points is that the threat of starvation is a prerequisite to the...

The aim of this article is to contend that Karl Polanyi's work bears significant coincidences with the republican tradition of thought. The first of them is one of a methodological or epistemological kind, and it consists of the use of a very

Esta monografia versa sobre as visões críticas de Karl Marx e Karl Polanyi à ideia de livre mercado proposta por Adam Smith. Smith disserta sobre a positividade no funcionamento automático dos mercados e, assim, funda o bem-estar das sociedades nas ações livres e espontâneas no domínio econômico. Marx crítica essa sociedade livre por visualizar grandes contradições em seu funcionamento, em especial no que diz respeito à relação de trabalho, uma vez que o trabalho é elemento fundamental na...

In this important new book, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi take a fresh look at the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as “capitalism,” upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject it to critique. They show how, throughout its history, various regimes of capitalism have relied on a series of institutional separations between economy and polity, production and social reproduction, and human and non-human nature, periodically...

When looking at definitions and understandings of the social and solidarity economy, one issue stands out as particularly significant. The issue of how it links to organizational (micro and meso level dimensions) and societal specificities. Whereas social enterprise also in the EMES ideal typical version (Borzaga & Defourny, 2001) is only indirectly linked to a Polanyian framework (Gardin, 2006), the notion of solidarity economy can hardly be understood at an elaborate level without...

The economic crisis in Greece resulted in high unemployment and the dismantlement of social protection policies. How does society respond to the collapse of both welfare-state and market mechanisms? I examine these issues through the study of one working class community in Athens over 2012-13. Since the onset of the crisis, my informants experienced a simultaneous drop in living standards, loss of social status, and debasement of their symbolic construction of reality. To respond to these...

Like the lifelong sinner who makes a deathbed conversion, it was always likely that supporters of neoliberal globalisation would rediscover ethics towards the end. Having devastated communities through indifference, and coercively imposed commercial priorities on to family life, the political “centre” now has to deal with anger, distrust and rejection on an unmanageable scale. In The Future of Capitalism, Paul Collier, a former chief economist at the World Bank, now professor at the Oxford...

En el presente trabajo mostraremos que la filosofía liberal operó en muchas ocasionesa través de un esquema teleológico, desde el cual entendía que la espontaneidad delmovimiento histórico conducía de forma natural hacia una economía de mercados libres.Semejante interpretación tenía que presuponer otra controvertida tesis, a saber, que lascategorías que informan la racionalidad práctica dentro de una sociedad de mercado no sonuna simple contingencia histórica, sino que responden a la...

The article discusses whether the visionary thinking of economic historian Karl Polanyi provide a feasible fix in the 21st Century for forces of populism and neoliberalism. Topics include Polanyi's work is stated to offer three potential contributions to the formation of this generation's new Left which include analysis of fascism, post-Vienna approach to socialism.

A review of the book "Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left," by Gareth Dale, is presented.

Gentrification as an urban strategy pivots upon the dual mediation of the city as a site for aesthetic consumption and pleasure, and as a space of potential ground rent. The recent rise of urban regeneration programs that assist small scale cultural entrepreneurs into disused commercial property – ‘pop-up shops’ – is one example of the convergence of the urban cultural economy and gentrification. This article presents a preliminary explanation of the function of such urban programs through...

The rise of the Emerging Market is a remarkable exemplar of an idea that originated and was socialized in Western financial markets during the 1980s. It has since gained rapid, wider normative status with respect to a particular set of beliefs that motivate policy choices on macroeconomic management, economic development and financial sector reforms in developing and less developed countries. I draw on the Polanyian notion of commodification and recent extensions to his scholarship in the...

In this article, we revisit Karl Polanyi's concept of 'oikos' in order to reconceptualize the role of the family as both a welfare provider and an economic actor in the social reproduction of East and South East Asian welfare capitalisms. Our article is structured in four parts. First, we critically review existing approaches on the characteristics of welfare capitalism in East and South East Asia. We argue that existing approaches tend to isolate family as a welfare provider and neglect how...

While the popularity of English football increases worldwide, there has been a marked rise in the discontent expressed by a small but growing group of domestic fans. This dissent has led to the emergence of a movement broadly defined as being 'Against Modern Football' (AMF), a banner under which fans of rival clubs have gathered in an attempt to challenge the poor governance, commercialism and greed that has come to dominate the English game. This article offers a conceptualisation of what...

Karl Polanyi's analysis of the genesis, crises, and institutional transformations of contemporary society is grounded on a theory of the basic features and dynamics of capitalism as a peculiar form of society. This article intends to develop this thesis on the basis of a reading of Polanyi's The Great Transformation, with references to Polanyi's preceding and later research. Polanyi's theoretical and methodological achievements suggest a wide comparative outlook and offer a critique of...

This contribution argues that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is unprecedented, not because it constitutes a Polanyian moment, but rather because it offers an alternative to multilateralism through the World Trade Organization (WTO). Never before has bilateralism offered such a 'best alternative to no agreement' (BATNA) to members of the core decision-making body of the WTO negotiating arm, making TTIP an unprecedented geopolitical game-changer. The anti-TTIP...

The article reads the works of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) and Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) in the light of their political commitments to neoliberalism and socialism respectively. It argues that both thinkers were inspired to explain history and recent events in line with these commitments in their 1944 publications, The Road to Serfdom and The Great Transformation. Furthermore, they both developed their most significant insights by attempting to counter perceived challenges from political...

Prominent republican theorists invoke anonymous orders such as the market as mechanisms that secure freedom as non-domination. Drawing on Karl Polanyi's account of fictitious commodities and demonstration of the impossibility of a just and rational market society, this article critically scrutinizes neo-republican assumptions regarding the market, develops an alternate social theory within which to situate the ideal of non-domination, and illustrates the importance of this reconfiguration...