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James O'Connor's "second contradiction" thesis is widely misunderstood as an ecological crisis theory. Most of the criticisms of the theory derive from this misreading, including those which ignore relations between ecological, personal and communal conditions and those which see the "first" and "second" contradictions as materially distinct. O'Connor himself is partially responsible for the misreading, however. His writings tended to put the ecological out front, and his use of Polanyi's...

This article seeks to subject Fred Block and Margaret Somers' influential reconstruction of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation to a systematic review. I show that Block & Somers's central claim—that Polanyi's thinking underwent a "theoretical shift" as he wrote his seminal book—is not supported by archival evidence. I demonstrate that all the narrative keys that Block & Somers advance to lend plausibility to their discovery of a "theory of the always-embedded market economy" in The...

This article investigates the (dis)embeddedness of digital labour within the remote gig economy. We use interview and survey data to highlight how platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are normatively disembedded from social protections through a process of commodification. Normative disembeddedness leaves workers exposed to the vagaries of the external labour market due to an absence of labour regulations and rights. It also endangers social reproduction by limiting...

Vereinzelte Verweise auf westmitteleuropäische Länder, die USA oder Australien machen aber deutlich, dass die neoliberale Politik auch in diesen Ländern zu einer Verschärfung der Spaltungen zwischen verschiedenen Gruppen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und zwischen diesen und den "Abgehängten" ohne Aussicht auf eine dauerhafte Integration in den Arbeitsmarkt geführt hat. Die Fragen nach der Nachhaltigkeit von Allianzen zwischen Gewerkschaften und sozialen Bewegungen, den politischen und...

Worldwide emergence of strongmen leaderships and eroded or failed democracies suggest that the era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony may be winding down and that alternatives are rising. The presidential election of Donald Trump has inspired rightwing populists at home and abroad. This paper will analyze the Trumpist fusion of authoritarian ethnoracial nationalism with neoliberal adventure capitalism and the broader matter of how neoliberal de-democratization opens way for right-wing...

Karl Polanyi started his career as a doctor of law and practiced law for a while; but he did not become a legal scholar. As an economic historian, anthropologist, or sociologist, he was concerned with the relation of economy and society. But even though law is an important factor in mediating this relationship, Polanyi gave little attention to the law as such. As part of an endeavour to advance a ‘Polanyian’ economic sociology of law, this article develops the ‘law of market society’ as an...

Karl Polanyi’s book The Great Transformation has found great resonance in the social sciences in recent years—especially in sociology, political economy and political science. The interest in Polanyi among historians is still modest in comparison. There are not enough studies that treat Polanyi as an object of intellectual history/history of science, nor has Polanyi been used hitherto as an idea-giver for the growing field of global history—despite the fact that his book can be understood as...

This article aims to inform current debates in the field of transnational commodity studies through a Polanyian lens. Polanyi reminds us of the need to pay attention to the “double movements” in which fictitious commodities are disembedded from and re-embedded in society. We focus on two fictitious commodities, labour and land, which are conventionally treated as mere inputs for the production of genuine commodities. Through investigating the disembedding and re-embedding of labour in the...

The article deals with the emergence of absolute capitalism due to the efforts of states to promote social reproduction. It explores the association between absolute capitalism and neoliberalism, a ruling-class political-ideological project that is connected to the rise of monopoly-finance capital. Some 20th century thinkers had their own ideas about absolute capitalism, including Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes.

O propósito do artigo é, a partir das obras de Marx e Polanyi, realizar uma revisão teórica centrada no pensamento crítico que os autores direcionaram à Economia Política burguesa, especialmente às ¨falácias epistemológicas¨, cujo objetivo seria de justificar um modo de produção desumanizante, que submete as demais esferas da vida social às leis de mercado, e o de naturalizar leis próprias, através da separação institucional entre sociedade e economia. Busca-se demonstrar como, apesar de...

The article provides a framework for thinking about how the question of the future of capitalism might be addressed. One of the problems resides in the very definition of capitalism and of what its defining features consist of and whether we should be talking about 'capitalist society' or the 'capitalist economy' or some kind of post-capitalist condition. Following Polanyi, Castoriadis and Habermas, it is argued that capitalism and democracy together constitute the defining dynamics of...

In the midst of a wave of market expansion, carbon markets have been proposed as the best way to address global climate change. While some argue that carbon markets represent a modern example of a Polanyian counter-movement to the environmental crisis, we adopt a structural interpretation of Polanyi to refute this claim. Carbon markets represent a further expansion of markets that fails to address the underlying contradictions related to the commodification of nature. In addition, they...

Presenting a profound and far-reaching analysis of economic, ecological, social, cultural and political developments of contemporary capitalism, this book draws on the work of Karl Polanyi, and re-reads it for our times. The renowned authors offer key insights to current changes in the relations between the economy, politics and society, and their ecological and social effects.

This text aims at accounting for the plurality of money by emphasizing the delicate and evolving balance of the legal monetary systems and the continued existence of moneys that stay outside, though their continuation is subjected to chronic difficulties. It uses Polanyian concepts to take the wide and increasing variety of money into account and mobilizes criteria able to analyse the variety of links between them. It proposes a framework based on the representation of a "plurality triangle"...

This article explores the concepts of spontaneity and spontaneous order, in particular their deployment by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Polanyi. Although in many respects these thinkers were poles apart, the article identifies a point of convergence. They both mobilize the concept of spontaneity in a manner that naturalizes a particular social process: for Hayek, the market economy, for Polanyi, society’s protective movement that arises in reaction against the market economy. To contextualize...

Across a crisis-stricken Europe battles rage for post-neoliberal hegemony, with "race" and "austerity" as central signifiers. One of the places where the frontlines are most pregnant is Sweden; long perceived as a role model for its welfare state, cultural equity and social equality. Sweden is, however, facing social conflicts following in the tracks of a deep transformation in terms of welfare cuts, racialization and growing social polarization, targeting in particular a disadvantaged...

In the twenty-first century, global business regulation has come of age. In this article, we review the literature on globalization and business regulation from the angle of transnational governance, a recently evolving interdisciplinary field of research. Despite the multiplicity and plurality of regulatory platforms and products that have emerged over time, we identify common patterns of field structuration and parallel trajectories. We argue that a major trend, both in practice and in...

This article argues that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of capitalism. Under the auspices of an economic shift, social reproduction and constituent care and care work are undergoing a process of reorganization. The first part draws on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the relation between market and society and on contemporary revisions of his approach. Referring to core arguments from his perspective on the market society it identifies processes of commodification, marketization...