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The last decade has seen a revived interest in using anomie theory in crime and deviance research. The present paper contributes to this development by offering an examination of a particular extension of anomie theory, namely, Messner and Rosenfeld's Institutional-Anomie theory. Explicating Institutional-Anomie theory relative to the sociologies of Durkheim, Merton and Polanyi, I find that this theory goes beyond Merton by using a strain of thought that is critical of liberal society. By...

An important characteristic of public policy formulation over the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in the English-speaking countries, has been the increasing use of contractual principles as regulatory tools. The 'new contractualism' represents the recent re-emergence and adaptation of the social contract of the 17th and 18th centuries and the classical legal contract that emerged in the 19th century. The work of Anna Yeatman provides the most cogent and influential, non-neo-liberal scholarly...

An outline of a theory of values-based labeling as a social movement argues that it is motivated by the need to re-embed the agro-food economy in the larger social economy. A review of some basic premises of embeddedness theories derived from the work of Karl Polanyi reveals their connection to particular values-based labeling efforts. From this perspective, values-based labeling presents itself as primarily an ethical and moral effort to counter unsustainable trends within presently...

Examines the relationship between democracy and development to set the scene for the pressing contemporary issue of how globalization might affect democracy and vice versa. Reference to the work of Karl Polanyi who posited a dual movement of market expansion matched by increasing social control over it; Impact of globalization.

This chapter contains section titled: * Market Domination and Society's Self-Defense * The Decline of the Bourgeoisie and Anti-Capitalist Policies * Analytical Convergence and Political Divergence

The article focuses on Europe in the age of global networks and flowing identities. In the article the author discusses the articulation of Europe. He starts with a discussion on the identity of Europe, goes on with a discussion of globalization and closes with an attempt to tie these two themes together. He then raises, in a new context, sociologist Karl Polanyi's question: "What Kind of a Time Is Our Time?" Throughout the article, specific emphasis is put on the European Union, as this...

This article re-interprets and develops Polanyi’s substantive institutionalist analysis of capitalist market economies and the market society in the light of two more recent approaches to the same issues. These are the Parisian ‘regulation school’ on contemporary capitalism and systems-theoretica l accounts of the modern economy. All three regard the capitalist economy (or, for autopoietic systems theory, the market economy) as an operationally autonomous system that is nonetheless socially...

Although Belgian poverty is mainly concentrated in urban regions, the profound restructuring of labour and food markets, the dismantling of the welfare state and the growth of new types of households are also producing poverty and social exclusion in rural areas. This paper stresses that not every deprived rural household should be regarded as excluded from society. By developing survival strategies, households attempt to escape from social marginalization. To understand these responses, a...

Current social and political theory is sceptical of the future of welfare states in the face of global markets. Their moral claims, too, have been challenged by the neo-liberal association of market capitalism and individual freedom and by an implicit acceptance of that critique - of the welfare state as bureaucratic - by left-wing commentators. This article offers a defence of the national welfare state as the guarantor of 'complex freedom'. This defence is derived from the theoretical...

This paper develops an analytical framework for the sociological analysis of the clash of economic ideologies. The framework is then used to make sense of the economic debate in South Africa in the 1990s. The argument is that, following Karl Polanyi, we must treat economic life as 'embedded' in social life; that is, economic action is a form of social action. However, the notion of 'embeddedness' must not blind us to the tendency in all economies, especially contemporary market economies,...

Digital capitalism’s information infrastructure is the subject of contentious debates concerning its transformative effects on the political economy and society. A frequent proposition, referring to older arguments of the ‘socialist calculation debate’, is that with big data analytics the pro-market arguments of neoliberal economists such as Hayek or Mises become obsolete. This article critically examines this proposition by drawing on Karl Polanyi’s notion of overview; a core theme in his...

The mandate of the European Central Bank (ECB) does not extend to labor market and social policies at the national level. Why, despite the reputational costs, did the ECB act as a staunch advocate of structural labor market reforms from 1999 through 2015? We discuss this question through the theoretical lens of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation. Although Polanyi has been a key reference point for the debate on the social consequences of European economic and monetary integration, one...

This book offers a critical reconstruction of the double movement, the central thesis of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, one of the most influential books of the 20th century. The double movement is the establishment of a free market economy and the subsequent effort by society to ameliorate the destructive effects of the market. In Polanyi’s bold vision, the double movement constituted the hidden gear of social change and historical transformation within capitalism. The book is a...

This article discusses digitalization and its connection with the political economy of transformation. Its point of departure is Karl Polanyi's historical analysis as presented in The Great Transformation. Polanyi analyzed the development of “self-regulating” markets—with transformative and destructive consequences for individuals, nature, and society—and government efforts to contain these consequences. Polanyi's perspective is compared to Marx's theorem of the development of productive...

Resumo Uma introdução à entrevista realizada com Gareth Dale (Brunel University) − economista político e especialista na trajetória e na obra de Karl Polanyi − e a um conjunto de textos inspirados na abordagem polanyiana publicados neste número de S&A. Recupera questões-chave apresentadas na entrevista e na obra de Dale, dando relevo à literatura recente produzida sobre o autor, à contínua e difundida relevância das ideias de Polanyi para a compreensão do capitalismo e da democracia, e a uma...

This paper assesses the contribution of Karl Polanyi, a theorist largely ignored in fascism scholarship, toward understanding fascism’s interwar rise and present-day implications. In exploring Polanyi’s work in The Great Transformation and lesser-known and unpublished writings, a sophisticated and largely original conception of fascism emerges, rooted in the idea of ‘anti-individualism’ as its foundational trait. Polanyi accounts for fascism’s philosophical content, ideological plasticity,...

Karl Polanyi’s scholarship is interpreted in radically different ways. The “hard” reading of Polanyi sees him as a radical socialist; the “soft” reading presents him as a theorist of mixed economy. This article sides with the soft interpretation. It uses Polanyi’s biography to explain his theoretical “elusiveness,” presents a novel interpretation of his three types of economic integration, claiming all economies are “mixed.” While it acknowledges Polanyi as one of the major sources of world...

After considering different possible elements of the ‘Trump era,’ I will turn to The Great Transformation to periodize capitalism into three waves of marketization and their counter-movements. In the first wave, we follow the commodification of land, money and especially labor, so-called fictitious commodities, and the local counter-movements marketization inspired, reaching to the level of the state. In the second wave, the focus turns on the way marketization generated a reaction from...

This application of Polanyi to the question of fascism’s resurgence provides an important corrective to mainstream liberal explanations (e.g., Albright 2018), inviting the reader to “look up rather than down” (Lim 2021) by tying fascism’s significance to the functioning of the capitalist system rather than to the personalities of fascist politicians or their degree of mass support. The merits of this notwithstanding, I argue that current Polanyian treatments have neglected to engage with a...