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Although Karl Polanyi is best known for his theorization of market regulation and the double movement, democratizing the economic was one of his core concerns. He believed societies need to bring labor, land, and money under collective oversight to displace the logic of market fundamentalism with the logic of human needs. In this article, the author draws on Polanyi’s vocabulary to shed light on the denial of money politics and the possibility of democratization. The author illustrates these...

There is a growing awareness that a whole-societal “Great Transformation” of Polanyian scale is needed to bring global developmental trajectories in line with ecological imperatives. The mainstream Sustainable Development discourse, however, insists in upholding the myth of compatibility of current growth-based trajectories with biophysical planetary boundaries. This article explores potentially fertile complementarities among trendy discourses challenging conventional notions of...

This paper explores some features of the development paths taken by Brazil and China (two member countries of the BRICS grouping) in the current context of the crisis of neoliberal globalization and transformation of the political and economic world order. The authors use Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ thesis to argue that newly emerging rural development (RD) dynamics in China and Brazil are part of a protective ‘countermovement’, driven by actors and institutions responding 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

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...

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...

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...

It is no exaggeration to say that Fred Block and Margaret Somers are almost singlehandedly responsible for reviving interest in Karl Polanyi’s intellectual and political legacy in American sociology. Their contribution has consisted not only in reminding sociologists of the power of Polanyi’s analysis of the rise of market society to make sense of our troubled times but even more importantly in resolving many of the difficult theoretical tangles that Polanyi gets himself into in the course...

Unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) has spurred an unprecedented boom in onshore production in the US. Despite a surge in related research, a void exists regarding inquiries into policy outcomes and perceptions. To address this, support for federal regulatory exemptions for UOGE is examined using survey data collected in 2015 from two Northern Colorado communities. Current regulatory exemptions for UOGE can be understood as components of broader societal processes of...

The article uses a case study of the American Manufacturing Extension Partnership to explore economic and industrial policy in the contemporary USA. Extensive quantitative and qualitative data are mobilized to show that: (a) the agency is pressured politically to limit its activities to 'blunt' remedies for identifiable 'market failures'; even as (b) regional centers in fact often orient also, and sometimes instead, toward 'coordination-oriented' policies to mitigate 'network failures'; and...

Purpose The paper aims to relate the four modes of coexistence of goal-orientated systems – conflict, hierarchy, the niche and cooperation – to static behavioral descriptions of social systems.Design/methodology/approach Analyzing the options for interactions of goal-orientated systems leads the four modes of coexistence. These show certain behavioral characteristics. Searching for these characteristics in selected behavioral descriptions in organizational theory, sociology, political...

This article dialogues Polanyi and Bourdieu to propose a new research agenda within the sociology of cultural production. Extending recent literature on hipsters, this iconic figure is shifted from the world of consumption to the world of production via Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of the new petite bourgeoisie. Using secondary empirical material of cultural micro-enterprises, two ideal-typical career strategies are sketched: cultural-capital oriented seeking to secure positions within...

A spectre is haunting Europe and the world — the spectre of Fascism (veiled as defensive democracy and common-sense patriotism) and authoritarian neoliberalism (disguised as social protectionism an…

This chapter stresses the point that contrary to arguments proposed by neoliberals, the state has consistently been a relevant actor in the organization of the economy and society. It indicates that the role played by the state was fundamental in the expansion and stability of capitalism in its early stages, during the laissez-faire era of the nineteenth century and under Fordism in the twentieth century. This argument is illustrated through a review of salient aspects of classical liberal...

Following recent calls for a more self-aware and historically sensitive sociology this article reflects on the concept of deindustrialisation and industrial change in this spirit. Using EP Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class and his examination of industrialising culture with its stress on experience, the article asks how these insights might be of value in understanding contemporary processes of deindustrialisation and work. Drawing on a range of sociological,...

Despite growing evidence of significant impacts from human-induced climate change, policy responses have been slow. Understanding this policy inertia has led to competing explanations, which either point to the need to build a consensual politics separated from economic partisanship, or which encourage solidarities between environmental and social movements and issues. This article analyses a recent successful mobilisation, leading to the passage of the Clean Energy Act in Australia, to...

The provocative political thinker asks if it will be with a bang or a whimperAfter years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated.In How Will Capitalism End?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that the world is about to change. The marriage between democracy and capitalism, ill-suited partners...

Ariane Fischer, David Woodruff, and Johanna Bockman have translated Karl Polanyi's 'Sozialistische Rechnungslegung' ['Socialist Accounting'] from 1922. In this article, Polanyi laid out his model of a future socialism, a world in which the economy is subordinated to society. Polanyi described the nature of this society and a kind of socialism that he would remain committed to his entire life. Accompanying the translation is the preface titled 'Socialism and the embedded economy.' In the...