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Most analyses of the US financial crisis of 2007–2009 focus on the proximate causes. This article sees the crisis as a consequence of the decline of a long-term pattern of accumulation in the USA and seeks to outline the requirements for a new period of dynamic economic growth. Drawing on work done by the French Regulation theorists and the US analysts of Social Structures of Accumulation, the paper attempts to describe the types of institutional changes that would be needed to spark a new...

The coexistence of border-enforcement policies such as Operation Gatekeeper and economic liberalization programs such as NAFTA is arguably paradoxical given the simultaneous push towards afree flow of products but curtailed flow of labor. This paper presents a critical review and reassement of existing accounts of neoliberal statehood to make sense of this apparent puzzle. While some have argued that the state is eroding under neoliberal globalization, a more sophisticated analysis has...

The article offers information on the features that contribute to the modernization in Russia. It discusses various value structure theories from various persons. It says that from the analysis of world survey statistics, Yevgeny Yasin concluded that Russians are more conservative compared to other western countries. Details regarding the mentality of Russian people are discussed including Russians' high score on cycloid scale and their tendency to fulfill their task at the last moment....

This chapter contains sections titled: * Clashing Models of Capitalism: Hayek VS. Polanyi * Market Liberalism's Return: From the “Not Quite Golden Age” to the “Great U - Turn” * Hegemonic Neoliberalism: From Crest to Crisis to Emphatic Reassertion(?) * Capitalism at the Point of Inflection: Neoliberalism's Wake * Conclusion * References

Karl Polanyi, who was born in 1886 in Vienna and died in 1964 in Pickering, Ontario remains a most influential theoretical figure in the social sciences, in particular stimulating both analytical and policy-related concerns that are related with the new institutionalism in economics, sociology and political science. Polanyian insights on the political economy of economic development from an institutional perspective have persistently shaped a variety of discourses that range from the theory...

Within the context of the New Economic Sociology, Karl Polanyi is almost universally considered the "father" of the concept of embeddedness. However, this concept has been subject to selective appropriation by this discipline and its relationship to the remaining theoretical edifice constructed by Polanyi has been neglected. It is, in fact, possible to refer to the "great transformation" to which the concept of embeddedness has been subjected: whereas in Polanyi’s work it is associated with...

This paper turns Karl Polanyi's concept of the "double movement" back on Polanyi and his intellectual contemporary, Friedrich Hayek, as a means to insight into the structural conditions of counter-movement in the second half of the 20th Century. After elaborating on the double movement concept, I contrast the trajectory of Polanyi and his greatest work, The Great Transformation, with that of Friedrich Hayek and his contemporaneous Road to Serfdom--treating each as protagonists in the...

In this paper I propose that role of law in Karl Polanyi's concept of the 'always embedded economy' (Block 2003) can be enriched by the application of the lens of community (Perry-Kessaris 2008) developed by Roger Cotterrell (1996-present). I begin with Polanyi's suggestion that economic action and interaction are always 'embedded' in wider social life. Reading through the lens of community, we can be more specific: any actor is at once engaged, to different degrees (from fleeting to...

Sociologists have examined the ways in which capitalism contributes to environmental degradation as well as how, in selected circumstances, it increases efficiency while reducing pollution and human injustices. In this review, we draw on Polanyi's concept of the double movement to illustrate how self regulating markets give rise to environmental degradation and inequities and, in response, how these conditions often stimulate the emergence of collective action in pursuit of regulatory and...

Depression-era bank suspensions and failures are conceptualized as products of the first part of what Polanyi (1994) called “The Great Transformation,” which involved an imbalanced institutional arrangement in which the economy dominated other institutions. Relying on Durkheim (1897/1951) and Merton (1938, 1968), it is argued that these banking problems accentuated the type of chronic anomie that Durkheim theorized would create normative deregulation and elevated suicide rates over the...

This article contends that decommodification is an appropriate concept for understanding diverse initiatives such as fair trade, microfinance, open source, social enterprises, and the environmental commons as component features of a common process. Decommodification is conceived as any political, social, or cultural process that reduces the scope and influence of the market in everyday life. Given recent transformations in market societies, a more expansive framework for decommodification...

The argument focuses on the corporate state as an increasingly significant political assemblage that has enabled new configurations of power with related social effects. Here the discussion proceeds from Karl Polanyi's thesis in The Great Transformation. A critical idea that Polanyi pursued related to the state production of economism and individualism, which prepared the ground for the expansion of capital in its globalizing form. The essay develops this idea, indicating that the...

‘Constitutionalisation’ is the key concept in the search for legitimate governance in the European Union and in the international system. This paper suggests the revitalising of a discipline which is widely neglected in European law and international law scholarship. It does not, however, recommend a return to the conflict of laws (private international law) in the traditional sense. The new type of conflicts law that the paper advocates is not concerned with selecting the proper legal...

How can a partial, revisable utopia of 'decent society' be used as a yardstick for assessing today's impersonal forms of social integration? In economic life - this essay's focus - Polanyi's hopes that the 'economic system' might cease 'to lay down the law to society' is a start. Recently, financial firms sold commodified promises and obligations on the allure of democratizing credit and providing financial 'choice' to millions. Yet these 'civilities' exploited people's hopes for a dignified...

This article introduces cultural political economy as a distinctive approach in the social sciences, including policy studies. The version presented here combines critical semiotic analysis and critical political economy. It grounds its approach to both in the practical necessities of complexity reduction and the role of meaning-making and structuration in turning unstructured into structured complexity as a basis for ‘going on’ in the world. It explores both semiosis and structuration in...

The dominant narrative around the unfolding capitalist crisis is firmly focused on the dominant economies, and in particular the US. This is understandable given that the proximate causes of the crisis lie in the imperial heartlands and crisis resolution measures taken there will have a global impact. But a 'view from the South' is needed to redress the balance and prevent the decimation of global majority likelihoods being presented as mere collateral damage. The first section below tackles...

This paper addresses a puzzle: how to account for changes in the routine behavior of groups, organizations and individuals in Britain? Following a detailed analysis of state-market interdependence and the role of the state in creating the market, an analysis drawn from the thinking of Weber and Polanyi, we suggest adapting Weber's notion of bureaucratic revolution: in what we call the British bureaucratic revolution, the state has played an essential role in social change by creating...