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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...

This chapter considers white European and American thinking on transatlantic slavery historically and, more briefly, in relation to today’s antislavery movement. Combining historical longue durée and a critical engagement with Nancy Fraser’s neo-Polanyian position, O’Connell Davidson shows that abolitionists were, and are, hard to fix as proponents of either market freedom or social protection, or indeed of ‘emancipation’. The postabolition experience of freed slaves shows that...

In economic geography and economic sociology, embeddedness refers to the ways in which relational, institutional, and cultural contexts shape economic life. In contrast to the undersocialized and utilitarian assumptions of neoclassical economics, rational choice theory, and new institutional economics, theories of embeddedness focus on the ways in which markets and society are variously articulated in particular societies, organizations, and places. Embeddedness in this sense is associated...

KM - What should we do with Marxism ? For most the answer is simple. Bury it ! Mainstream social science has long since bid farewell to Marxism. The approach adopted here is that Marxism is a living tradition that enjoys renewal and reconstruction as the world it describes and seeks to transform undergoes change ... However, Marxsm cannot simply mirror the world. It seeks to change the world, but changing such a variegated world requires a variegated theory that keeps up with the times and...

A critical review of nine dimensions of economization of social relations and their repercussions on societal dynamics. Discusses fictitious commodification, financialization, finance-dominated accumulation, and issues of ecological dominance. Bibliographic note: Book contains selected papers from conference on Marketization of Societies, organized at Bremen University, 1-2 June 2012. This is the pre-print version of a planned conference collection with a commercial publisher.

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...

In Property Economics: Property Rights, Creditor’s Money and the Foundations of the Economy - Metropolis-Verlag, 2008.

Book edited by Jirí Pribán This collection of essays brings together Zygmunt Bauman and a number of internationally distinguished legal scholars who examine the influence of Bauman's recent works on social theory of law and socio-legal studies. Contributors focus on the concept of 'liquid society' and its adoption by legal scholars. The volume opens with Bauman's analysis of fears and policing in 'liquid society' and continues by examining the social and legal theoretical context and...

Philip McMichael casts a critical eye on the process of globalization suggesting that it takes different forms across time and space. He specifies contemporary globalization as a discursive project, geared to institutionalizing corporate markets through multilateral and regional economic agreements driven by powerful states. From this perspective of depicting globalization as an exercise in power, he examines political countermovements to globalization. Global justice movements, he argues,...

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...

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...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the associated COVID-19 pandemic, is perhaps the greatest threat to life, and lifestyles, the world has known in more than a century. The scholarship included here provides critical insights into the ethics and ideologies, inequalities, and changed social understandings that lie at the heart of this pandemic. This volume maps out the ways in which the pandemic has impacted (most often disproportionately) societies, the successes and failures of means used to combat...

The chapter reconstructs the emergence and formulation of Karl Polanyi's central research question: How is responsible freedom possible in a complex modern society? The origins of this question in the time before the First World War and the confrontations with the challenge of neoliberalism and fascism are discussed. It is shown that Karl Polanyi's concept of freedom has four dimensions. Polanyi connects negative, positive, substantial and social freedom with each other and formulates a...

Though Polanyi referred to three distinct fictitious commodities, one, money, and the fate of the apex structure that commodified it, the gold standard, structured The Great Transformation’s narrative. Despite this centrality of money and its commodification to Polanyi’s masterwork, there is near-deafening silence in Polanyi scholarship on money as a fictitious commodity. This chapter ends it. It traces Polanyi’s understanding of fictitious commodities to its sources in classical political...

This introduction places the contributions that follow in the context of Polanyi’s rising influence, its causes and effects, and of the key twenty-first century developments that make his oeuvre more relevant than ever. It emphasizes how the contributions push the boundaries of received understandings of Polanyi. While some contributions fill gaping holes, such as those on money as a fictitious commodity, others overturn received understandings, whether that of the double movement or...

In these remarkably stirring reflections, delivered at the 2014 conference from which most of the contributions to this volume emerge, the late Abe Rotstein, Polanyi’s student and collaborator, recalls the projected sequel to The Great Transformation, to be titled Freedom and Technology. Whereas the former was built on a social sciences approach using institutional analysis, the sequel was to follow the intention Hegel expressed in the words ‘Wir die religiöse Vorstellung in Gedanken fassen’...