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The classical conceptualization of the working class, of workers’ collective action and, especially, of trade unionism, was implicitly or explicitly based on the Standard Employment Relationship that, for a few decades, has been dominant in North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia. The ‘classical’ model of collective bargaining, which has shaped the world's traditional labour movements, was based on this conceptualization. However, it is now increasingly undermined by the rapid spread of...

Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of ‘alienated politics’. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm because of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive...

The food-energy-climate change trilemma refers to the stark alternatives presented by the need to feed a world population growing to nine billion, the attendant risks of land conversion and use for global climate change, and the way these are interconnected with the energy crisis arising from the depletion of oil. Theorizing the interactions between political economies and their related natural environments, in terms of both finitudes of resources and generation of greenhouse gases, presents...

Capitalism is the only complex system known to us that can provide an efficient and innovative economy, but the financial crisis has brought out the pernicious side of capitalism and shown that it remains dependent on the state to rescue it from its own deficiencies. Can capitalism be reshaped so that it is fit for society, or must we acquiesce to the neoliberal view that society will be at its best when markets are given free rein in all areas of life? The aim of this book is to show that...

A large number of currencies has emerged for thirty years, far beyond the national currencies alone. It includes systems created by groups of citizens, others by territorial communities, and others by private companies for their own benefit. These currencies take various forms, ranging from electronic money on smart cards to settlement systems ...

La sociologie des politiques économiques défendue dans cet article prend pour objet le travail permanent de construction, de naturalisation et de maintien de l’ordre économique déployé par une multitude d’acteurs et d’instruments techniques. Il s’agit d’ouvrir des enquêtes sur la façon dont prennent forme les processus de désencastrement et de réencastrement de l’économie vis-à-vis des institutions politiques et sociales. Cette piste est suivie en quatre temps. D’abord en soulignant la...

Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi's substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in south-western China. Illuminating the tensions arising from two interrelated reforms, namely the ambitious attempt to construct 40 million m2of public rental housing between 2010 and 2012, and the large-scale drive to ensure peasant migrants enjoy equal access to social benefits as current urban...

Karl Polanyi's concept of a "double movement" has been used to describe the protectionist measures taken by governments to mitigate damage caused by the expansion of markets. Through a lens of political economy and historical institutionalism, this article uses Polanyi's framework to examine competing notions of the public interest as exemplified by the socially constructed nature of American and British broadcasting and the legitimating discourse that produced divergent outcomes. A...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of items that are included in recent productivity programmes in various countries and integrate these items with the ideas of virtuous circuit of productivity and socially embedded productivity. Design/methodology/approach – In depth analysis of an illustrative set of productivity measures. The analysis reveals how each measure/programme could make sense to the industrial relations actors. A new conceptual reformulation of analysed...

Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven by technological progress, we are led to believe, is the end-state of history; the glorious condition of a fully enlightened society of free citizens equipped with equal rights at which all traditional societies are bound to arrive, after a period of transition which might involve some temporary difficulties or 'sacrifices'. However, and in contrast to this, modernity rather involves an infinite...

Commodification has been and still is one of the key processes within capitalist market economies. Since the 1970s, different forms of knowledge have increasingly been subjected to this process. In this paper the commodification of knowledge in the field of higher education is defined in a broad sense as an example of the intensive enlargement of capitalism. I argue that knowledge shares some features of public goods and can be subjected to commodification both as an educational product and...

In this article, I examine the main typologies of transaction that have been built from Auguste Comte to Karl Polanyi, Marcel Mauss, and Philippe Descola. Then, I suggest to reconsidering Polanyi's typology, the most common in contemporary economic sociology, and to limit the time span to modern societies. Accordingly, it is possible to map seven forms of transaction and the related institutions at work in our societies. In conclusion, the political consequences of the existence of these...

In the first half century of Dissent’s history, Karl Polanyi almost never made an appearance in the magazine’s pages. On one level this is surprising, because Polanyi was a presence in socialist circles in New York City from 1947 through the mid-1950s, the period of Dissent’s gestation. On another level it is unsurprising, in that Polanyi was a heterodox thinker—even among fellow socialists. With some significant exceptions, it has taken decades to recognize the extraordinary theoretical...

What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic...

In 2008 Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic economic crises of any economy in the world. It remains at the heart of the international crisis, sitting uneasily between the US and European economies. Not long ago, however, Ireland was celebrated as an example of successful market-led globalisation and economic growth. How can we explain the Irish crisis? What does it tell us about the causes of the international crisis? How should we rethink our understanding of contemporary economies...

Le don et l’échange marchand sont généralement opposés. Pourtant, l’un et l’autre apparaissent comme fondateurs du lien social dans la mesure où l’on prend en compte la relation qu’ils créent au niveau interindividuel et collectif. Le don apparaît ainsi associé à une certaine forme de réciprocité et le marché à une certaine forme de gratuité., Gift and commodity exchange are generally opposed. But both appear as founders of the social bond when we consider the relationship they create...

Public sociology and the sacrifices it entails, richly described in the case studies in this monograph, are driven by moral commitment. This is one element of sociology as a vocation. The other element is sociology as a science. The case studies are built on an embryonic sociology of commodification, understood in its historical dimensions and its global consequences. This sociology of commodification examines the disasters created by third-wave marketization and the bleak future for human...

This article discusses some alternative or critical theoretical contributions regarding globalization and labor. The main question in this discussion is if there are changes in direction of a possible revitalization of labor movements and if international solidarity can increase due to globalization. This question also relates to discussions of changes in division of work, the concept of work, working class, commodification, decommodification, and new centers of global production--all...

Karl Polanyi's critique of market society is a very powerful tool for understanding our current social reality. It helps us to formulate a creative and purposeful proposal that contributes to build a just, equitable, and more humane society, that would be committed to the future life on the planet. A comparison between the society criticized by Polanyi and ours, leads us to discover the validity of his basic concepts and his method for the preparation of a new critical discourse that not...

The article presents selected aspects of the discussion about the conditions and consequences of global economic crisis in Polish sociology. The author argues that the relatively limited debate on the nature of the current crisis can be explained by two factors. Firstly, it is the consequence of the dominance of modernisation paradigm in the analysis of the Polish social transformation as well as the marginalisation of two sociologies: critical labour sociology and economic sociology....