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The concept of the ‘counter-movement’ has had a significant impact within studies in International Political Economy (IPE). In the light of the credit crisis and the growth of growing resentment to the notion of the free market, the idea of the counter-movement has been utilised to understand social reaction to neoliberalism. This article argues that whilst the counter-movement has been used in unique and innovated ways, Karl Polanyi himself used the term largely to refer to a specific...

This paper explores the dynamics of institutional change in periods of instability in the global capitalist system. Two recent bodies of literature—actor-centered institutionalism and the ‘policy mobilities’ approach—emphasize how contextual and historical specificities drive transformation as institutions move across space. However, scholars in both traditions give less attention to the systematic patterns of social conflict that influence how policies move and mutate. Drawing on the case...

In this article I revisit Karl Polanyi's writings on ancient Mesopotamia. I begin by situating them in the context of his general approach to trade, markets and money in the ancient world. Next, I reconstruct his major theses on Mesopotamia, drawing upon his published works as well as unpublished documents in the Karl Polanyi and Michael Polanyi archives. Finally, I provide a critical assessment of the merits and demerits of his contribution, with reference to Assyriological research...

In this analysis of the first colonialisms in history, the eastern roots of the Phoenician colonial system in the first millennium BC are traced and the metropolis of Tyre is established as the final link in a long chain of colonial experiences in the ancient Near East. The author reviews some of the theories and debates about trade and the colonial phenomenon, scrutinises the colonial situations that arose in the East in a context of long-distance interregional trade, and analyses the...

A “port of trade” is a theoretical concept developed by Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) to describe the phenomenon of a particular kind of trading post.

Nature and Power is to be understood not only as human power against nature but also as power by nature in the sense of Michel Foucault's biopouvoir (biopower) or Francis Bacon's "Naturae non imperator nisiparendo" (Only by obeying nature may we dominate nature). The fragile human attempts to get power over nature and by nature have a long history, reaching back over millennia until prehistoric times, and much of world history may be explained in part by the unstable relationship between...

This essay identifies a contradiction between the flourishing interest in the environmental economics of the classical period and a lack of critical parsing of the works of its leading representatives. Its focus is the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. It offers a critical analysis of their contribution to environmental thought and surveys the work of their contemporary devotees. It scrutinizes Smith's contribution to what Karl Polanyi termed the "economistic fallacy," as well as his...

This article proceeds from the field of tension between the synchronical approach of the economics of convention and the diachronical approach of economic anthropology (in the tradition of Karl Polanyi). It is argued that the economics of convention remain problematic to historians in that they fail to capture the long term transformations traditionally referred to as the emergence of modernity and the coming about of homo economicus. As a possible solution, the use of concepts and insights...

This essay discusses the intellectual contributions of five Jewish émigrés to the study of European economic history. In the midst of the war years, these intellectuals reconceptualized premodern European economic history and established the predominant postwar paradigms. The émigrés form three distinct groups defined by Jewish identity and by professional identity. The first two (Guido Kisch and Toni Oelsner) identified as Jews and worked as Jewish historians. The second two (Michal Postan...

This article provides foundations to K. Polanyi's famed argument that monopoly power in the global capital market served as an instrument of peace during the Pax Britannica (1815-1914). We focus on the role of intermediaries and certification. We show that when information and enforcement are imperfect, there is scope for the endogenous emergence of 'prestigious' intermediaries who enjoy a monopoly position and as a result, control government actions. They can implement conditional lending:...

The essay examines from a historian's point of view the approaches to the analysis of market exchange in new economic sociology and explores in which way sociology and history can cooperate in embedding markets in temporal structures. In a first step the author sharply criticises the favourable reception given to Karl Polanyi's work "The Great Transformation" in the field of new economic sociology. In particular she discusses the narrowing of research perspectives and its negative side...

A fundamental principle of Karl Polanyi's institutional outlook is that any economic system has to be considered as a whole and as a historically specific social organization. This principle implies a comparative method and a critique of conventional economics. Besides, the problem of the interrelation between the economic system and other aspects of social life cannot be avoided. On this basis, Polanyi points out the peculiar "economic" nature of the market-capitalist society and explains...

The crisis of the institutions of liberal capitalism dates back to the last decades of the nineteenth century. Economics was thenceforth forced to radically reconsider its achievements and even its basic presuppositions, to the extent that they were linked to a free-market and perfect-competition model.

Karl Polanyi is considered one of the most prominent social scientists of the 20th century. In his writings, an important concern was the relationship between the markets and the society (therefore, the state) as a whole; to discuss it, he introduced the concept of "embeddedness", fundamental for his study of the origins and consequences of the Industrial Revolution. An important part of his heritage is the study of the economic history of what he called "ancient societies," especially of...

Abstract:This essay explores the connections between Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944) and midcentury social theory in the United States. It argues that Polanyi shared with his U.S. colleagues a critique of market society. In particular, Polanyi's work bears close resemblance to the early thought of management theorist Peter Drucker, with whom Polanyi lived while writing his celebrated book. By comparing Polanyi to his contemporaries who advanced similar ideas, one gains a...

Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, offered a radical critique of how the market system has affected society and humanity since the industrial revolution. This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in economic anthropology, sociology and political economy to consider Polanyi's theories in the light of circumstances today, when the relationship between market and society has again become a focus of intense political and scientific debate. It...

The purpose of this essay is to provide the historian with a generic understanding of the term economy by examining some aspects of the work of the Hungarian “economic historian” Karl Polanyi (1886–1964). It does not seek to explain Polanyi's economic ideas to economists nor does it seek to locate his ideas within the discourses of the academic discipline of economics; there is abundant academic literature which carries out those tasks. This essay is intended to help fill a void in the...

KM: a review article on Nafissi's book.

Freewheeling capitalism or collectivist communism: when it came to political-economic systems, did the twentieth century present any other choice? Does our century? In Third Ways, social historian Allan Carlson tells the story of how different thinkers from Bulgaria to Great Britain created economic systems during the twentieth century that were by intent neither capitalist nor communist. Unlike fascists, these seekers were committed to democracy and pluralism. Unlike liberal capitalists,...