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A commentary on Asad Zaman's paper “The Methodology of Polanyi's Great Transformation”

This paper examines the long-run fluctuations in growth and distribution through the prism of wage- and profit-led growth. It argues that the relation between distribution of income and growth changes over time and proposes an endogenous mechanism that leads to fluctuations between wage- and profit-led periods. The ephemeral character of distribution-led regimes needs to be taken into account when someone estimates empirically the effect of a change in distribution on utilization and growth....

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...

This paper focuses on how discourses of food have shaped understandings of what is at stake in the Greek crisis. Drawing from Karl Polanyi's concept of "embeddedness," I argue that food is central to Greek interpretations of neoliberal policies and processes because of its centrality to Greek culture and identity. Food has also been a site of contested practices of "solidarity" and "charity" by which new social experiments are emerging in the wake of the breakdown of the welfare state. In...

The rise of for-profit law schools in the United States highlights the interplay of political and moral economy in the reproduction of legal expertise. This article offers ethnographic evidence from one ABA-accredited for-profit law school pseudonymously labeled New Delta School of Law. The article posits New Delta as a case study in market fundamentalism of the kind first theorized by Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi. Polanyi defined global capital as a “double movement” between free...

All communities of practice must face questions relating to the material economic foundations of future sustainable societies. David Graeber, Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx each have produced typologies of possible types of economy, synthesised as: (1) the principle of individual reciprocity, (2) the market principle of capitalism, and (3) the planning principle of the state. I apply this synthesis to recent proposals for community change advanced by Bill McKibben and David Korten concerning...

The last 50 years of nation building has firmly established Singapore as a globally competitive and highly successful economy and city-state with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Singapore has achieved a prosperity undreamed of by its founders. How successfully Singapore can evolve into a fully developed nation, with a firm sense of national belonging, social cohesion, political legitimacy and participation—and not just a strong and successful developmental state—will...

Polanyi's book, The Great Transformation, provides an analysis of the emergence and significance of capitalist economic structures which differs radically from those currently universally taught in economic textbooks. This analysis is based on a methodological approach which is also radically different from existing methodologies for economics, and more generally social science. This methodology is used by Polanyi without explicit articulation. Our goal in this article is to articulate the...

Governments in Europe and elsewhere have renewed their attention to the fiscal regulation of their economies in order to close tax loopholes and boost revenues in response to the financial crisis. The article uses a neo-Polanyian ‘instituted economic process’ approach to explore and explain the uniquely high level of bogus self-employment in the UK construction industry, facilitated by confused law and stimulated by a bespoke construction fiscal regime, resulting in endemic tax evasion. It...

Infrastructure projects provide a spatial fix by increasing the scale and rate of capital accumulation, and because infrastructure projects themselves absorb massive amounts of productive and finance capital. I seek to explain the timing, character, and consequences of a Can $85 billion infrastructure boom in Canada's largest province, Ontario, between 2003 until 2013. I focus on the expansion and privatization of environmentally oriented infrastructure in Ontario via three policies: the...

The expression "sharing economy" has spread exponentially in the past few years, a sign of the growing interest in a phenomenon that continues to maintain boundaries that are somewhat vague. The hypothesis of this paper is that this can be attributed not only to the pervasiveness and enabling power of new technologies but also to the need to fill a social vacuum due to the failures of the market and the state. The sharing economy is introducing collaborative social forms able (at least...

Internationally educated teachers (IETs) seeking to resume their careers in Canada often demonstrate tremendous endurance, fortitude, and resilience in the process of navigating their new professional landscapes, yet neoliberalism and the myth of meritocracy obscure the pervasive systemic barriers characterizing their professional experiences. Critical action research undertaken with graduates of an academic and professional bridging program for IETs in Manitoba reveals a complex interplay...

The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks and institutions. The book is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it focuses on theoretical contributions, by pulling together and extending what the contributors...

This paper examines Canadian federal and cross-provincial higher education policy from 1960 to 1990, a critical time when provisions for vocational and adult training came under the auspices of governmental concern, justified under both an economic rationale and as a way to address persistent forms of inequality. The problematisation of skill during this period had particular gendered implications, as addressing inequality through education subsidies intersected with the perceived training...

In the Marxist tradition, capitalism is understood as a commodified society based on markets. The article argues that the ultimate justification of this position does not lie in any ‘materialistic’ approach, but in the disembedding of markets that was the result of the historical ‘Great Transformation’ analysed by Karl Polanyi. Disembedded markets are not an economic subsystem within society but take the place of the most encompassing social system, which Durkheim had reserved for religion....

This article discusses the difference between a social policy approach to the regulatory embedding of a market and a moral economy approach using the insurance case wherein the European Union's Court of Justice ruled that insurers may not discriminate on grounds of sex in identifying risks.

To grasp what might exist beyond neoliberalism, we need to rethink the history of development before neoliberalism. This article makes two arguments. First, for poorer countries, processes of commodification which are highlighted as evidence of neoliberalism often predate the neoliberal era. Third World development policies tended to make social and economic life more precarious as a corollary to capital accumulation before neoliberalism as an ideology took hold. Second, the intense...

In face of the strong conflict between market norms and social norms, peaceful co-existence is impossible. In traditional societies, markets were subordinated to society. Modern society emerged via a number of revolutions which made society subordinate to markets. This led to a reversal of traditional values of social cooperation and harmony with nature. Instead, men, nature, society became objects to be exploited for creating profits. A market society generates profits by exploiting men and...