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For intellectual generations born at the end of the 19th century in Europe, the discourses on rights were to a large measure determined by proponents and detractors of various versions of Marxism. Hence the debates on justice and rights predominantly operated with the conceptual and analytical instruments of European political economy. These debates also were premised on assumptions about the status of the political economy of Europe and North America in the distribution of global space. But...

Globalization--the interconnection of the world culturally, socially, politically, and economically--has generated intense theoretical and practical concerns. Is globalization inevitable? What are the effects of globalization on social structures and individual perceptions? What is the effect of globalization on societal level inequality? America Transformed: Globalization, Inequality, and Power examines these questions by analyzing the links among global processes and shifting patterns of...

Karl Polanyi's views on the nature of "pre-market" society are influential not only among historians but also among economists concerned with present-day transitional and developing economies. This paper examines Polanyi's arguments about the "Great Transformation" from traditional to market society in the light of recent advances in economic theory and empirical evidence from a range of European and non-European societies. These theoretical and empirical considerations provide little...

This is a book chapter from: The Social Generative Action of the Third Sector – Comparing International Experiences Edited by H. K. Anheier; G. Rossi, L. Boccacin, 2008, Vita e Pensiero, Milano

Within the field of critical political economy exists a literature urging a re-conceptualization of democracy (Munck 2002, Cox 1997, Webster and Adler 1998). Liberal, particularly neo-liberal, political systems are critiqued for their binary separation of economics and politics leading to substantive disenfranchisement and elitest governance. Robert Cox (1997) has called this ‘limited democracy’ and argues that consumer choice and infrequent elections cannot be equated with democratic...

The article offers a critical reappraisal of Karl Polanyi's claim that the restructuring of the economy based on the ideals of the self-regulating market inevitably leads society to reassert itself against the commodification of land, labour and money. Dubbed as the "double movement," the author focuses his reappraisal on the two aspects of the movement. The first refers to the push for free market reforms by various groups in society, and the second refers to the counter-movements that he...

The article reviews the book "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time," by Karl Polayni.

This text will not focus on The Great Transformation but will deal with previous and following writings from Karl Polanyi where his emphasis is on the constitutive elements that define us as social beings and as agents of social change.

Typically when we think of street markets we think of chaotic places full of energy and vibrating with danger and opportunity. Traders or governments create markets to meet existing and emergent demands as well as the unintended consequences of other policy decisions. It is this institutional design, this governance, this regulatory process that provides access to the market and organizes the vending space therein. Public and private entities operating in fiscally constrained environments...

Latin America is currently undergoing Karl Polanyi's "double movement" at full swing, as most governments of the region are currently experimenting with policies that defy the neoliberal orthodoxy that has been reigning there for almost three decades. One of such governments has been the center-left Concertación governments of Chile, which have been elected since the restoration of democracy in 1990. In addition to poverty alleviation programs, Concertación has been in an ongoing process...

In this article, Polanyi's (1944) notion of society as constituted by three forms of economic integration (market exchange, reciprocity, and redistribution) is applied to entrepreneurship. In advanced capitalism, the market-exchange relationship is the dominant form of economic integration; secondary relationships of reciprocity and redistribution, however, co-exist alongside relations of market exchange. Following Polanyi (1944), this article introduces an "embedded market" approach to...

This paper traces China's move towards a market economy in the mid-1980s, the near triumph of market forces in the 1990s, and the countermovement this engendered as inequalities between the rich and poor increased and social security networks collapsed. It focuses on the country's regional and healthcare policies to illustrate how it has dealt with issues of inequality and insecurity over time. The prevailing view now is that the market is necessary but it must be embedded in society. And...

Pentecostalism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, expanding most quickly in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia. To make sense of this expansion in so many developing regions, I suggest that Pentecostalism fosters norms and behaviors that harmonize with neoliberal economic restructuring. I frame this theoretically with Polanyi's notion of double movement. In our current era of weakened state governance vis-à-vis neoliberal trade and fiscal policy, non-state...

This paper argues that the legitimacy of the global order depends not on economic progress alone, but on the progressive naturalization of its epistemological foundations, through 'new solutions' to old problems by states and development agencies. New solutions become methods of social control through which the dominant visions of what count as viable futures are reproduced. We critique efforts to humanize development (e.g., by the World Bank, Amartya Sen) as evidence of development's...

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve’s shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the “neoliberal dilemma.” In the context of generally deteriorating economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi )....

In this article Polanyi's double move and Wæver's securitisation argument inform an analysis of poverty as a security issue. The inclusion of poverty on the security agenda confirms and complicates, rather than marginalises, the state as a central referent of security. It is argued that analytically and pragmatically qualitative and socially contextualised analysis of poverty offers deeper understanding than quantitative approaches. It is also argued that the rhetoric of inclusion currently...

This reader combines in a single volume the key writings of classical and contemporary thinkers on political economy. The articles provide both a theoretical approach to understanding capitalism and a survey of the varieties of capitalism around the world today, examining the interaction between politics and markets both in theory and practice. Drawing on history, economics, political science and sociology, it emphasizes the ways in which markets are embedded in and influenced by political...

Like a hurricane, third-wave marketisation is picking up velocity and destroying societies in its path, destroying the very grounds upon which sociology grows. Sociology and humanity have a common interest in upholding civil society, and keeping state and market at bay. Working with Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, I diagnose three waves of marketisation associated with the commodification of labour, money and land, generating counter-movements at local, national and global levels. I...

This article discusses a renewed interest in the work of scholar Karl Polanyi and the incorporation of his work into the body of institutional economics. This article discusses the notion of time in Polanyi's work and how it differs from the metaphor of time inherent in neoclassical economics. The author discusses the definition of the word "primitives" and its relationship to social policy, and how Polanyi deployed the actual state of primitives in order to replace the economistic...

This article discusses the relationship among economic constraints, social reform and societal pressures for a humane society, drawing on the insights of scholars Karl Polanyi and Herbert A. Simon. One of the key issues in Polanyi's work is the divergence between economic and societal values in modern capitalism. The divergence leads to a reaction against the rationale of the market and to what Polanyi refers to as the double movement. The distinction between internal consistency and...