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The subordination of society to self-regulating international markets is the reason why British workers and industries so often fall prey to predatory financiers, writes Ann Pettifor. It is also a fundamental cause of current political crises throughout the west – just as Karl Polanyi described almost 80 years ago.

The article presents the authors' arguments on the political and policy response behind the rise of Trumpism according from the analysis of authors Kojin Karatani, Karl Polanyi and Mark Blyth. Topics discussed include Karatani's book "The Structure of World History" on the integration of modalities for political and economic system, Polanyi's analysis in the book "The Great Transformation" on the systemic balance and the transition in regimes of value for re-alignment of modalities.

Studies have pointed out that the value of markets is related to their impact on the character of a society. Karl Polanyi's thesis about social disembeddedness attributed to 19th century economic liberalism the responsibility for consolidating the process of separating markets from society, which changed the dynamics between the state and population when economic rationality began dictating their connections. However, Polanyi only suggested analyses regarding power relations between these...

A literary criticism of the book "Lawyers' Empire: Legal Professions and Cultural Authority" by Canadian lawyer W. Wesley Pue is presented. It outlines economic historian Karl Polanyi's assumption of Great Transformation in Western Europe that made the period of Pue's book long. It examines lawyers being innovators in Canada.

The article presents the views of economic historian Karl Polanyi on the nature of economic and social embeddedness. Topics discussed include relationship between the economic and social embeddedness, the impact of the market economy, the transformation of society and production of material goods. Particular focus on limits of privatization, commodification, and marketization.

Purpose The paper aims to relate the four modes of coexistence of goal-orientated systems – conflict, hierarchy, the niche and cooperation – to static behavioral descriptions of social systems.Design/methodology/approach Analyzing the options for interactions of goal-orientated systems leads the four modes of coexistence. These show certain behavioral characteristics. Searching for these characteristics in selected behavioral descriptions in organizational theory, sociology, political...

Progress in analysing the instrumental view of governance as an engine for growth, poverty reduction, and inclusive development has been held back by the difficulty in framing governance. This essay seeks to address this problem by 1) reframing urban governance 2) evaluating its aims, processes, and outcomes, and 3) explaining those outcomes on the basis of which some lessons are teased out. Using examples from Africa and an institutional political economy approach (based on institutional...

How has neo-liberalism transformed the economic structure and policies of India? And what are the politico-economic implications of such policies for marginalised populations? Following Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement”, this paper argues that while market liberalism has helped India overcome the slow so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, it has adversely affected the economic interests of the poor. It further argues that the expansion of the market (first movement) has led to various...

This article dialogues Polanyi and Bourdieu to propose a new research agenda within the sociology of cultural production. Extending recent literature on hipsters, this iconic figure is shifted from the world of consumption to the world of production via Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of the new petite bourgeoisie. Using secondary empirical material of cultural micro-enterprises, two ideal-typical career strategies are sketched: cultural-capital oriented seeking to secure positions within...

The role of competition and cooperation in relation to the goal of health equity is examined in this paper. The authors explain why the win-lose mentality associated with avoidable competition is ethically questionable and less effective than cooperation in achieving positive outcomes, particularly as it relates to health and health equity. Competition, which differentiates winners from losers, often with the winner-takes-all reward system, inevitably leads to a few winners and many losers,...

Farm subsidies have become increasingly maligned in agricultural policy debates, but the merits of subsidies are a distraction from deeper political, economic, and ecological problems in agriculture. Drawing on a history of the U.S. Farm Bill, this paper argues that a fixation on farm subsidies ignores why they came into being, and more generally glosses over the imperative for modern states to intervene into agricultural economies. Karl Polanyi's 'double movement' framework is used to...

Noting a lack of consensus in the recent literature on the Anthropocene, this article considers how social anthropologists might contribute to its theorizing and dating. Empirically it draws on the author’s long-term fieldwork in Hungary. It is argued that ethnographic methods are essential for grasping subjectivities, including temporal orientations and perceptions of epochal transformation. When it comes to historical periodization, however, ethnography is obviously insufficient and...

This contribution argues that the articulation between the state and peasant organizations’ internal structures – the class characteristics of their mass bases, their leaderships and the modes of interaction between the two – is critical for determining the nature of contemporary struggles guided by the discourse of food sovereignty. It will show that that counter-hegemonic demands are not synonymous with counter-hegemonic practice; rather than struggling to replace the neoliberal food...

In this brief essay, I argue that the ‘Brexit’ vote is but the latest manifestation of popular dissatisfaction with the utopian ideal of autonomous markets beyond the reach of regulatory democracy. Brexit represented the collective, if (to my mind) often misguided, efforts of those ‘left behind’ in Britain to protect themselves from the predatory nature of market fundamentalism. In a Polanyian sense, it is a form of social self-protection from self-regulating markets in money, trade and labour.

Financialization challenges Karl Polanyi's thesis of double movement, the thesis that efforts to extend the market evoke efforts to protect humans, nature, and means of production from market forces. Financialization refers to the increased power of financial institutions. The government protects the incomes and assets of financial institutions, but it does little to protect the incomes and assets of households, which are necessary for people to afford healthcare, education, emergencies,...

This short piece suggests that the roots of the successful Brexit vote can be found in the free market purity that was implicit within the ideals behind Thatcherism. Whilst the rhetoric of populist and British (or in many parts English) nationalism were utilised in order to win support, the ideological driving force implicit within many Brexit figureheads rested in the belief that the EU watered down their visions of a harder neoliberal reality. Yet, by stimulating right-wing reactionary...

The article focuses on author Karl Polanyi and his works including "Origins of the Cataclysm," "Freedom from Economics" and "The Liberal Utopia." It mentions the role Polanyi and his works during the Great Recession and in the analysis of the social movement in the age of Porto Alegre and Seattle as they can be compared to a totem for social democracy such as Karl Marx for communism and Hayek for neoliberalism. It adds that during the Great Recession, Polanyi was considered a master theorist...

Following recent calls for a more self-aware and historically sensitive sociology this article reflects on the concept of deindustrialisation and industrial change in this spirit. Using EP Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class and his examination of industrialising culture with its stress on experience, the article asks how these insights might be of value in understanding contemporary processes of deindustrialisation and work. Drawing on a range of sociological,...

This article explores the recent rise of populist politics from the perspective of Karl Polanyi's theory of the ‘double movement’. It firstly introduces Polanyi's understanding of interwar populism, and relates this to his broader critique of liberal economic thought. This framework is then used to analyse three prominent explanations for populism which emerged in the wake of the UK's 2016 EU referendum: globalisation; cultural reaction; and social media. I show how each of these...