Full bibliography

It is no exaggeration to say that Fred Block and Margaret Somers are almost singlehandedly responsible for reviving interest in Karl Polanyi’s intellectual and political legacy in American sociology. Their contribution has consisted not only in reminding sociologists of the power of Polanyi’s analysis of the rise of market society to make sense of our troubled times but even more importantly in resolving many of the difficult theoretical tangles that Polanyi gets himself into in the course of developing this analysis. Now their various essays, written over three decades, have been revised for publication in a single volume, supplemented with several new essays that introduce novel themes and also attempt to apply Polanyi’s conceptual apparatus to current social and political problems. 1 As a compilation of essays, the resulting volume defies easy summary—and I won’t attempt to offer a full treatment of the many important …