Your search

The dominant narrative around the unfolding capitalist crisis is firmly focused on the dominant economies, and in particular the US. This is understandable given that the proximate causes of the crisis lie in the imperial heartlands and crisis resolution measures taken there will have a global impact. But a 'view from the South' is needed to redress the balance and prevent the decimation of global majority likelihoods being presented as mere collateral damage. The first section below tackles...

Despite the core role played by market in economic theoretical frameworks, the market is still little addressed and finally remains a vague type at best equivoque. This thesis aims to contribute to a collective pattern devoted to the diversification of market analysis since the 70s. This collective pattern is the New Economic Sociology, founded and built on a central idea, i.e. the embeddedness. In the perspective of Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter’s works, the thesis intends thus to...

Drawing on Karl Polanyi's distinction between formal and substantive theory, this article argues that 'an Australian international political economy' could (and should) be erected on the historical study of Australia's substantive articulations with the global economy.

RésuméDans les années 1930, Hannah Arendt et Karl Polanyi ont partagé l’expérience du déracinement, de la désolation et celle de l’effondrement de la civilisation du xixe siècle. À partir de l’analyse de la société de marché pour K. Polanyi et de la condition de l’homme moderne pour H. Arendt, ils montrent comment l’économisme et la construction d’une société économique au xixe siècle, sont à l’origine de l’avènement de la société de masse qui porte des tendances totalitaires. Leur regard...

Part of what makes the current conjuncture so extraordinary is the coincidence of the massive economic meltdown with the implosion of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, and the reappearance of US liberal internationalism in the guise of “smart power” defined in terms of Diplomacy, Development, and Defence. This essay engages these challenges through a framework that distinguishes between “Development” as a post-war international project that emerged in the context of...

This paper addresses a puzzle: how to account for changes in the routine behavior of groups, organizations and individuals in Britain? Following a detailed analysis of state-market interdependence and the role of the state in creating the market, an analysis drawn from the thinking of Weber and Polanyi, we suggest adapting Weber's notion of bureaucratic revolution: in what we call the British bureaucratic revolution, the state has played an essential role in social change by creating...

Antipode was launched into the firmament of the 1970s. We might reflect upon how well the journal and its contributors fully appreciated the historical gravity and weight of what was surrounding the project to create “a radical journal of geography”. What sort of radicalism was on offer? The language was “social relevance” from “a radical (Left) political viewpoint”. In writing to celebrate Antipode's birthday, this time in another, and similar, firmament there is still the need to confront...

The agri-environmental governance of value chains can favour a Polanyian double movement seeking social protection and control over price setting markets or it can advance a neoliberal logic that strives to overcome the few remaining civic and ecologic obstacles to full market dominance. Coupled with a typology that contrasts corporate social responsibility and social economy Fair Trade models, this theoretical framework elucidates positions in the current policy debates about the minimum...

Abstract:  This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental “crises” of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world-scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of “crisis talk” in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that “neoliberalism” has seemingly been de-legitimated. My answer is that a “post-neoliberal” future is...

English translation: Karl POLANYI has an indirect understanding of the societies that were part of the Third World in the fifties. From anthropologists he came out with the principle of reciprocity. He then opposed this principle of economic integration to both redistribution and market principles. Reciprocity can neither be viewed as a practice of primitive societies (as in evolutionist approaches) nor as a gift and counter-gift exchange. Reciprocity needs to be understood as a social whole...

The development economist Dani Rodrik recently declared that “the globalization consensus is dead”. The claim has momentus implications, because this consensus has steered economic policy around the world for the past quarter century. It emanates from the heartland of neoclassical economics, and defines the central tasks of the Washington-based organizations which claim to speak for the world. This essay answers two main questions. First, is Rodrik's claim true, and by what measures of...

The main purpose of this paper is to understand Polanyi's research project after The Great Transformation. This includes his developing ideas on economic history and theory of economic institutions after 1947, when he came to Columbia University in New York. This paper deals mainly with Polanyi's new agenda, namely "the place of the economy in society" in the intellectual context of post World War II United States of America.

On the basis of the "challenge" North (1977) identified in the works of Polanyi, we propose to outline the originality of North's institutionalism, especially in comparison with "new institutionalism" in economics as well as in sociology. Far from endorsing the dichotomy between market and non market dimensions of economic activities at the basis of the analyses of Williamson and Granovetter, North's definition of institutions as "rules of the game" allows him to conceive of institutions as...

This paper examines the extent to which one manifestation of neoliberal transnational legality, represented by the investment rules regime, may be vulnerable to critical resistance in the post-recession environment. If the regime was experiencing a crisis of legitimacy before the global recession set in, it might now be portrayed as having broken down entirely. This paper argues, in contrast, that the regime has a constitution-like resiliency that is intended to adapt and last far beyond the...

I examine Fair Trade (FT) as a social movement that emerges as a regulative force in response to the rise of neoliberalism. I apply Polanyi's (1944, 1957) classic concepts of embeddedness and the double movement to understand the conflict that arises within a coherently motivated social movement. Using interview and participant observation data along with content analysis of FT organization mission statements, this research examines the role of conflict within the FT movement over how best...

This article analyzes the development of “local food” institutions from a social movements perspective. Over the last decade, institutions that “shorten the links” between producer and consumer have developed through a diverse collaboration of many social sectors (farmers, agronomic experts, retailers, chefs, food writers, and several distinct consumer sectors). Some agronomists and rural sociologists critical of the globalization and industrialization of agriculture have recognized this...

Fair trade banana farming in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean has emerged since the late 1990s in response to a crisis. Rulings by the World Trade Organization ended a longstanding trade dispute between the US and the EU by eliminating a system of preferential access of Windward Island bananas to the UK market. What followed was a period of rapid decline in banana exports from these small islands and a widespread abandonment of banana cultivation. Those banana farmers who remain are now...

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...

The core economic functions of production and distribution of goods can be handled by many different methods. After the fall of communism, the market mechanism has become nearly universal. Conventional economic theories argue that this is natural, because it is the best and the most efficient method for organizing economic affairs in a society. This paper, based on the analysis of Polanyi (1944) and Klein (2008) argues that the opposite is true. Market mechanisms conflict with natural...