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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,...

Karl Polanyi knew the market couldn’t solve all ills. History is proving him correct.

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...

The economy was always embedded in society until capitalism arrived on the scene—this perhaps best explains the rise of Donald Trump

A spectre is haunting Europe and the world — the spectre of Fascism (veiled as defensive democracy and common-sense patriotism) and authoritarian neoliberalism (disguised as social protectionism an…

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation and a new political economy Professor Matthew Watson, Assistant Professor Christopher Holmes and Professor Ben Clift, Politics and International Studies Avert…

The author argues that market liberalism should be stopped if the 21st century generation is to avoid the re-emergence of fascism and environmental collapse. The author calls on the political left to offer a different political economy to avoid the consequences of market liberalism and warns against economist Karl Polanyi's assertion that market liberalism always leads to the erosion of society's human and natural substance. He also discusses the reasons for the political turmoil in the U.S.

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.

This study approaches Aristotelian reflections on economy through the eyes of Karl Polanyi, as he resorts to the Greek philosopher to find useful elements when building a profound criticism of the modern market society. Aristotle intuited the uncertain future of a social order devoured by economic relations expanding at a hypertrophic rate. In his time, indeed, this was only a potential threat —he never saw the effective culmination of anything like what we are seeing today—. But he was...

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...

This chapter stresses the point that contrary to arguments proposed by neoliberals, the state has consistently been a relevant actor in the organization of the economy and society. It indicates that the role played by the state was fundamental in the expansion and stability of capitalism in its early stages, during the laissez-faire era of the nineteenth century and under Fordism in the twentieth century. This argument is illustrated through a review of salient aspects of classical liberal...

Featuring essays from Michael Brie (Rose Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin), Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research, New York) and Kari Polanyi-Levitt (McGill University, Montreal). The contemporary Left fights its political battles on various fronts: protesting the crippling structural inequalities that sustain neoliberal economic policy; developing sustainable, community-based alternatives to the consumerism and short-termism that exacerbate the environmental crisis; and advocating for...

From the very beginning a misunderstanding has to be cleared up – the reduction of Polanyi’s work to that of a reformer who wants to counter the excesses of market radicalism with social protective measures and believes that the crisis of modern