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Ancient Athens and Modern Ideology addresses the battle between primitivism and modernism over the ancient economy, focusing especially on the contributions of three major figures, Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and Moses Finley. Finally, a short Epilogue returns to the examination of Marx's puzzle and his manifestly unsuccessful attempt to resolve it. Mohammad Nafissi uses this discussion to put this dispute out of its misery by advancing his own resolution of the primitivist-modernist dispute....

The originality of Karl Polanyi's (1886-1964) work in the interwar period and his work in the 1950's has gained increasing recognition in recent years, during which time the major debate on modernity has erupted. In order to link Polanyi's work with this debate, the article first discusses his legacy on the controversial concept of progress and then relates his position to this debate. Polanyi's position combines the better aspects of the two rival approaches to modernity. The article then...

Cet article se propose d’analyser le sens de l’invention d’une « économie de la connaissance » et de la transformation de la connaissance en bien économique, illustrée par la transformation des droits de propriété intellectuelle. En poursuivant l’analyse de Karl Polanyi à propos des « quasi-marchandises », la connaissance doit plutôt être considérée comme une marchandise « fictive ». C’est le point de vue adopté dans cet article qui montre comment la tentative actuelle de rendre cette...

L’idée qu’une rémunération juste du travail relève d’un calcul du mérite tend à s’imposer comme un lieu commun. Les présupposés et les conséquences d’une telle représentation sont ici interrogés dans la perspective ouverte par les analyses de Polanyi sur les effets dévastateurs de la fiction d’un marché autorégulateur lorsqu’elle atteint des réalités comme celles – parmi d’autres – du travail. Le paradigme du don et le concept arendtien de l’action permettent d’identifier, dans le besoin de...

Les licenciements massifs que connaît depuis vingt ans l’industrie française conduisent les ouvrier(ière)s à exprimer des demandes de réparation symbolique sous des formes nouvelles, dont l’interprétation échappe au paradigme classique de la lutte des classes. C’est avec Karl Polanyi, pour qui l’activité économique n’est pas autre chose que la vie elle-même, et Marcel Mauss, qui a posé le don au centre des relations sociales, que nous tentons de réinterroger la relation de travail dans son...

Cet article revient sur la réception du travail de Karl Polanyi par plusieurs chercheurs importants de la nouvelle sociologie économique. Il montre que Polanyi a fait l’objet de deux types de critiques ayant en commun de contester la possibilité du désencastrement. Ces critiques sont discutables, et il est possible de donner une explication des malentendus liés à cette question en distinguant deux notions complémentaires d’encastrement, la première insistant sur les conditions sociales à...

This paper is based on the idea that the early debate on economic calculation in a planned economy conducted in Vienna among Neurath, Mises, and Polanyi (1919-1925) was the starting point for the development of a particular form of heterodox economic theory propounded by liberal thinkers like Mises and by socialists like Neurath and Polanyi. Mises claimed that solving the problem of calculation was impossible, and consequently that a centrally planned economy was not theoretically feasible....

Voluntary food labels that express ecological, social, and/or place-based values have been posed as an important form of resistance to neoliberalization in the Polanyian sense of protecting land, other natural resources, and labor from the ravages of the market. At the same time, these labels are in some respects analogs to the very things they are purported to resist, namely property rights that allow these ascribed commodities to be traded in a global market. After reviewing the Polanyian...

Abstract: Mirowski''s justification for replacing the foundational principles of neoclassical economics – methodological individualism and rational choice theory – with a theoretical framework informed by cybernetics, information theory, and computational biology, is subject to a critique informed by the work of Karl Polanyi, Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. Mirowski''s proposed alterative is called into question on the basis of two crucial weaknesses. First there is Mirowksi''s penchant...

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the consequences of globalization, in particular the increasing disparity between the wealth of nations and individuals in society. It discusses mechanisms which lead to perpetuation and reinforcement of the situation in which, despite being characterized by inequalities and fragmentation, societies remain by and large cohesive and stable. This article engages with the so-called “Polanyi problem” and with Polanyi’s and other...

This article analyses the key features and origins of three variants of transnational capitalism emerging in Central-Eastern Europe: a neoliberal type in the Baltic states, an embedded neoliberal type in the Visegrád states, and a neocorporatist type in Slovenia. These regimes are characterised by their institutions and performances in marketisation, industrial transformation, social inclusion, and macroeconomic stability. Explanations for regime diversity are developed at two levels. First,...

Building on Karl Polanyi's theory of a societal reaction to the unregulated exchange of what he called fictitious commodities—labour, money and land—this paper links the history of sociology to the history of the market. If the first wave of marketization in the nineteenth century dwelt on the commodification of labour, prompting utopian sociologies, and the second wave of marketization of the twentieth century was provoked by the commodification of money, generating national policy...

Recently Claus Offe has raised the question concerning the fate of the European model of social capitalism. Can the model of social capitalism survive European integration amongst current tendencies? Offe assumes that this model has been challenged by the processes of globalisation and by the integration of postsocialist countries into the European Union. The working hypotheses of this article is that a relatively coherent answer to this question may be offered. The article is divided into...

This article proposes a neo-Polanyian theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics within contemporary market societies. It uses this framework to analyze the divergence between the United States and other developed societies that has become more pronounced in the first years of the twenty-first century. The argument emphasizes the shifting political alliances of the business community in the United States and suggests that from 1994 onward, business lost power in the right-wing...

The article examines the renewed interest in heterodox political economy. Institutionalists, post Keynesians, neo-Marxists, and feminists among others, and various sub-groups provide schools of thought on heterodoxy. The guidelines of institutional-evolutionary political economy (IEPE) are offered alongside socioeconomic analysis and complexity theories. The author outlines the conflict of individual v. structure. Other topics covered include social capital, heterogeneous agents, financial...

Argentina constitutes a revealing textbook case of the link between the liberal utopia of an auto-regulated market, commodity fetishism and economists' theories. How does economic liberalisation, backed by a law on currency convertibility, resolve the crisis of political representation affecting the country since the emergence of Peronism, the «voice of the voiceless», in the 1940s? The liberal utopia of markets' auto-regulation associates taking root in social life with having money, by...

This paper argues for a theoretical approach based on embeddedness which assumes that the economic actor is not an atomized and utilitarian individual, but is in fact positioned within specific historical and institutional contexts in various social networks. This approach is based on Polanyi's critically debated contribution which allows for an empirical study of the diversity of institutional structures and of the significance of configurations of insertion within different social...

This study contends that the various forms of archaic trade that anthropologists have reconstructed on the Northwest Coast of America are explanatory of plot-construction and characterization in Conrad's South-American novel. My thesis is that Nostromo is a figure defined by the practice of potlatch, and that his key presence in the plot entails the representation of a culturally dislocating transition from archaic transactions to modern commerce. The theoretical framework of this chapter...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of rising income inequality on the welfare state in East Asia. Specifically, I explore and test two causal links: 1) the effects of economic globalization on income distribution, and 2) the increase in income inequality on the prospect of socio-welfare policies. Building on Polanyi's politico-economic concept of "double movement," I hypothesize that rapid neoliberalization and financial globalization in East Asia since the early 1990s...