Polanyi and the Instituted Processes of Markets: Introducing a Wellbeing Perspective

Analysis of the role of markets in development is mainly focused on their ability to promote material provisioning. Polanyi argued that markets were only one approach to material provisioning, and that the concept of the self-regulating market had become disembedded from society. He was concerned that processes of provisioning be understood within the wider framework of society and developed the concept of instituted process as a means to understand this role. This paper sets out to explore whether and how Polanyi’s concept of instituted process might work with emerging approaches to analysing wellbeing – what it means to live well – to offer tools for the institutional analysis of markets.