La « marchandisation » croissante du monde - Dupuis, Flavien (Esprit, 2016)
Un examen de la « marchandisation » montre qu’elle s’accompagne d’un processus inverse de dé-marchandisation, en particulier du travail, des ressources naturelles, du corps et des échanges, sous l’impulsion de l’État-Providence, du droit et de la société civile. ENG: "Commodification" is accompanied by the opposite movement of de-commodification, in particular for labor, natural ressources, bodies and exchanges, under the impulse of the Welfare state, law and civil society.
Economics
Keywords: commodification; decommodification

Think tanks and the pressures for planning reform in England - Haughton, Graham; Allmendinger, Phil (Environment & Planning C: Government & Policy, 2016)
This article examines how advocacy think tanks have sought to influence the remaking of the English planning system. Pressure for planning reform has come particularly though not exclusively from the political right, which has sought to portray planning as a form of bureaucratic regulation, out of touch with the needs of modern, global economies and the needs of society. This research involved 27 interviewees, the majority of whom have worked in think tanks, whilst others worked in government or in advocacy and professional groups. We explore how despite years of critique and many reforms to the planning system, it is still portrayed as failing. Drawing on ideas around the experimental state, we seek to develop a better understanding of the dynamics behind the process of continuous calls for planning reform before turning to some of the implications for both planning and our understanding of how think tanks seek to influence policy.
Geography
Keywords: advocacy groups; environmental protection planning; experimental state; markets; planning reform; political reform; research institutes; think tanks

Moral economy: Rethinking a radical concept - Palomera, Jaime; Vetta, Theodora (Anthropological Theory, 2016)
This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated and attempts to cast it in a new light by bringing class and capital back into the equation. First, it reviews the seminal works of Thompson and Scott, tracing the origins of the term. It deals with the common conflation of moral economy with Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness, differentiating the two concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these perspectives have been criticized. Second, it dispels dichotomist conceptions separating economic practice from morality, or embedded configurations from disembedded ones. Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, it posits that social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values, which can only be fully grasped by delineating the contours and characteristics of capital accumulation. Third, it contends that moral economy is a dynamic concept because it accounts for class-informed frameworks involving traditions, valuations and expectations. Finally, it argues that moral economy can enrich the concept of hegemony because it pays attention to the often-contradictory values that guide and sustain livelihood practices, through which cultural domination is reproduced or altered.
Anthropology
Keywords: SCOTT; James C.; THOMPSON; E.P.; capital; class; economics - moral & ethical aspects; embeddedness; hegemony; moral economy; saving and investment; social reproduction

Counterbalancing marketization informally: Georgia’s new-institutionalist reform and its discontents - Rekhviashvili, Lela (Debatte: Review of Contemporary German Affairs, 2016)
Discussing the case of institutional change and its discontents in the Georgian context, this article critically engages with one of the most influential perspectives on informal economic practices, namely the new institutionalist perspective. The examination of the responses to the new-institutionalist remedies reveals counterintuitive outcomes to allegedly successful market-enhancing reforms. The reforms were resisted and they failed to deliver the promise of improved entrepreneurial opportunities and eased social vulnerability. I suggest that the new-institutionalist prescriptions result in counterintuitive outcomes as they are based on two misleading assumptions. First, they read informal practices as a priori market-like and second, they see the transition to a market economy as a relatively harmonious process. I argue that, informal economic practices are not necessarily market-like, nor is the establishment of market-enhancing reforms uncontested by informally operating actors. Instead, the persons operating informally draw on non-commodified resources and suffer significant social and economic losses when the state-supported process of marketization deepens. The process of adjusting to marketization and coping with its costs inevitably involves elaboration of practices and interventions that defy and contradict the market logic. Precisely, this dismissal of the need for non-market-based solutions in current theory and practice leads to informalization of the resistance against marketization.
Political Science
Keywords: Eastern Europe; Georgia; Polanyian institutionalism; informal economic practices; informal sector (economics); marketization; markets; new-institutionalism; organizational change

Climate change and the welfare state? Exploring Australian attitudes to climate and social policy - Spies-Butcher, Ben; Stebbing, Adam (Journal of Sociology, 2016)
Despite growing evidence of significant impacts from human-induced climate change, policy responses have been slow. Understanding this policy inertia has led to competing explanations, which either point to the need to build a consensual politics separated from economic partisanship, or which encourage solidarities between environmental and social movements and issues. This article analyses a recent successful mobilisation, leading to the passage of the Clean Energy Act in Australia, to explore the relationship between attitudes to environmental and social protection, particularly among the core constituency in favour of stronger climate action. Using social survey data from the Australian Election Study, the article finds evidence of independent associations between prioritising environmental concerns and support for welfare state expansion, and a realignment of materialist and post-materialist values. This we argue is consistent with Polanyian analysis that posits a link between social and environmental causes based on resistance to commodification.
Sociology
Keywords: clean energy; climate policy; climatic changes - government policy; commodification; law and legislation; political attitudes; social policy; welfare state

How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System - Streeck, Wolfgang (Verso Books, 2016)
The provocative political thinker asks if it will be with a bang or a whimperAfter years of ill health, capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth has given way to stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the money economy has all but evaporated.In How Will Capitalism End?, the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that the world is about to change. The marriage between democracy and capitalism, ill-suited partners brought together in the shadow of World War Two, is coming to an end. The regulatory institutions that once restrained the financial sector’s excesses have collapsed and, after the final victory of capitalism at the end of the Cold War, there is no political agency capable of rolling back the liberalization of the markets.Ours has become a world defined by declining growth, oligarchic rule, a shrinking public sphere, institutional corruption and international anarchy, and no cure to these ills is at hand.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: political science / globalization; political science / political economy; political science / political ideologies / democracy

Polanyi and Political Consumption: A Modern Theoretical Application of the Double Movement - Frank, Phillip M. (Society for Marketing Advances Proceedings, 2016)
There has been an increase in literature on a growing field recently termed, "Political Consumption" (Baumann et al., 2015). Political consumption is defined as the choice or avoidance of products or brands with the aim of changing ethically or politically objectionable institutional or market practices (Shah et al., 2007). The following paper posits a theoretical model for the conceptualization of political consumption. Specifically, the author presents Karl Polanyi and his "Double Movement" as the underpinning theoretical conceptualization of Political consumption. The author also proposes empirical research to test such a theoretical model.
Business; Marketing
Keywords: brand choice; branding (Marketing); consumer behavior; consumption (economics); double movement; political consumption; product management

Moving targets: Carbon pricing, energy markets, and social movements in Australia - Pearse, Rebecca (Environmental Politics, 2016)
Reporting on the origins and directions of social movement strategy on climate and energy issues in the last decade, the shifts in ‘climate movement’ practice are discussed using a neo-Polanyian account of the political economy of climate change combined with sociological analysis of the strategic decisions campaigners reported making. Since the mid-2000s, Australia’s climate movement has been engaged in three concurrent arenas of political contestation. The longest-standing arena of movement activity has been negotiations over climate policy. More recently, activists and communities are engaged in a struggle over the expansion of fossil fuels. A third contest has been waged over the present and future position of renewable energy technologies in Australia’s electricity market. In the wake of climate policy failure, energy campaigns have been deepened, and it seems that a broader energy justice agenda is being forged. New strategic dilemmas are visible in the field.
Environmental Studies; Education
Keywords: Australia; carbon pricing; climate policy; climatic changes; economics; energy industries; energy markets; fossil fuels; renewable energy sources; social movements

Toward a Polanyian network analysis: market and non-market forms of coordination in the rice economy of Vietnam - Prota, Laura (Journal of Economic Geography, 2016)
The study proposes a network-based methodology linking Polanyi's ideal types of coordination and deductive blockmodeling to identify different forms of coordination within an economy. Using the proposed methodology, the economy of rice in postsocialist Vietnam is interpreted as a double movement responding to market liberalization. Qualitative and relational data were collected from 323 households and firms in two communes of the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam. Results show that in one case markets and redistribution co-existed as competing forms of coordination, entailing different relations of production and labor conditions; while in the other they blended and constituted a hybrid house-holding system.
Geography
Keywords: Vietnam; Vietnam transition; blockmodeling; corporate governance; economic coordination; embeddedness; liberalization (finance); local governance; markets; networks; rice - economic aspects; social networks

The Power of Market Fundamentalism. Karl Polanyi’s Critique - Silva Baptista, António L. (Analise Social, 2016)
Sociology
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred L.; SOMERS; Margaret R.; The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); capitalism; nonfiction; review

Embeddedness and migrant tourism entrepreneurs: A Polanyian perspective - Su, Xiaobo; Chen, Zhigang (Environment and Planning A, 2016)
Tourism embodies flows of tourists, capital and information, as well as migration, including migrants who operate businesses. How do migrant entrepreneurs negotiate social ties and economic activities in their destinations? To answer this question, the paper draws on Polanyi’s work on embeddedness to explore migrant tourism entrepreneurs (MTEs) and their modes of integration in the practice of social and economic life. We argue that MTEs are situated in a complex matrix in which they must build economic connections with locals and government officials, yet maintain a respectful distance with local groups, and develop embedded ties with other fellow migrants and tourists. Embeddedness, juxtaposed with distance, indicates that in tourist destinations, mixed patterns of economic and social relations significantly influence MTEs’ social and economic life. A Polanyian perspective on embeddedness can provide useful theoretical tenets to understand entrepreneurial activities in a mobile world.
Geography
Keywords: Lijiang ancient town; embeddedness; migrant tourism entrepreneurs; social and economic life; tourism production system

Karl Polanyi and the Reality of Society - Behrent, Michael C. (History and Theory, 2016)
This essay reconsiders Karl Polanyi's famous thesis about the “embeddedness” of the economy through an examination of two recent books: For a New West, a collection of previously unavailable essays by Polanyi, and Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers's The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique. The guiding thread of this analysis is the claim that a constant in Polanyi's thought was his belief in what he called “the reality of society,” that is, that society exists as a social fact over and above the individuals that constitute it. The essay begins by tracing Polanyi's intellectual development, drawing primarily on the essays found in For a New West. Polanyi's quest to reconcile individual freedom with social solidarity led him first, in the years between the First and Second World Wars, to embrace liberal socialism, before his readings in anthropology persuaded him that traditional economies “embed” the economy in social relations and that the nineteenth-century liberal project of a “disembedded” economy (through the so-called free market) is a departure from this anthropological norm. The essay then examines and questions Block and Somers's claim that Polanyi maintained that the economy is always “already embedded,” arguing notably that Polanyi believed that the advent of market society entailed an economy that was actually disembedded from social relations, not merely one that was re-embedded in an alternative set of institutions.
History
Keywords: already embedded; anthropology; capitalism; embeddedness; liberalism; markets; reality of society; socialism; society

'Socialist Accounting' by Karl Polanyi: with preface 'Socialism and the embedded economy' - Bockman, Johanna; Fischer, Ariane; Woodruff, David (Theory & Society, 2016)
Ariane Fischer, David Woodruff, and Johanna Bockman have translated Karl Polanyi's 'Sozialistische Rechnungslegung' ['Socialist Accounting'] from 1922. In this article, Polanyi laid out his model of a future socialism, a world in which the economy is subordinated to society. Polanyi described the nature of this society and a kind of socialism that he would remain committed to his entire life. Accompanying the translation is the preface titled 'Socialism and the embedded economy.' In the preface, Bockman explains the historical context of the article and its significance to the socialist calculation debate, the social sciences, and socialism more broadly. Based on her reading of the accounting and society that Polanyi offers here, Bockman argues that scholars have too narrowly used Polanyi's work to support the Keynesian welfare state to the exclusion of other institutions, have too broadly used his work to study social institutions indiscriminately, and have not recognized that his work shares fundamental commonalities with and often unacknowledged distinctions from neoclassical economics.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: Keynesian economics; Keynesianism; embeddedness; neoclassical economics; social accounting; socialism; socialist accounting; socialist calculation debate; welfare state

Polanyi, political-economic opportunity structure and protest: capitalism and contention in the post-communist Czech Republic - Císař, Ondřej; Navrátil, Jiří (Social Movement Studies, 2016)
Drawing on Polanyian logic, we focus on the gradual institutionalization of capitalism in the Czech Republic and the protests accompanying this process. We hypothesize that different configurations of political economy, or what we term the political economic opportunity structure, trigger different popular responses and are a potent indicator of expected protest forms. To analyze this we chose to carry out a country case study, in which many variables commonly associated with political mobilization, in particular the state’s institutional structure, are kept constant. By contrast, models of political economy vary over time, as a function of the extent and form of the international integration of capitalism. We focus on three configurations of political economy – national, globalized and austerity models – and for each one, identify the characteristics and mechanisms, i.e. concrete policy measures, that shape particular protest patterns in the context of our case study. In theoretical terms, this paper seeks to present one possible response, in this case a Polanyian response, to recent complaints about the disappearance of capitalism from social movement studies. At the same time, given the focus of this special issue, our goal is to analyze the current wave of anti-austerity protest that emerged in relation to what has been labelled the Great Recession.
Sociology; Economics
Keywords: Czech Republic; anti-austerity; economic protest; political economic opportunity structure; political opportunity structure; social movement studies

Economic Exchange: Interdisciplinary Conceptualizations for Management Applications - Das, Roshni (Vilakshan: The XIMB Journal of Management, 2016)
The concept of 'Economic Exchange', taken in the neoclassical economics sense, has traditionally yielded a unilateral direction for business and management studies, that of profit maximization. This paper argues that, the same, when conceptualized from a sociological and anthropological point of view in particular, taking theorization by Polanyi (1946), Weber (1978) and Zafirovski (2001) into cognizance, can generate many alternative and interesting directions. Illustrations for the same have been provided in the form of management applications. Some controversies in the lifecycle of the concept have been noted such as that of the 'rational' man or Homo Economicus, which eventually led to the emergence of socio-economics and the consequential paradigmatic realignments among scholars, as a rebuttal to the dominant paradox. We undertake a conceptual exploration and synthesis of the relevant trans-disciplinary literature. Future implications for discursive research in management are discussed.
Management Studies
Keywords: WEBER; Max; 1864-1920; ZAFIROVSKI; M.; anthropology; economic exchange; economic man; homo economics; homo economicus; industrial management; methodological indivisualism; profit maximization; socioeconomics

Re-embedding Financial Stakes within Ethical and Social Values in Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) - Revelli, Christophe (Research in International Business and Finance, 2016)
The aim of this study is to understand how the definition of ethics in finance has steered socially responsible investing (SRI) towards a financial approach where ethics is guided by finance. Following a critical perspective of historical and modern SRI, we advocate a reconceptualization of the SRI paradigm through a framework that re-embeds finance in ethical and social values according to Polanyi's theory of embeddedness. To conclude, we propose an SRI model where impact measurement and extra-financial performance guide investments.
International Business
Keywords: economic anthropology; economic sociology; embeddedness; general financial markets: general (includes measurement and data) G10; social and economic stratification; social finance; socially responsible investing

Formal Economy, Substantive Economy, and Economism - Sobel, Richard; Postel, Nicolas (Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2016)
Polanyi analyzes the historical deployment of a “formal” economic science starting from the “market-scarcity-instrumental rationality triptych.” This triptych, and the knowledge associated with it, is shown to be more than merely a “substantial” economic science’s interest in the triptych “need-nature-institution.” While we must agree with Polanyi that economism is ill-suited to the first triptych, we hesitate to accept his suggested alternative, a heterogeneous mixture of naturalism and institutionalism, essentialism and historicism.
Sociology; Economics
Keywords: capital shortages; capitalism; economic systems; economism; essentialism (philosophy); formal economy; historicism; institutionalism (religion); profit; rationality; scarcity; substantive economy

TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCE REGIMES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: MULTINATIONALS, STATES AND NGOs AS POLITICAL ACTORS - Morgan, Glenn; Peinado Gomes, Marcus Vinícius; Perez-Aleman, Paola (Administração de Empresas em Revista, 2016)
The article discusses the function of the state within Polanyi's double movement and the limitations of the state as a governance mechanism under globalisation, the way transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and social movements examine gaps in governance within capitalism as an alternative way of preventing the market powers exercised multinational corporation (MNC), and the way the Global South position itself within the global economy and the creation of governance mechanisms.
Economics
Keywords: double movement; globalization; nongovernmental organizations

Beyond prices: The cultural economy of water in the Cordillera highlands of Northern Luzon, Philippines - Abansi, Corazon L.; Doble, Maria Consuelo C.; Cariño, Jessica K.; Rola, Agnes C. (Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 2016)
This paper analyses how the economic actions of water distribution and exchange are embedded in the culture of indigenous communities in the Cordillera highlands of Northern Luzon, Philippines. Such actions are fundamental to water access and provisioning. Data was derived from a series of focus group discussions conducted with various water users, including households, farmers, enterprises and local government officials, and from upstream, midstream and downstream communities along the Balili River, a critical watershed in the Cordillera highlands. The study area exhibits a mix of livelihood systems and both formal and traditional institutions of decision-making. Recognising that water is both an economic and social good, this paper draws inspiration from Polanyi's concept of embeddedness. Cases of three communities suggest that water distribution and exchange are embedded in the community's socio-cultural spaces, but the extent of embeddedness declines as communities transform from subsistence to market-based economies. Embeddedness also determines value and availability of water. The paper contributes to the discourse on the cultural economy of water and provides direction on new modes of decision-making on river management that promise more inclusive, equitable and ecologically sustainable outcomes.
Economics
Keywords: Philippine Cordillera; cultural economy; embeddedness; water distribution and exchange

Regulating class in the neoliberal era: the role of the state in the restructuring of work and employment relations - Howell, Chris (Work, Employment & Society, 2016)
The article argues that, in the last three decades, states have become more preoccupied with, and interventionist in, the regulation of class relations in order to facilitate a broad liberalization of employment relations institutions. Drawing on insights from Regulation theorists and Karl Polanyi, the article examines the market-making role of states during periods of transition from one growth regime to another. The more prominent role of the state follows from the stickiness of institutions and the role that states can play in compensating workers from the consequences of liberalization. The article illustrates the argument with an examination of France and Sweden in the period since the early 1980s. For all their differences, in both cases substantial liberalization of employment relations institutions took place and in both cases, but for the state, the process of liberalization would have been either stymied or much more uneven than it was.
Political Science
Keywords: class; employment relations; liberalization; state

The failure of regulation: Work, environment and production at Taranto’s ILVA - Greco, Lidia; Chiarello, Franco (Economic & Industrial Democracy, 2016)
The article focuses on the case of the largest steel plant in Europe, located in Taranto (Italy), to argue that its current crisis is not simply dictated by technological or managerial failings. Rather, the article contends that its problems stem from a regulatory crisis and, specifically, from the failure of the deregulation model pursued after the industry’s process of privatization. Such a model has hinged upon the logic of a big private firm that, on the one hand, has sought to disembed itself from the socio-institutional context and, on the other, has set and followed its own rules with disruptive effects on the local society and environment, as well as on the plant’s economic viability. Such a model entered a crisis when the other socio-institutional actors started to react to the disastrous situation existing in Taranto. To use Polanyian language, a ‘double movement’ has emerged: disruptive pressures have triggered defensive reactions.
Political Science
Keywords: Taranto (Italy); economic democracy; employee ownership; employee participation in management; financial crises; financial crisis; industrial democracy; institutional change; privatization - Italy; sociology; technological innovations

The business of the Anthropocene? Substantivist and diverse economies perspectives on SME engagement in local low carbon transitions - North, Peter (Progress in Human Geography, 2016)
The involvement of private sector actors in low carbon urban transitions is a neglected element of geographical analysis. Drawing on Polanyian, cultural economic geographies and the non-capitalocentric ethics of JK Gibson-Graham’s diverse economies perspective, the paper engages with the wider literature on the engagement of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in environmental action, corporate social responsibility and low carbon transitions to develop a substantivist account of the contribution of SMEs to local low carbon transitions. The paper argues that, contra formalist economic analyses of economic rationality, SME owners should not be thought of as uncritical profit maximizers but as actors in favour of positive low carbon futures. Thus the paper argues that Polanyian economic geographies and diverse economies perspectives, which rarely speak to each other, can be drawn together, and concludes with suggestions for future research.
Geography
Keywords: Polanyian geographies; carbon offsetting; cultrual geography; diverse economies; environmental protection; local business representation; local economic development; low carbon transitions; small business; social responsibility of business; substantivist

Karl Polanyi: The Hungarian Writings - Dale, Gareth (Oxford University Press, 2016)
The work of Karl Polanyi has gained in influence in recent years to become a point of reference to a wide range of leading authors in the fields of economics, politics, sociology, and social policy. The volume is a combination of reflections on, and assessment of, the nature of Polanyi's contribution and new strands of work, both theoretical and empirical, that has been inspired by Polanyi's insights. It gathers together the key contributions to the first ever workshop on the work of Karl Polanyi held in the United Kingdom. The workshop was opened by Kari Polanyi-Levitt, who also has written the Introductory Foreword to this book. Several of the contributions develop Polanyian ideas in relation to contemporary capitalism. However, in a critical spirit, other contributions in the volume substantially transform his concept 'instituted economic process' in considering a broad range of contemporary socio-economic change: markets for mobile telephony, call centre operations, and European labour markets.
Political Science
Keywords: history - modern; political history; political philosophy; political theory

Globalization and Its Countermovement: Marxian Contention or Polanyian Resistance? - Gemici, Kurtuluş; Nair, Manjusha (Sociology Compass, 2016)
This article surveys the scholarship on the countermovement against the diffusion of capitalism and market economy in the Global South. We identify two streams of analysis in the literature. On the one hand, scholars observe contentious politics instances where the spread of capitalist production relations enables the associational capacity and bargaining power of social classes. On the other hand, there are voluminous studies on contentious politics in the Global South where groups such as peasants, shopkeepers, and urban poor resist the intensification of the market economy. We use Beverly Silver's distinction between Marx-type and Polanyi-type protests, which focuses on how globalization makes and unmakes social groups, to unpack the heterogeneity of the impacts and experiences of globalization. We argue that although Silver's distinction is of great analytical value, there are strong warrants for separating the effects of the market economy from capitalism in studying contentious politics against globalization. Such an analytical strategy (i) expands the scope of the distinction between Marxian and Polanyian contention to social groups other than the working class and (ii) emphasizes that the roots of these struggles lie in the interconnected diffusion of capitalism and market economy.
Sociology
Keywords: Global South; MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; SILVER; Beverly; countermovement; global south; globalization

In search of Karl Polanyi's International Relations theory - Dale, Gareth (Review of International Studies, 2016)
Karl Polanyi is principally known as an economic historian and a theorist of international political economy. His theses are commonly encountered in debates concerning globalisation, regionalism, regulation and deregulation, and neoliberalism. But the standard depiction of his ideas is based upon a highly restricted corpus of his work: essentially, his published writings, in English, from the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing upon a broader range of Polanyi's work in Hungarian, German, and English, this article examines his less well-known analyses of international politics and world order. It sketches the main lineaments of Polanyi's international thought from the 1910s until the mid-1940s, charting his evolution from Wilsonian liberal, via debates within British pacifism, towards a position close to E. H. Carr's realism. It reconstructs the dialectic of universalism and regionalism in Polanyi's prospectus for postwar international order, with a focus upon his theory of 'tame empires' and its extension by neo-Polanyian theorists of the 'new regionalism and European integration. It explores the tensions and contradictions in Polanyi's analysis, and, finally, it hypothesises that the failure of his postwar predictions provides a clue as to why his research on international relations dried up in the 1950s.
Political Science
Keywords: CARR; Edward Hallett; 1892-1982; deregulation; international relations; liberalism; neoliberalism

Embedding Capital: Political-Economic History, the United States, and the World - Kramer, Paul A. (Journal of the Gilded Age & Progressive Era, 2016)
The article examines U.S. political and economical history in the context of its impact as well as influence to world affairs. Topics discussed include the Marxist's historical approaches to analysis of capital as in Karl Polanyi's take on American capitalism, "primitive accumulation" with regimes of commodification and the "new history of capitalism" hype. Also mentioned were transnational expansion of humanitarianism, international education sponsorship and Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy.
History
Keywords: United States - politics & government - history; capital; capitalism; economics - United States - history; embeddedness; humanitarianism

Brexit: Doom, or Europe’s Polanyi Moment? — Welcome to TheFamily - Colin, Nicolas (Medium, 2016)
N/A
Keywords: Brexit; entrepreneurship; fascism

The New Washington Consensus: Millennial Philanthropy and the Making of Global Market Subjects - Mitchell, Katharyne; Sparke, Matthew (Antipode, 2016)
This paper outlines the emergence of a New Washington Consensus associated with leading philanthropies of the new millennium. This emergent development paradigm by no means represents a historic break with the market rationalities of neoliberalism, nor does it represent a radical departure from older models of early 20th century philanthropy. Rather, it is new in its global ambition to foster resilient market subjects for a globalized world; and new in its employment of micro-market transformations to compensate for macro-market failures. Focusing on reforms pioneered by the new philanthropic partnerships in education and global health, the paper indicates how the targets of intervention are identified as communities that have been failed by both governments and markets. The resulting interventions are commonly justified in terms of “return on investment”. But the problems they target keep returning because the underlying causes of failure are left unaddressed.
Geography
Keywords: development; education; global health; millennial philanthropy; neoliberalism; philanthropy; triple movement

Expanding the labor theory of value - Collins, Jane (Dialectical Anthropology, 2016)
This paper revisits debates over the labor theory of value in the 1970s and 1980s and proposes an expansion and revision for the neoliberal era. It draws on three empirical cases of social movements grappling with contemporary changes in the societal division of labor and argues that they can best be understood as 'revaluation' projects seeking to bring recognition to aspects of the economy that are necessary for its long-term sustainability but are not 'counted' as important.
Anthropology
Keywords: division of labor; domestic labor; environment; feminism; labor theory of value; labour theory of value; neoliberalism; public sector; shareholder value; social movements; sustainability

Apple, Foxconn, and Chinese workers’ struggles from a global labor perspective - Pun, Ngai; Shen, Yuan; Guo, Yuhua; Lu, Huilin; Chan, Jenny; Selden, Mark (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2016)
To enrich the discussion of global labor, between 2010 and 2016, we studied Apple’s value chain, Foxconn’s mode of labor control, and Chinese workers’ struggles. Through our fieldwork in China we also examined Apple’s and Foxconn’s responses to the spate of worker suicides, workers’ resistance, the activism of scholar and student groups, and transnational justice campaigns. We conclude with reflection on global labor studies in light of the debates between Karl Polanyi’s counter movement and Karl Marx’s class-based struggle.
Sociology; Asia Studies
Keywords: Apple; Apple Inc.; China; Chinese workers; Foxconn; Foxconn Technology Group (Company); MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; countermovement; global labor studies; global labour studies; student and scholar activism; value chains; working class

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left - Dale, Gareth (Columbia University Press, 2016)
Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) was one of the twentieth century's most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of globalization's disruptions and the Great Depression's underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. This biography shows how the major personal and historical events of his life transformed him from a bourgeois radical into a Christian socialist but also informed his ambivalent stance on social democracy, communism, the New Deal, and the shifting intellectual scene of postwar America.The book begins with Polanyi's childhood in the Habsburg Empire and his involvement with the Great War and Hungary's postwar revolution. It connects Polanyi's idealistic radicalism to the political promise and intellectual ferment of Red Vienna and the horror of fascism. The narrative revisits Polanyi's oeuvre in English, German, and Hungarian, includes exhaustive research in five archives, and features interviews with Polanyi's daughter, students, and colleagues, clarifying the contradictory aspects of the thinker's work. These personal accounts also shed light on Polanyi's connections to scholars, Christians, atheists, journalists, hot and cold warriors, and socialists of all stripes. Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left engages with Polanyi's biography as a reflection and condensation of extraordinary times. It highlights the historical ruptures, tensions, and upheavals that the thinker sought to capture and comprehend and, in telling his story, engages with the intellectual and political history of a turbulent epoch.
History
Keywords: European history; biography; history - Europe / Austria & Hungary; history - United States / 20th Century; history - modern; history - modern / 20th Century; social science; sociology

The catastrophe of neo-liberalism Finance, emancipation and disintegration - Foster, Roger (Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2016)
My article provides a systematic interpretation of the transformation of capitalist society in the neo-liberal era as a form of what Karl Polanyi called ‘cultural catastrophe’. I substantiate this claim by drawing upon Erich Fromm’s theory of social character. Fromm’s notion of social character, I argue, offers a plausible, psychodynamic explanation of the processes of social change and the eventual class composition of neo-liberal society. I argue, further, that Fromm allows us to understand the psychosocial basis of the process that Polanyi calls cultural catastrophe. This requires an elucidation of the major social forces of financialization and emancipation which, I argue, proved to be important formative factors in the emergence of neo-liberal society. The cultural catastrophe of neo-liberalism concerns the working class, whose prevailing social character has become misaligned with the new expectations and requirements of neo-liberal society.
Philosophy
Keywords: FROMM; Erich; cultural catastrophe; emancipation; financialization; neo-liberalism; neoliberalism

The Commonalities of Global Crises: Markets, Communities and Nostalgia - Karner, Christian; Weicht, Bernhard (Springer, 2016)
Bringing together contributions from an international group of social scientists, this collection examines diverse crises, both historical and contemporary, which implicate market forces, widening inequalities, social exclusion, forms of resistance, and ideological polarisation. The Commonalities of Global Crises offers carefully researched case studies which stretch across large geographical distances- from Egypt to the US and from northern, central, eastern and southern Europe to South America- and covers timely issues including human rights, slavery, care, migration, racism, and the far right. The volume demonstrates that such different settings and diverse concerns are characterized by a common tension in which the crises that unfold around pressures of widening marketization and commodification are met by the (re)building or re-assertion of various communities, and competing politics of solidarity and nostalgia.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: business & economics / general; commodification; disembedding; double movement; economic theory; political science / general; social science / general

Karl Polanyi and twenty-first century socialism - Block, Fred (openDemocracy, 2016)
Polanyi’s views were the exact opposite of his contemporary, Joseph Schumpeter, who famously defined democracy as giving people a choice over which elite group would rule over them.
Sociology
Keywords: socialism

The Hill and Knowlton Affair and the Marketization of the First Gulf War. a Polanyian Perspective - Petre, Silviu Valentin (Proceedings of the Scientific Conference AFASES, 2016)
The 1990-1991 First Gulf War became a classic manual of PR or manipulation, depends on the terms one chooses. Within the whole manipulative framework, Hill and Knowlton, one of USA’ s foremost advertising brands played a pivotal, ripple-making role. With the money provided by Kuwaiti government in exile, H&K faked several testimonies according to which Saddam’s soldiers had been responsible of appalling deeds by pillaging Kuwaiti hospitals, where they stole incubators and left newborn babies to die. Thus, President Bush gained legitimacy in front of the US Congress and international fora to assemble a coalition of the willing to deal with Iraqi aggression. This article will not only dwell upon the abovementioned episode, but shall also sketch an explanatory framework using Karl Polanyi’s writings.
Defence Studies
Keywords: BUSH; George H.W.; Gulf War; HUSSEIN; Saddam; Hill and Knowlton Strategies (Company); POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964 - political and social views; Persian Gulf War; 1991; manipulation; manipulative behavior; public opinion; public relations & politics

Quality Work and the Moral Economy of European Employment Policy - Bolton, Sharon; Laaser, Knut; Mcguire, Darren (JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2016)
Following a decade of radical economic and workplace restructuring, it is important to understand how state employment policies support or deny human flourishing. This article utilizes a realist document analysis approach and reviews European employment policy through a moral economy lens. It fuses different moral economy approaches, drawing together the work of Karl Polanyi and Andrew Sayer a multi-layered conceptual lens is offered that explores the tensions between a commodification of labour and human needs. A dominant market ideology is revealed, highlighting how quality work has been subsumed by the flexicurity agenda in the EU.
Business & Management
Keywords: European employment policy; dignity; employment; flexicurity; management studies; moral economy; quality work

Public Capital and the Post-Communist Welfare State: The Case of Poland - Rae, Gavin (Polish Sociological Review, 2016)
This paper provides an overview of some of the main theories of the welfare state. It builds upon Polanyi's theory of the double-movement and relates this to Bourdieu's concept of multiple capitals. It argues that the welfare state can be understood as a form of public capital, both in an economic and sociological sense. The welfare state emerges and is maintained due to a social countermovement that at least partly removes areas of socio-economic life out of commodity relations. In turn this creates public capital, which is both economic and social. In the post-Communist countries most of this public capital was created during a period when almost the whole of economic and social life was controlled by the state. Once the Communist system collapsed, so the accompanying policy of full-employment and system of social welfare organised through state enterprises disappeared. This was met with a large rise in unemployment and labour deactivation, meaning that many social benefits were created during the initial years of the transition. Also, the post-Communist systems inherited large amounts of public capital in the form of public services such as health and education. Through the example of Poland this paper analyses how this public capital was initially maintained and even developed during the early transition period, but then how a process of commodifying it was later begun.
Sociology
Keywords: BOURDIEU; Pierre; 1930-2002; Poland; capital; communism; countermovement; post-communism; public welfare; social movements; social policy; social services; welfare state

From Keynes to Piketty: The Century that Shook Up Economics - Haan, Peter de (Springer, 2016)
From Keynes to Piketty provides the reader with an accessible and entertaining insight into the development of economic thought over the past century. Starting with John Maynard Keynes's bestseller, The Economic Consequences of Peace (1919), and ending with Thomas Piketty's blockbuster, Capital in the Twenty First Century (2014), the author explains which dramatic political and economic events changed the way economists interpreted these events, and how they revolutionized the economic science.The book contains biographies of Keynes, Schumpeter, Galbraith, Hayek, Friedman, Hirschman, North, and Piketty, alongside others, and highlights their extraordinary lives and works, anecdotes about them, and their often sharp differences of opinion. Extensive summaries of their main works provide the interested scholar and student with an accurate presentation of their contents. A must-read for all those who wonder what happened to economics during the past century, and why.
Economics
Keywords: KEYNES; John Maynard; 1883-1946; PIKETTY; Thomas; business & economics; economic history

Polanyi’s ‘substantive approach’ to the economy in action? Conceptualising social enterprise as a public health ‘intervention’ - Roy, Michael J.; Hackett, Michelle T. (Review of Social Economy, 2016)
For several decades now, critical public health researchers have highlighted the deleterious effects that pursuing neoliberal policies can have on the ‘causes of the causes’ of poor health and upon growing health inequalities. This paper argues that the conceptual tools of Karl Polanyi can help lend particular insight into this issue. The specific example that this paper focuses upon is the ‘social enterprise’: a form of organisation that combines both social and business objectives. The paper explores, conceptually, whether social enterprises may have the potential to act as one component of a neo-Polanyian countermovement: helping to re-embed the economy back into society, and offering greater recognition for a more comprehensive and socially imbued concept of health. Importantly, this potential is critically examined in the context of neoliberal hegemony, where challenges to the status quo have regularly been met with assimilation, co-option and/or repression.
Sociology
Keywords: health inequality; public health; social enterprise; substantive approach

Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World - McCloskey, Deirdre N. (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
There’s little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists—from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty—say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. “Our riches,” she argues, “were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea.” Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn’t work, and didn’t. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas—ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois Deal, and we were all enriched. Few economists or historians write like McCloskey—her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity, yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don’t come any more ambitious, or captivating, than Bourgeois Equality. KM - Part IV heavily engages with Polanyi's ideas, including embeddedness
Economics; Political Science
Keywords: Europe; business & economics; economic history; embeddedness; history; political science; political theory; social science

The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 - McNeill, J. R. (Harvard University Press, 2016)
The pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a new age—the Anthropocene. Humans have altered the planet’s biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. The Great Acceleration explains the causes, consequences, and uncertainties of this massive uncontrolled experiment.
History; Political Science
Keywords: anthropocene; history / modern / 20th Century; history / world; nature / environmental conservation & protection; political science / public policy / environmental policy

England's Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution - Steinberg, Marc W. (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
With England’s Great Transformation, Marc W. Steinberg throws a wrench into our understanding of the English Industrial Revolution, largely revising the thesis at heart of Karl Polanyi’s landmark The Great Transformation. The conventional wisdom has been that in the nineteenth century, England quickly moved toward a modern labor market where workers were free to shift from employer to employer in response to market signals. Expanding on recent historical research, Steinberg finds to the contrary that labor contracts, centered on insidious master-servant laws, allowed employers and legal institutions to work in tandem to keep employees in line. Building his argument on three case studies—the Hanley pottery industry, Hull fisheries, and Redditch needlemakers—Steinberg employs both local and national analyses to emphasize the ways in which these master-servant laws allowed employers to use the criminal prosecutions of workers to maintain control of their labor force. Steinberg provides a fresh perspective on the dynamics of labor control and class power, integrating the complex pathways of Marxism, historical institutionalism, and feminism, and giving readers a subtle yet revelatory new understanding of workplace control and power during England’s Industrial Revolution.
History; Economics; Sociology
Keywords: business & economics / economic history; economic history; history / Europe / Great Britain; history / general; industrial revolution; social science / sociology / general

For real: land as capital and commodity - Christophers, Brett (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2016)
With the aim of helping to revivify a stalled geographical literature on the place of land in capitalist political economies, this article presents a critique of the popular idea that land can be usefully conceptualised as a ‘fictitious’ form of capital or commodity. The critique is based primarily on a close and critical consideration of the grounds on which the identifiers and theorists of such fictitiousness – Marx/Harvey in the case of capital, Polanyi in the case of the commodity – distinguished it from ‘real’ variants. Those grounds, the article argues, are tenuous. And, far from disabling us, treating land as no more or less real than other forms of capital and commodity can empower us in productively revisiting and centring the question of land's political economy – a crucial undertaking in a world where the materiality of land to social relations is writ increasingly large.
Geography
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; capitalism; economic geography; fictitious capital; fictitious commodities; fictitious commodity; land; political economy; social economy

Fair trade certification as oversight: an analysis of fair trade international and the small producers' symbol - Clark, Patrick; Hussey, Ian (New Political Economy, 2016)
In this article we analyse Fair Trade as a form of non-state regulation, building on the literature on the internal politics and governance of Fair Trade International (FTI) certification. We focus on recent developments in the FTI certification system, including the split of Fair Trade USA from FTI and the emergence of the Small Producer's Symbol (SPP) as an alternative to FTI certification. We highlight the role of the three regional Producer Networks, in particular the Latin American Producer Network, the CLAC, in the politics and governance of the FTI system. In order to analyse these issues we employ an alternative reading of Karl Polanyi's work in relation to Fair Trade. We problematise the claim made by some in the literature that FTI certification is an example of Polanyi's concept of re-embedding. Instead, we draw on Polanyi's concept of oversight to analyse Fair Trade certification. We argue that the emergence of the SPP out of the CLAC shows promise for being a mechanism of oversight more reflective of Polanyian re-embedding than FTI certification. We also emphasise how the growth of the SPP and the pressure from the Producer Networks have prompted governance reform within the FTI system.
Political Science; Sociology
Keywords: Canada; Carleton University; European Union countries; certification; economic conditions; fair trade; financial crises; financial crisis; governance; liberalization (finance); municipal services; producer networks; small producers; unfair competition

Polanyian Pathways: A review of The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique by Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers and For a New West: Essays, 1919–1958 by Karl Polanyi; edited by Giorgio Resta and Mariavittoria Catanzariti - Peck, Jamie (Economic Geography, 2016)
Geography
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred; CATANZARITI; Mariavittoria; For a New West: Essays 1919-1958 (Book); POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; RESTA; Giorgio; SOMERS; Margaret R.; The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); book review; nonfiction

Neoliberalism, Polanyi's Protective Response, and Veblenian Waste - Wrenn, Mary V. (Journal of Economic Issues (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 2016)
As capitalism unfolds, continual technological advance – in combination with the relentless accumulation imperative – serves to amplify material progress. The expanding economic sphere begins to pervade the everyday lives and thinking of the individual. The institutionalization of the market fundamentally changes the structure of society and, in so doing, fundamentally changes the institutional structure through which individuals are socialized. The social dislocation generated therein prompts Karl Polanyi's protective response. Despite this market intensification, the existence of the economic surplus undermines the syllogistics of market-determined pricing. Evidence of the economic surplus and Veblenian waste as well as of the fact that the competitive law of value is not operable under neoliberalism is found in the lobby industry and campaign contributions. This research seeks to explicitly connect the concepts of Polanyi's protective response with Veblenian waste and the economic surplus in order to better understand how the irrational system of neoliberalism continues to evolve.
Sociology; Economics
Keywords: Veblen; capitalism; economic sociology; economic surplus; institutional economics; neoliberalism

Saving the Commons in an Age of Plunder - Batt, H. William (American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2016)
Land ownership, as commonly understood today, originated with the enclosure movement during the English Tudor era almost four centuries ago. Karl Polanyi referred to this “propertization” of nature as the “great transformation.” That land, water, and air was a social commons is now archaic and forgotten, and with it the classical economic concept of rent, which was, in theory, once paid to royalty as the earth's guardian. Garrett Hardin's article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” raised alarm about the abuse and loss of this realm, and he recommended constraints and privatization to prevent this. Most people view titles to landed property much as they do their household goods, but Henry George saw that the earth should be seen as a common resource and its value taxed to benefit everyone. This would restore economic equilibrium to market exchanges and pay for government services. The capture of natural resource rents can supplant taxes on wages and capital goods, and it comports with all textbook principles of sound tax theory. This policy can be the modern replacement for the commons, and implementing resource rent capture is both economically and technically feasible.
Economics; Sociology
Keywords: commons; propertization of nature

Az „új közgazdaságtanról” - Polányi Károly kölcsönbe vett szemüvegén keresztül... (Heurisztika és program) - Balázs, Krémer (Szociologiai Szemle, 2016)
This paper aims at interpreting Polanyi's theory on substantive and embedded economy as a possible insight to interpret rich empirical findings of “new economics”. Key phenomena and concepts of Polanyi, especially the “latent commodities” may provide new explanations on how inappropriate political regulations and social conventions biased the integration of land (natural resources), labor and money into past-decades markets, and how led to crises. As a hypothesis the paper suppose more about the relevance of Polanyi's theory by contributing to overcome the crisis of the sociology. Mainstream economic, social and human sciences seek how human and social nature causes biases and fallacies in market mechanisms. Following Polanyi's inspirations, the question should be reversed: the sociological question is not how society impact markets, but rather, how markets contribute to substantive and embedded economy, both on micro (household) and macro (markets, redistribution-welfare state, and reciprocity - new kinships and civic society) levels. (English)
Sociology
Keywords: Polányi; beágyazódottság; embedded economy; substantive economy; szubsztantív gazdaság; új közgazdaságtan

Beyond the Minsky and Polanyi Moments - Gemici, Kurtuluş (Politics & Society, 2016)
The period of very high foreclosure rates sets the 2007–8 financial meltdown apart from similar banking crises fueled by asset price booms. Why did the 2007–8 meltdown lead to a prolonged foreclosure crisis? Through a theoretical perspective built on Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, Polanyi’s ideas about adverse consequences of commodity fiction, financialization of homes, and institutional coupling, I argue that commodifying houses as financial assets exposed mortgage loan holders to price fluctuations originating in capital markets and elevated their risk of default. I show how increased exposure to price fluctuations followed from the tight coupling between U.S. housing and capital markets, a coupling that resulted directly from the rising preponderance of securitization in U.S. housing finance. I provide further evidence from countries where housing finance was tightly coupled with capital markets (Iceland and Ireland) to countries where housing finance did not rely dominantly on capital markets (Canada and the Netherlands).
Sociology
Keywords: MINSKY; Hyman; United States; asset-backed financing; economic aspects; financial instability; financialization; foreclosure; great recession; housing foreclosures; institutional coupling; recessions - 2008-2013; securitization

The New Urban Fiscal Crisis - Kirkpatrick, L. Owen (Politics & Society, 2016)
Numerous U.S. cities suffered immense fiscal strain following the subprime mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2007–8. Diminished revenues, tightened credit, and speculative financing that went bad in the aftermath fueled widespread fiscal distress on the local scale. Although the current moment resembles fiscal crises that crested in cities in the 1970s–90s, two factors distinguish the current period. First, municipal affairs have become thoroughly financialized—dominated by speculative securities and volatile debt arrangements—such that local crisis can no longer be understood apart from financial market instability. Second, local fiscal politics have become increasingly removed from democratic oversight and control. This de-democratization hinders the capacity of political communities to reregulate markets and rebuild urban communities. An analytic model derived from the work of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi emphasizes how cities become ensnared in a “financial instability” cycle and how communities seek to protect themselves by way of the “double movement.”
Sociology
Keywords: Chicago; Detroit; MINSKY; Hyman; United States - economic conditions; de-democratization; financialization; municipal bonds; municipal finance; recessions - 2008-2013; urban fiscal crisis

Countermovement, Neoliberal Platoon, or Re-Gifting Depot? Understanding Decommodification in US Food Banks - Lindenbaum, John (Antipode, 2016)
In this paper, I explore the decommodification that takes place in US food banks. I argue that food banks are neither Polanyian countermovements re-embedding the market in society nor tiny platoons of neoliberalism that advance market relations and state withdrawal. Rather, food banks are best understood as re-gifting depots that are part of the capital accumulation process. Recent scholarship on primitive accumulation, the disarticulations approach, and waste suggests that the devaluation of food products and the exclusion of human labor are everyday elements of capitalism. I conclude by examining the potential for progressive politics in US food banking.
Geography
Keywords: Polanyi - political & social views; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (U.S.); United States Deptartment of Agriculture; commodification; decommodification; disarticulation; equality - social aspects; food banks; food security; primitive accumulation; re-gifting depot; waste

The Copenhagen Turn in Global Climate Governance and the Contentious History of Differentiation in International Law - McGee, Jeffrey; Steffek, Jens (Journal of Environmental Law, 2016)
The 2009 Copenhagen Accord marked a significant shift in global climate governance which has been substantially adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement. At Copenhagen, binding targets for states to reduce emissions were replaced by voluntary pledges. We argue that the Polanyian 'double movement' offers a useful lens to understand the Copenhagen shift in global climate governance as part of ongoing contestation in the international law system between principles of economic liberalisation and redistributive intervention. In the second half of the 20th century, redistributive design of international legal institutions became evident in a number of issue areas including trade law, oceans law and the seminal climate treaties. However, there has been ongoing US lead opposition to 'redistributive multilateralism' (RM), particularly over the last decade of climate negotiations. The Copenhagen model of voluntary pledges, therefore, needs to be viewed as an outcome of this opposition to RM and a related weakening of differentiation in international environmental law.
Law; Environmental Studies
Keywords: Copenhagen; Copenhagen Accord; UNFCCC; climate change; differentiation of duties; environmental justice; environmental law; international cooperation; international law; political economy; regime design

Economy, Society and Earth in Polanyian and Wild Law Perspectives on Environmental Regulation: To Perform a Double or Triple Movement? - Pontin, Ben (Journal of Environmental Law, 2016)
Law; Environmental Studies
Keywords: BURDON; Peter D.; HAINES; Fiona; LANGE; Bettina; MALONEY; Michelle; Regulatory Transformations: Rethinking Economy-Society Interactions (Book); THOMAS; Dania; Wild Law: In Practice (Book); book review; double movement; environmental law; nonfiction; triple movement

Revisiting Free Market Utopia: A Hayek-Polanyi Reminder - Usenmez, Ozgur; Duman, Levent (Journal of Economic and Social Thought, 2016)
As pundits discuss the causes and results of the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession, economists of various strands–led mainly by Keynesians–are slowly beginning to question the supposed wisdom of unfettered markets. Since Keynesian-liberal disputes revolve around the symptoms of the crisis rather than the historical and structural features of market economies, we thought that a Hayek-Polanyi comparison would be a timely intervention in order to understand the real nature of the subject. This comparison may also pave the way for the creation of an alternative to the vagaries of unfettered markets.
Political Science
Keywords: Austrian; HAYEK; Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August); 1899-1992; Keynesian; Keynesianism; business fluctuations; cycles; evolutionary; financial crises; financial markets; financial markets and the macroeconomy; general aggregative models: Keynes; history of economic thought: individuals; institutional; post-Keynesian

Governing by Panic - Woodruff, David M. (Politics & Society, 2016)
The Eurozone’s reaction to the crisis beginning in late 2008 involved not only efforts to mitigate the arbitrarily destructive effects of markets but also vigorous pursuit of policies aimed at austerity and deflation. To explain this paradoxical outcome, I build on Karl Polanyi’s account of a similar deadlock in the 1930s. Polanyi argued that a society-protecting response to malfunctioning markets was limited under the gold standard by the prospect of currency panic, which bankers used to push for austerity, deflationary policies, and labor’s political marginalization. I reconstruct Polanyi’s “governing by panic” theory to explain Eurozone policy during three key episodes of sovereign bond market panic in 2010–12. By threatening to allow financial panics to continue, the European Central Bank promoted policies and institutional changes aimed at austerity and deflation, limiting the protective response. Germany’s Ordoliberalism, and its weight in European affairs, contributed to the credibility of this threat.
Political Science
Keywords: European Central Bank; Eurozone; Eurozone crisis; Eurozone debt crisis; depressions (economics) - 1929; economic conditions; euro; governing by panic; ordoliberalism

The new agrarian double movement: hegemony and resistance in the GMO food economy - Carroll, Myles (Review of International Political Economy, 2016)
This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in analyzing the consequences of legal regimes that regulate genetically modified foods. Against the tide of neoliberalism, a binding, precautionary agreement over trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has emerged through the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. This Protocol exemplifies what Polanyi termed the ‘self-protection of society,’ the second phase of his double movement. The Protocol's final form was a product of European governments’ responses to public concerns over the potential environmental and health impacts of GMOs in an unregulated global economy. This ‘self-protective’ turn has been manifest at regional and national scales, including in Australia. Drawing on Gramsci, I argue that this unlikely turn emerged in the context of shifting public opinion, effective anti-GMO activism, and alternative discursive framings. It took hold with European publics and governments, generating the relations of force needed to become the hegemonic framing of GMOs globally. The objectives of this paper are thus to demonstrate how a double movement has occurred in the regulation of GMOs and to use Gramsci's relations of force to explain how this double movement has nonetheless failed to challenge the underlying neoliberal basis of GMO agriculture as it exists today.
Political Science
Keywords: Australia; GMOs; agriculture - Australia; biosafety; double movement; economics; hegemony; international political economy; law; political economy; relations of force; transgenic organisms

Orientating disability studies to disablist austerity: applying Fraser’s insights - Dodd, Steven (Disability & Society, 2016)
Many disabled people in Britain have experienced profound challenges brought about by a government policy programme characterised by ‘austerity’. Drawing on the work of Fraser and Polanyi, this article explores new ways in which disability studies can become theoretically orientated to the task of explaining and challenging what has become an issue of overbearing importance for many disabled people. It is argued that Fraser’s notion of bivalency encapsulates the combination of cultural and economic challenges which characterise ‘disablist austerity’. Fraser’s development of Polanyi’s work is used to argue that disability studies should be orientated to large-scale economic challenges as well as cultural and discursive concerns that are more often the object of study in the field.
Health Studies; Disability Studies
Keywords: Great Britain; austerity; budget; conceptual structures (information theory); culture; disability studies; disablism; government policy; marketisation; people with disabilities - psychology; practical politics; public welfare; recognition; redistribution; research methodology; social justice; socioeconomic factors; triple movement

A Concept of Eurasia - Hann, Chris (Current Anthropology, 2016)
To imagine Europe and Asia as constituting equivalent "continents" has long been recognized as the ethnocentric cornerstone of a Western, or Euro-American, world view. The amalgam Eurasia corrects this bias by highlighting the intensifying interconnectedness of the entire landmass in recent millennia. This article builds on the work of Jack Goody and others to analyze the unity-in-civilizational-diversity of the Old World. It draws on the substantivist economic anthropology of Karl Polanyi to postulate continuities between ancient ideals of economic embeddedness in the agrarian empires and various forms of socialism in the twentieth century. Today, when the human economy everywhere is again exposed to the domination of the market, the Eurasian dialectic has universal relevance. However, recognition and realization of pan-Eurasian affinities continues to be impeded by geopolitics, and sociocultural anthropology has a long way to go to overcome its Atlantic bias.
Anthropology
Keywords: Eurasia; GOODY; Jack; 1919-2015; economic anthropology; ethnocentrism; geopolitics; socialism; substantivist

The Labor of Informational Democracy: A Library and Information Science Framework for Evaluating the Democratic Potential in Socially- Generated Information - Cope, Jonathan (Progressive community action: Critical theory and social justice in library and information science, 2016)
This essay outlines a framework that LIS can use to analyze socially-generated information. The proposed evaluative framework involves three democratic horizons of analysis: the level of access, the level of production, and the level of communicative speech. This inquiry synthesizes the political economy of communication/librarianship, autonomist Marxist insights about the dematerialization of labor in late capitalism, and the concerns of contemporary democratic theory. The essay concludes with a set of proposals for LIS to pursue research and policies that use a critical theoretical framework linking the realm of production (i.e., labor) with communicative democracy.
Library and Information Science; Information Studies
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; dematerialization of labor; informational democracy; late capitalism

Polanyi'nin Modern İktisatın İnsan Anlayışına Eleştirileri - Akan, Seriyye (Polanyi's Criticisms on Modern Economics' Conception of the Human Being., 2016)
Discipline of economics, who already assimilated the mathematical and technical tools as a base for the expression of theory is almost lost its identity as a social science. This process has become visible through some historical breakups. These breakups have scientific, social and economic faces. While the developments in natural sciences had led the economists to imitate physics - since it uses more certain methods as a science; the market society which established after the industrial revolution separated humans from the economic understanding of the past eras. Rationality, which indeed a philosophical concept, purified from its philosophical context and integrated to economics. On the other hand, the mainstream economics which accepts the maximisation of interest as one of the components of human nature prevailed the economics literature. The modern economics' conception of human had shaped via the steps which we briefly mentioned above. Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) had criticized the human conception of modern economics by using social anthropological methods. He had claimed that market system did not emerged spontaneously, the nature of human did not change throughout history, and primitive economics was totally different from today's market society since the economic relations were embedded in the other social relations. In this article, we tried to analyse Polanyi's criticisms on modern economics' human conception. For this reason, we firstly argued the term rationality in the economic context, since it would be a basis for our subject. Then we emphasized the thesis of "uncahged nature of human" which highlighted by Polanyi, discussions on primitive economies, and the market society which established parallel to the industrial revolution respectively. (English)
History; Anthropology
Keywords: holism; market society; primitive economies; rationality; social anthropology

Towards Another 'Great Transformation' - Mkandawire, Thandika (Africa Insight, 2016)
As Karl Polanyi indicates in the 'Great Transformation',1'the so-called self-regulating markets cannot exist for any length of time without destroying human society'. Three 'Great Transformations' have taken place. The first occurred in Europe at a time when it was widely believed that markets were nature's way of managing exchange in an efficient way and that interference in the workings of the market, as Adam Smith argued, was not only artificial, but against the laws of God.2 The second was about society's reaction in defending itself against the ravages of the market. The third was when neoliberalism launched a counter-movement that gave the market primacy. This paper argues that the assumption that the self-regulation expected from 'corporate social responsibility', or the instinct for self-preservation, would replace the state, had failed disastrously. The neoliberal model is therefore in trouble. It is important to contemplate a new global order that will be built on and facilitate social orders that are developmental, socially inclusive and democratic - which will be the fourth 'Great Transformation'. As the paper argues, there are two imperatives: the first imperative would be the creation of global institutions that would ensure that commitments to justice, equality and democracy are translated into global and national policies; and the second one would be the intellectual and ideological challenge of the views and discursive practices that, all too often, fetishised globalisation into some exogenous force that ineluctably imposes its laws on the human race.
Economics; Development Studies
Keywords: Africa studies; Europe; democracy; economic conditions; humanism; justice administration; socioeconomics

Organic farm volunteer tourism as social movement participation: a Polanyian political economy analysis of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) in Hawai‘i - Mostafanezhad, Mary (Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2016)
In recent years, Karl Polanyi's concept of the “double movement” has been resurrected to describe growing international resistance to neoliberal global capitalism. The double movement originally referred to counter-movements for social protection against the 19th and early 20th century laissez-faire market. Today, it describes the growth of new social movements which often resist neoliberal economic practices and ideologies. Drawing on Polanyi's concept of the double movement and on recent work on neoliberalism and new social movements, this article examines farm hosts' motivations for participation in World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF). It argues that farm hosts tend to articulate their motivations as an attempt to proclaim solidarity with organic, spiritual, and educational new social movement agendas. It describes how a loosely articulated organic identity converges around three corollaryprotective counter-movements: organic food production and consumption, spirituality, and alternative education, exploring the creative ways people are resisting neoliberal capitalism at the intersection of alternative tourism and organic agriculture. Yet, despite hosts' intentions, the article illustrates how new social movement participation through WWOOF is in constant tension with the neoliberal agrarian and tourism marketplace in which it operates, as well as the perhaps unforeseen limits of its radical horizon.
Geography
Keywords: POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; agri-tourism; capitalism; critical theory; culture change; farm tourism; geography; neoliberalism; organic farming; sustainability; sustainable tourism; volunteer tourism

Market Reforms and Water Wars - Simmons, Erica S. (World Politics, 2016)
Responses to the imposition of market-oriented economic policies have varied. This article asks two questions: (1) How can we better understand when marketization will or will not prompt resistance? And (2) when people do mobilize, why are some movements broad-based while others draw on particular segments of society? The author argues that these questions can best be answered by focusing not only on the political contexts and resources available to potential social movements, but also on what is perceived to be at stake during marketization. These perceptions influence mobilization processes and the kinds of groups available for mobilization. When people understand markets as threatening to material wellbeing, as well as to widely shared community relationships, understandings, and commitments, heightened feelings of group belonging can contribute to broad-based mobilization. The author develops this argument through analysis of the broad-based, widespread movement that emerged to protest water privatization in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1999 and 2000. In the context of a history of agriculture, irrigation, drought, and conflict, water helped to produce and reproduce imagined communities of nation, region, and ethnic group, as well as quotidian communities revolving around the routine production and consumption of water. These meanings help to explain the dynamics of the resistance that emerged.
Political Science
Keywords: Latin America; marketization; political science; social movements; water wars

Ireland, Small Open Economies and European Integration: Lost in Transition - Begg, David (International Political Economy Series., 2016)
Presents a development model for the recovery of the Irish polity post-2008 financial crisis and traces and compares the evolution of the development models of Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Ireland from 1987 to 2012, considering how those four countries managed the process of Europeanization. Explores the core Polanyian tension between markets and social protection, with particular reference to the capacity of selected small, open economies to manage that tension as compared with Ireland. Discusses the world of Peter J. Katzenstein–the major historical events that contributed to the formation of the polities of Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Ireland, as well as how the development models evolved as European integration intensified; 1994-2001–the age of employment miracles; 2001-08–European integration intensifies; going beyond 2008–coping with the crisis; and unpacking Ireland's polity from a new institutionalist perspective. Begg is Director of the Think Tank for Action on Social Change and former General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Bibliography; index.
Economics
Keywords: current heterodox approaches: historical; economic integration; evolutionary; heterodox economics; institutional; international institutional arrangements; international political economy; open economy macroeconomics; political processes: rent-seeking; lobbying; elections; legislatures; social protection; voting behavior

The contradictory logics of financialization: Bringing together hyman minsky and Karl Polanyi - Block, F. (Politics and Society, 2016)
This introduction explains the logic of bringing together the perspectives of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi to analyze processes of financialization. Although Minsky and Polanyi have very different intellectual trajectories, there are important complementarities in their approaches. The introduction also explains the focus of the three papers in this special section written by Kurtuluşc Gemici, Lucas Kirkpatrick, and David Woodruff. © 2015 SAGE Publications.
Sociology
Keywords: MINSKY; Hyman; finance; financial crises; financial crisis; financialization; political economy; speculation

Human growth and avoiding European disintegration: lessons from Polanyi - Buzaglo, Jorge (real-world economics review, 2016)
Many economists, including mainstream economists, have declared the necessity of an ambitious public investment program for Europe. The continuation of the present laissez-faire and austerity approach, they say, will deepen the dissatisfaction of European peoples with the European project. In effect, in the absence of inspiring progressive alternatives, there is the real prospect of nationalistic reactions everywhere, with fragmentation and the end of the EU (or even worse) as a consequence. At the bottom of EU-fatigue there is dissatisfaction with the present economic paradigm, which implies social and economic strain and stagnation for a large majority, and growing wealth and privilege for a tiny minority (the “one percent”). A new social and economic paradigm should be necessary to reverse the negative and dangerous trends that the now more than 30 years old neoliberal paradigm has implied. To be effective, a new social and economic paradigm should underlie the new, ambitious European investment program. The guiding general idea of such a new, hopeful paradigm and program should be the idea of human growth. Human growth can be understood as the growth of human capabilities — the all-round development of individuals and societies. The paper summarizes a dynamic simulation model for the efficient allocation of investment. Investment efficiency is understood in the sense of the intersectoral allocation of investments being able to fulfil desired patterns of capability growth. That is, efficient investment programs are those that maximize the capacity of the production system — and in general, the socioeconomic system — of generating human growth.
Economics
Keywords: European Union; human growth

Reconstructing Karl Polanyi - Dale, Gareth (Pluto Press, 2016)
Karl Polanyi was one of the most influential political economists of the twentieth-century and is widely regarded as the most gifted of social democrat theorists. In Reconstructing Karl Polanyi, Gareth Dale draws upon primary sources archived in the countries that Polanyi called home—Hungary, Austria, Britain, the United States, and Canada—to provide a sweeping survey of his contribution to the social sciences. Polanyi’s intellectual and political outlook can best be summarized through paradoxical formulations such as ‘romantic modernist’, ‘liberal socialist’, and ‘cosmopolitan patriot.’ In exploring these paradoxes, Dale excavates and reconstructs Polanyi’s views on a range of topics that have been neglected in the critical literature, including Keynesian economic policy, the evolution and dynamics of Stalin’s Russia, regional integration, and McCarthyism. He reinterprets Polanyi’s philosophy of history, his theory of democracy, and his economic historiography of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and guides readers through Polyani's critical dialogue with Marxism. While the central threads and motifs of this study are intellectual-historiographical in nature, Dale also critically analyzes the views of Polanyi and his followers on issues of pressing present-day relevance, notably the clash between democracy and capitalism, and the nature and trajectory of European unification.
Political Science
Keywords: political theory; social theory

Treble Troubles? Marketization, Social Protection and Emancipation Considered Through the Lens of Slavery - Davidson, Julia O’Connell (The Commonalities of Global Crises, 2016)
This chapter considers white European and American thinking on transatlantic slavery historically and, more briefly, in relation to today’s antislavery movement. Combining historical longue durée and a critical engagement with Nancy Fraser’s neo-Polanyian position, O’Connell Davidson shows that abolitionists were, and are, hard to fix as proponents of either market freedom or social protection, or indeed of ‘emancipation’. The postabolition experience of freed slaves shows that marketization, social protection and emancipation are not fully disarticulable political forces, suggesting that the idea of the ‘triple movement’ may be less useful for those committed to a politics of nondomination than it may initially appear.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: economics; public choice; slavery; social choice; social inequality; social protection; social structure; triple movement; welfare economics

État social, démocratie et construction européenne. Pour une citoyenneté sociale européenne - Delruelle, Édouard (Revue Française d'Histoire des Idées Politiques, 2016)
L’idée de « modèle social européen » n’est-elle qu’un leurre ou un objectif politique que les forces progressistes doivent continuer à promouvoir ? L’article s’interroge sur les fondements proprement philosophiques (souvent négligés) de l’État social – à la fois système assurantiel universel et institution d’un « citoyenneté sociale » (T.H. Marshall), dont la dynamique excède la forme de l’Etat-nation., Is the idea of a “European social model” but a decoy or is it a political aim that progressive forces need to keep on promote? This paper is concerned with the (often neglected) philosophical foundations of the welfare state – both a universal insurance system and the establishment of a “social citizenship” (T.H. Marshall) whose dynamics extend beyond the form of the nation-state.
Philosophy
Keywords: social citizenship; welfare state

Domesticating the market: moral exchange and the sharing economy - Fitzmaurice, Connor; Ladegaard, Isak; Attwood-Charles, William; Cansoy, Mehmet; Carfagna, Luka; Schor, Juliet; Wengronowitz, Robert (Under review at Socio-Economic Review, 2016)
The sharing economy has generated enormous excitement with its promise of transforming work and consumption through technology and novel socio-economic relations. However, critics see the phenomenon as a further development of neoliberalism. Platforms such as Airbnb and TaskRabbit, monetize a previously uncommodified realm of life via renting of bedrooms, possessions, space and labor time. In this paper, we analyze the meanings and attitudes of sharing economy participants. On the basis of 100 interviews in two for-profit and three not-for-profit sites, we find that most see the sharing economy as an opportunity to build a radically different market, from the bottom up. They are critical of the neoliberal market order, and envision an economy of personalized exchanges that are morally attuned, based on ideals of community, and that help them achieve creative and financial autonomy in their working lives. To our respondents, the sharing economy is an opportunity to domesticate the market.
Sociology
Keywords: domestic production; economic sociology; hostile worlds; markets; morality; neoliberalism; sharing economy

Social Quality - Herrmann, Peter (International Journal of Social Quality, 2016)
A fundamental methodological problem is the relevance of an antagonism of capitalism. This needs to be classified in light of the developmental stage of the means of production: far too little attention is paid to the contradictory character of individualization and socialization. This brings us to Karl Polanyi's main argument of disembedding. He also deals with a shift from the socially integrated (and dependent) individual to the utilitarian market citizen. The French regulationist theory offers a major step toward understanding new forms of societal embedding linked to this "new personality." It will also allow us to move beyond the misleading juxtaposition or dichotomization of individualization-socialization. Investigating five major tensions, it ventilates the possible meaning of the digital revolution and the challenges for monitoring development. The main aim of the article, however, is to bring the economy back in and to go beyond the traditional duality between economics and politics.
Economics
Keywords: capitalism; change; development; disembedding; economics; economics and social science; economy & society; social quality; social sciences; theory of regulation; work

Karl Polanyi for President - Iber, Patrick; Konczal, Mike (Dissent Magazine, 2016)
Are you a Bernie Sanders supporter? Chances are you'll like Karl Polanyi, too. An explainer.
N/A
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); SANDERS; Bernie

The Methodology of Polanyi's Great Transformation: Commentary - Mayhew, Anne (Economic Thought, World Economics Association, 2016)
A commentary on Asad Zaman's paper “The Methodology of Polanyi's Great Transformation”
Economics
Keywords: ZAMAN; Asad; capitalist systems; economic methodology; economic thought; history of economic thought; political economy

Distribution-Led Growth in the Long Run - Nikiforos, Michalis (Review of Keynesian Economics, 2016)
This paper examines the long-run fluctuations in growth and distribution through the prism of wage- and profit-led growth. It argues that the relation between distribution of income and growth changes over time and proposes an endogenous mechanism that leads to fluctuations between wage- and profit-led periods. The ephemeral character of distribution-led regimes needs to be taken into account when someone estimates empirically the effect of a change in distribution on utilization and growth. The model is a linear version of Goodwin's predator-prey model, but with a reversal of the roles for predator and prey; this is another way to conceptualize the symbiosis between the two classes within a capitalist economy. The aforementioned argument is also examined in relation to the double movement of Karl Polanyi and the inverse U-shaped curve proposed by Simon Kuznets.
Economics
Keywords: Kaleckian; Sraffian; aggregate factor income distribution; aggregate human capital; aggregate labor productivity; business fluctuations; capacity; capital; cycles; employment; general aggregative models: Marxian; intangible capital; intergenerational income distribution; investment; one; two; and multisector growth models; unemployment; wages

Local Embeddedness - Pickles, John (International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, 2016)
In economic geography and economic sociology, embeddedness refers to the ways in which relational, institutional, and cultural contexts shape economic life. In contrast to the undersocialized and utilitarian assumptions of neoclassical economics, rational choice theory, and new institutional economics, theories of embeddedness focus on the ways in which markets and society are variously articulated in particular societies, organizations, and places. Embeddedness in this sense is associated first and foremost with the work of Karl Polanyi. Polanyi argued that the market generally sought to disembed itself from social regulation, while society responded by attempting to socialize and regulate (re-embed) the excesses of unregulated markets. It is also associated with the work of Granovetter in economic sociology, who cautioned against oversocializing, as well as undersocializing, the economy, in favor of a much more detailed analysis of the specific ways in which social relations structured economic practices.
Geography; Sociology
Keywords: POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; culture; economy; embeddedness; institutions; society; undersocialized

Critical reflections on social enterprise through a polanyian lens - Roy, M., S., Grant (Social Enterprise Research Colloquium Australasia, 2016)
N/A
Keywords: social enterprise

Polanyi In Our Times - Saval, Nikal (The Nation, 2016)
N/A
Keywords: Greek crisis; biography; blog

"Let Them Eat Stuffed Peppers": An Argument of Images on the Role of Food in Understanding Neoliberal Austerity in Greece - Sutton, David (Gastronomica, 2016)
This paper focuses on how discourses of food have shaped understandings of what is at stake in the Greek crisis. Drawing from Karl Polanyi's concept of "embeddedness," I argue that food is central to Greek interpretations of neoliberal policies and processes because of its centrality to Greek culture and identity. Food has also been a site of contested practices of "solidarity" and "charity" by which new social experiments are emerging in the wake of the breakdown of the welfare state. In arguing for food's centrality in the reshaping of Greek sociability, I will suggest that food be thought of not simply as a "topic" for anthropological investigation, but as a master-concept on the level of "kinship," "ritual," or "exchange" in any anthropological analysis of contemporary life.
Anthropology; Food Studies
Keywords: Greece; Greek crisis; Kalymnos; Oriental and African Studies; austerity (economics); critical food studies; food metaphors; food studies; kinship; neoliberalism; solidarity

Proprietary Law Schools and the Marketization of Access to Justice - Tejani, Riaz (Social Science Research Network, 2016)
The rise of for-profit law schools in the United States highlights the interplay of political and moral economy in the reproduction of legal expertise. This article offers ethnographic evidence from one ABA-accredited for-profit law school pseudonymously labeled New Delta School of Law. The article posits New Delta as a case study in market fundamentalism of the kind first theorized by Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi. Polanyi defined global capital as a “double movement” between free marketeerism on the one hand and countervailing social protectionism on the other. Treating this as incomplete, social philosopher Nancy Fraser has since argued that the emancipatory new social movements form a third element in what should more properly be considered a “triple movement.” In this article, I argue that for-profit law schools such as New Delta support Fraser’s revision. Drawing in capital commitments from large institutional investors with promises of high returns on the basis of guaranteed federal student loan dollars, New Delta recruits disproportionately from minority and low-income communities while offering low chances of bar passage and legal employment. By marrying free marketeerism with the discourse of emancipation, the school has successfully evaded scrutiny.
Law; Legal Studies
Keywords: anthropology; economic; finance; law; legal education; markets; morals; neoliberalism; race; regulation; triple movement

Local Trade and Exchange/Employment Systems (LETS) in Future Eco-sustainable Societies - Westra, Richard (Anthropology in Action, 2016)
All communities of practice must face questions relating to the material economic foundations of future sustainable societies. David Graeber, Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx each have produced typologies of possible types of economy, synthesised as: (1) the principle of individual reciprocity, (2) the market principle of capitalism, and (3) the planning principle of the state. I apply this synthesis to recent proposals for community change advanced by Bill McKibben and David Korten concerning economic scale and the re-localising of production and consumption sundered by globalisation, focused on the local exchange and trading system (LETS). The operationalising of LETS draws upon Adam Smith's view of markets as face-to-face exchanges of goods taking place in small morality-bound communities. Smith, McKibben and Korten conflate two different meanings of the term 'exchange'. To understand the role LETS may play in future sustainable economies in communities of practice demands treatment of this problem.
Anthropology
Keywords: MCKIBBEN; Bill; 1960-; capitalism; communities of practice; community; eco-sustainability; economy; globalization; local exchange and trading systems; markets; sustainability; sustainable societies

Singapore’s Social Contract Trilemma - Yeoh, Lam Keong; Auyong, Hawyee; Yeo, Andrew Zhi Jian (Globalization and Democracy in Southeast Asia, 2016)
The last 50 years of nation building has firmly established Singapore as a globally competitive and highly successful economy and city-state with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Singapore has achieved a prosperity undreamed of by its founders. How successfully Singapore can evolve into a fully developed nation, with a firm sense of national belonging, social cohesion, political legitimacy and participation—and not just a strong and successful developmental state—will depend on the extent to which the country is able to translate this success to broader social protection and democratic participation for her people, and the extent to which the country is able to forge a common national identity.
Political Science
Keywords: FRASER; Nancy; Singapore; democracy; double movement; globalization; neo-Polanyian; policy studies; triple movement

The Methodology of Polanyi's Great Transformation - Zaman, Asad (Economic Thought, 2016)
Polanyi's book, The Great Transformation, provides an analysis of the emergence and significance of capitalist economic structures which differs radically from those currently universally taught in economic textbooks. This analysis is based on a methodological approach which is also radically different from existing methodologies for economics, and more generally social science. This methodology is used by Polanyi without explicit articulation. Our goal in this article is to articulate the methodology used in this book to bring out the several dimensions on which it differs from current approaches to social science. Among the key differences Polanyi provides substantial scope for human agency and capability to change the course of history. He also shows that the social, political and economic spheres of human existence are deeply interlinked and cannot be analysed in isolation, as current approaches assume. KM - see Mayhew's (2016) commentary on this paper.
Economics
Keywords: capitalism; liberalism; methodology; social science

The evolution of false self-employment in the British construction industry: a neo-Polanyian account of labour market formation - Behling, Felix; Harvey, Mark (Work, Employment & Society, 2015)
Governments in Europe and elsewhere have renewed their attention to the fiscal regulation of their economies in order to close tax loopholes and boost revenues in response to the financial crisis. The article uses a neo-Polanyian ‘instituted economic process’ approach to explore and explain the uniquely high level of bogus self-employment in the UK construction industry, facilitated by confused law and stimulated by a bespoke construction fiscal regime, resulting in endemic tax evasion. It examines how the co-evolution of employment status law and a sector-specific fiscal regime maps tightly onto the emergence of mass self-employment, as evidenced by comparative labour market and sectoral statistics. Seeing competition as an instituted process within these distinctive market arrangements, it identifies a form of ‘degenerative competition’, driving out both genuine direct-employment and self-employment, and driving in bogus self-employment, with its attendant substantial fiscal losses, failed skill reproduction and poor productivity.
Sociology
Keywords: British construction industry; Great Britain; bogus self-employment; business revenue; construction industry; economic sociology; instituted economic process; labour market formation; self-employment; tax evasion; tax loopholes

Ontario's infrastructure boom: a socioecological fix for air pollution, congestion, jobs, and profits - Nugent, James Patrick (Environment & Planning A, 2015)
Infrastructure projects provide a spatial fix by increasing the scale and rate of capital accumulation, and because infrastructure projects themselves absorb massive amounts of productive and finance capital. I seek to explain the timing, character, and consequences of a Can $85 billion infrastructure boom in Canada's largest province, Ontario, between 2003 until 2013. I focus on the expansion and privatization of environmentally oriented infrastructure in Ontario via three policies: the conversion of public coal power plants to private natural gas and nuclear facilities; the Green Energy Act (a renewable energy feed-in tariffs programme); and The Big Move (a Can $50 billion dollar rapid transit plan using a public–private partnership model). I employ a Polanyian– O'Connor approach to emphasize the role of labour, environmental groups, and other social movement groups in bringing these investments about. I argue that infrastructure investments are not only a spatial fix aimed at finding capital a safe long-term investment and addressing class struggles around job creation. In Ontario these infrastructure investments have also provided the state with a broader socioecological fix for the economic and political contradictions stemming from air pollution and congestion. Social movements have pressured the government to address what James O'Connor refers to as the underproduction of the conditions of production: that is, degraded human health and quality of life; a deteriorating environment; and inadequate public infrastructure. Throughout the paper I emphasize how the socioecological fix in Ontario is being accomplished by advancing the neoliberal governance of public infrastructure. I point to how these neoliberal socioecological fixes are simply displacing socioecological crises to new spatial and temporal scales.
Geography
Keywords: Canada; Ontario; Polanyian-O'Connor approach; air pollution; fictitious commodities; human ecology; infrastructure; infrastructure and the environment; neoliberal environmental fix; privatization; saving and investment; second contradiction of capitalism; social movements; socioecological fix; spatial fix

Sharing Economy: A Step towards the Re-embeddedness of the Economy? - Pais, Ivana; Provasi, Giancarlo (Stato e Mercato, 2015)
The expression "sharing economy" has spread exponentially in the past few years, a sign of the growing interest in a phenomenon that continues to maintain boundaries that are somewhat vague. The hypothesis of this paper is that this can be attributed not only to the pervasiveness and enabling power of new technologies but also to the need to fill a social vacuum due to the failures of the market and the state. The sharing economy is introducing collaborative social forms able (at least ideally) to embed economic relations within social ones. To test this hypothesis, the article uses the instrumentation implemented by Karl Polanyi to analyze the forms of integration of economy and society (exchange, reciprocity, redistribution). The political economy of the late twentieth century was especially interested in exchange (market) and redistribution (state), leaving social reciprocity in the background. However, we have to look at this more carefully to grasp any social and institutional innovation that the sharing economy can promote. The first part of this paper is devoted to an analysis of the forms of integration and, in particular, to reciprocity in its different variants. The second part, in light of the taxonomy proposed in the first, analyzes some of the most significant experiences of the sharing economy, seeking to determine the institutional characteristics and social dynamics that this could (at least potentially) engender and support. The conclusions will attempt to answer the questions formulated and indicate avenues for further research.
Economics; Sociology
Keywords: cooperative enterprises; economic anthropology; economic sociology; market structure; pricing; and design; open source products and markets; other economic systems: general; prices; public goods; reciprocity; renewable resources and conservation: demand and supply; sharing economy; social and economic stratification

Herculean efforts are not enough: diversifying the teaching profession and the need for systemic change - Schmidt, Clea (Intercultural Education, 2015)
Internationally educated teachers (IETs) seeking to resume their careers in Canada often demonstrate tremendous endurance, fortitude, and resilience in the process of navigating their new professional landscapes, yet neoliberalism and the myth of meritocracy obscure the pervasive systemic barriers characterizing their professional experiences. Critical action research undertaken with graduates of an academic and professional bridging program for IETs in Manitoba reveals a complex interplay of challenges with respect to diversifying the teaching force in intercultural settings. Data collected with IETs seeking full-time teaching positions suggest resuming their careers is by no means guaranteed for many IETs who, in spite of what can be deemed herculean efforts to follow the advice of mentors and make themselves as ‘marketable’ as possible, continue to face significant barriers to employment in a context largely characterized by an over-supply of qualified applicants. Guided by Cummins’ work on collaborative relations of power and a Polanyian critique of economic determinism, my analysis illuminates a multi-pronged systemic approach that has the potential to help ensure the numerous contributions of IETs in Canadian schools can be fully realized.
Education
Keywords: Canada; career development; collaborative relations of power; critical theory; economic determinism; equity; internationally educated teachers; professional education; systemic barriers; teacher development; teachers

Re-Imagining Economic Sociology - Aspers, Patrik; Dodd, Nigel (Oxford University Press, 2015)
The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks and institutions. The book is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it focuses on theoretical contributions, by pulling together and extending what the contributors believe to be the most important theoretical innovations within their own particular areas of the field. Second, there are contributions by leading economic sociologists from both the US and Europe, which gives the book both wider scope and appeal, while also creating the opportunity for some interesting dialogue between distinct theoretical traditions. The book will be of interest to researchers, Ph.D. students, and advanced students on both side of the Atlantic, and indispensible in advanced economic sociology courses.
Sociology
Keywords: business & economics; economic sociology; economic theory; social science / sociology / general

Emancipation, marketisation, and social protection: the female subject within vocational training policy in Canada, 1960–1990 - Pullman, Ashley (Gender and Education, 2015)
This paper examines Canadian federal and cross-provincial higher education policy from 1960 to 1990, a critical time when provisions for vocational and adult training came under the auspices of governmental concern, justified under both an economic rationale and as a way to address persistent forms of inequality. The problematisation of skill during this period had particular gendered implications, as addressing inequality through education subsidies intersected with the perceived training needs of employers and the market. Employing Nancy Fraser's theory of a ‘triple movement’, the following paper ‘takes stock’ of how the three political forces of social movements, marketisation, and social protection have shaped gendered discourses of education and training, the implications for which are of continued relevance to those trying to understand the education and training within the contemporary neo-liberal state.
Education
Keywords: Canada; education policy; gender; historical sociology; history; institutional analysis; social protection; vocational education and training; welfare; workfare

Disembedded markets as a mirror of society - Deutschmann, Christoph (European Journal of Social Theory, 2015)
In the Marxist tradition, capitalism is understood as a commodified society based on markets. The article argues that the ultimate justification of this position does not lie in any ‘materialistic’ approach, but in the disembedding of markets that was the result of the historical ‘Great Transformation’ analysed by Karl Polanyi. Disembedded markets are not an economic subsystem within society but take the place of the most encompassing social system, which Durkheim had reserved for religion. The article distinguishes between spatial, social, material and temporal dimensions of disembedding, thereby elaborating and correcting the analysis of Karl Polanyi. As a genuine form of society, disembedded markets give rise to the epistemological dilemma, which, as Luhmann had shown, is fundamental to any encompassing social theory: Society as a whole cannot be viewed by any observer. According to this viewpoint, economic theories take on ‘theological’ functions, as they provide rationality and legitimacy to a reality that is unknowable.
Sociology
Keywords: Marxist philosophy; capitalism; disembedded markets; disembedding; markets; religion; social theory; uncertainty

Polanyi in the European Single Market: The Re- Regulation of Insurance - Mabbett, Deborah (Economic Sociology: The European Electronic Newsletter, 2015)
This article discusses the difference between a social policy approach to the regulatory embedding of a market and a moral economy approach using the insurance case wherein the European Union's Court of Justice ruled that insurers may not discriminate on grounds of sex in identifying risks.
Political Science; Sociology
Keywords: Court of Justice of the European Union; insurance; lawsuits & claims; reembedding; regulation; social policy

Cultural studies, production et économie morale - Hesmondhalgh, David; Morin, Céline (Réseaux, 2015)
Les approches issues des cultural studies ont insufflé à la recherche sur les productions médiatiques et culturelles une vigueur nouvelle et nécessaire. Cependant, il devient de plus en plus clair au fil des ans qu’elles rencontrent également de sérieuses limites. L’évaluation menée dans cet article repose sur une première partie dans laquelle nous explorons, en profitant du recul historique, la période d’opposition entre les cultural studies et l’économie politique des années 1990, en distinguant ce que nous appelons les modes théorique et populiste des cultural studies. Nous esquissons ensuite les trois « écoles » des approches cultural studies vis-à-vis de la production et de l’économie : cultural economy, production studies, et creative industries analysis. Selon nous, ces approches en cultural studies de la production et de l’industrie dans le domaine de la culture pêchent, tant dans leur mode populiste que dans leur mode théorique, par le manque d’attention portée à des problématiques fondamentales liées à la normativité dans les rapports entre la culture, les médias et l’économie. Dans les deux dernières parties, portant sur le tournant du cultural labour et le concept d’économie morale, nous suggèrerons des solutions pour une prise en compte plus explicite des problèmes de normativité, proposant ainsi une base éthique potentiellement plus rigoureuse pour l’étude de questions importantes dans le champ de la production culturelle. Nous appliquerons succinctement ce système au rapport problématique entre les biens culturels et le bien-être dans les sociétés modernes., ENG: Cultural studies approaches have provided a welcome reinvigoration of research on media and cultural production. But, as the years go by, it becomes clearer that they also suffer from important limitations. To provide a basis for the assessment in this article, the first section revisits the 1990s moment of ‘political economy versus cultural studies’ with the benefit of hindsight, distinguishing what I call the theoretical and populist modes of cultural studies. I then outline three ‘schools’ of cultural studies approaches to production and economy : cultural economy, production studies, and creative industries analysis. My argument is that, in both its theoretical and populist modes, these cultural studies approaches to production and industry in the realm of culture suffer from a lack of attention to fundamental normative issues regarding the relationship between culture, media and economy. In the final two sections, which discuss the turn to cultural labour and the concept of moral economy, I offer suggestions for how key normative issues might be addressed in a more explicit way, potentially offering a more rigorous ethical grounding for important questions regarding the realm of cultural production. I briefly apply this to the problematic relationship between cultural goods and well-being in modern societies.
Communication; Media Studies
Keywords: cultural production; cultural studies; industry; moral economy

Internet, une société contre l’État ? - Loveluck, Benjamin (Réseaux, 2015)
L’informatique en réseau a souvent été présentée comme un instrument favorisant l’auto-organisation de la société civile, à partir de modes alternatifs de distribution du pouvoir et de coordination des activités. L’histoire d’internet, abordée du point de vue de l’histoire des idées, montre que de telles propriétés ont donné lieu à la formation d’une véritable philosophie politique que nous avons appelée le libéralisme informationnel. Celle-ci a vu différents modèles d’économie politique s’affronter ; nous en présentons ici le mouvement général ainsi que les divergences internes. Nous terminons par un exposé de trois grandes formes de gouvernementalité qui en sont issues, et qui ouvrent à une critique de l’économie politique en régime numérique : la captation, la dissémination et l’auto-institution., Network computing has often been presented as an instrument promoting self-organization within civil society, through alternative modes of power distribution and coordination of activities. The history of the Internet, considered from the perspective of the history of ideas, shows that these properties have led to the formation of a genuine political philosophy that we have called informational liberalism. This article presents its overall movement and internal divisions, understood as alternative models of political economy. Finally, three main forms of governmentality stemming from this framework are identified, which pave the way for a critique of political economy in a digital regime : capturing, dissemination and self-institution.
Cultural Studies
Keywords: information society; informational liberalism; internet

A hidden counter-movement? Precarity, politics, and social protection before and beyond the neoliberal era - Harris, Kevan; Scully, Ben (Theory & Society, 2015)
To grasp what might exist beyond neoliberalism, we need to rethink the history of development before neoliberalism. This article makes two arguments. First, for poorer countries, processes of commodification which are highlighted as evidence of neoliberalism often predate the neoliberal era. Third World development policies tended to make social and economic life more precarious as a corollary to capital accumulation before neoliberalism as an ideology took hold. Second, the intense theoretical and discursive focus on neoliberalism has obscured a tangible shift towards de-commodification in much of the global South. The most salient examples today are state-led social assistance programs that have been implemented across the former Third World. These emerged not out of technocratic fixes from above but often out of political and social struggles from below. The rise and spread of these programs are not only in stark contrast to popular conceptions of a neoliberal reinforcement, but are also specifically targeted at social strata whose precarity commonly originated in developmental policies before the neoliberal era. Utilizing a database of 183 active flagship social assistance programs in 84 developing countries, we present macro-level quantitative evidence of the rise and spread of social protection policies over the past two decades in the global South. We then detail these programs for four middle-income countries-China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. To those who lament that the 2008 crisis has produced no Polanyian double movement, we argue that these state-driven social assistance policies are such a mechanism.
Sociology
Keywords: Global South; abstracts; countermovement; developing countries; double movement; global south; ideology; labor studies; labour studies; middle-income countries; neoliberalism; peasant studies; social policy; social services; welfare studies

Markets and Society - Zaman, Asad (Social Science Research Network, 2015)
In face of the strong conflict between market norms and social norms, peaceful co-existence is impossible. In traditional societies, markets were subordinated to society. Modern society emerged via a number of revolutions which made society subordinate to markets. This led to a reversal of traditional values of social cooperation and harmony with nature. Instead, men, nature, society became objects to be exploited for creating profits. A market society generates profits by exploiting men and nature, and requires increasing profits to sustain itself. This process has run into its limits as planetary resources are being destroyed on a scale large enough to threaten the planet. Saving the planet requires reversing the transition to modernity by subordinating markets to society. This is a difficult task.
Economics
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); environmental economics; exploitation; market society

Regulatory Transformations: Rethinking Economy-Society Interactions - Lange, Bettina; Haines, Fiona; Thomas, Dania (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015)
The issue of whether transnational risk can be regulated through a social sphere goes to the heart of what John Ruggie has described as 'embedded liberalism': how capitalist countries have reconciled markets with the social community that markets require to survive and thrive. This collection, located in the wider debates about global capitalism and its regulation, tackles the challenge of finding a way forward for regulation. It rejects the old divisions of state and market, citizens and consumers, social movements and transnational corporations, as well as 'economic' and 'social' regulation. Instead this rich, multidisciplinary collection engages with a critical theme-the idea of harnessing the regulatory capacity of a social sphere by recognising the embeddedness of economic transactions within a social and political landscape. This collection therefore explores how social norms, practices, actors and institutions frame economic transactions, and thereby regulate risks generated by and for business, state and citizens.A key strength of this book is its integration of three distinct areas of scholarship: Karl Polanyi's economic sociology, regulation studies and socio-legal studies of transnational hazards. The collection is distinct in that it links the study of specific transnational risk regulatory regimes back to a social–theoretical discussion about economy–society interactions, informed by Polanyi's work. Each of the chapters addresses the way in which economics, as well as economic and social regulation, can never be understood separately from the social, particularly in the transnational context.Endorsement'This thought-provoking collection asks the most critical question of our time – how to civilise markets through social accountability and political action. The climate and financial crises we face show how crucial this challenge is. Lange, Haines and Thomas have put together a series of fruitful case studies of the possibilities for embedding economic relationships in social relationships by a series of top-class researchers within their own illuminating and sensitive framing of the issue'.Professor Christine Parker, Professor of Regulatory Studies at Monash University.
Law; Sociology
Keywords: administrative law & regulatory practice; economic regulation; economic sociology; embedded liberalism; social regulation; socio-legal studies

The Next Safety Net - Colin, Nicolas; Palier, Bruno (2015)
As the economy becomes more automated and digitized, patterns of employment will change dramatically, and social policy will need to evolve too. Instead of relying guaranteed jobs or income, write experts Nicolas Colin and Bruno Palier, governments should embrace the “flexicurity” at the heart of the Nordic model.
N/A
Keywords: automation; economy; employment; flexicurity; robots; safety net; social policy

Markets, Nature, and Society Embedding Economic & Environmental Sociology - Kaup, Brent Z. (Sociological Theory, 2015)
Social scientists have drawn on theories of embeddedness to explain the different ways legal, political, and cultural frameworks shape markets. Often overlooked, however, is how the materiality of nature also structures markets. In this article, I suggest that neo-Polanyian scholars, and economic sociologists more generally, should better engage in a historical sociology of concept formation to problematize the human exemptionalist paradigm their work upholds and recognize the role of nature in shaping markets and society. Unearthing nature in the work of Karl Polanyi, I develop a theory of embeddedness that more closely accounts for the economic, the social, and the ecological. In doing so, I provide a way for scholars to conceptualize both how market societies shape nature and how nature shapes market societies.
Sociology
Keywords: ecology; embeddedness; environmental sociology; materiality; socionatural

The meta-crisis of secular capitalism - Milbank, John; Pabst, Adrian (International Review of Economics, 2015)
The current global economic crisis concerns the way in which contemporary capitalism has turned to financialisation as a double cure for both a falling rate of profit and a deficiency of demand. Although this turning is by no means unprecedented, policies of financialisation have depressed demand (in part as a result of the long-term stagnation of average wages) while at the same time not proving adequate to restore profits and growth. This paper argues that the current crisis is less the ‘normal’ one that has to do with a constitutive need to balance growth of abstract wealth with demand for concrete commodities. Rather, it marks a meta-crisis of capitalism that is to do with the difficulties of sustaining abstract growth as such. This meta-crisis is the tendency at once to abstract from the real economy of productive activities and to reduce everything to its bare materiality. By contrast with a market economy that binds material value to symbolic meaning, a capitalist economy tends to separate matter from symbol and reduce materiality to calculable numbers representing ‘wealth’. Such a conception of wealth rests on the aggregation of abstract numbers that cuts out all the relational goods and the ‘commons’ on which shared prosperity depends.
Economics
Keywords: abstraction; financialisation; financialization; materialisation; meta-crisis

Karl Polanyi and the Problem of Corporate Social Responsibility - Moncrieff, Lilian (Journal of Law and Society, 2015)
This article considers Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of the projects in ‘new governance and decentred regulation’, which draw social forces towards the regulation of economic behaviour. It uses Karl Polanyi to open up pertinent interfaces between society and economy for observation, and Gunther Teubner to substantiate a ‘regulatory’ view of the company's social relationships. The article finds that CSR combines movements for the recognition of social relationships, on an unprecedented scale, with rigorous simultaneous movements for market building and social abstraction. Twenty-first-century market economy is defined by a capacity to contain ‘the social,’ which is thrown between the two movements, creating opportunities for companies to void the market's social limits. The article counterposes that the social that ‘returns’ after marketization needs to find its way past market-building CSR, to constructively unshackle and redefine the framing of social conflicts that concern the corporation.
Law; Sociology
Keywords: CSR; corporate social responsibility; marketization

Benjamin Cohen on global political order: when Keynes meets realism – and beyond - Guzzini, Stefano (Contexto Internacional, 2015)
This article analyses the trajectory of Benjamin J. Cohen's work by focusing on his ongoing concern with the nature and governance of world order. It does so by playing out his debt to realism and to Keynesianism. In a first moment, Cohen criticises the economic determinism of dependency scholarship, while turning to political realism, and then to possible Keynesian co-operation under anarchy: agents have the power to affect positive change. Later, Cohen the disillusioned Keynesian, watching how the possible reform of financial markets is marginalised by politicians and academics alike, shifts his analysis to more structural aspects of governance or rule that affect actors' preferences. I draw two conclusions. First, in this shift towards theorising the global political order away from steering capacity towards impersonal rule and bias, Cohen also questions the very setup of the theories with which we deal with that world – only to see that this very inspiration of original IPE is abandoned in the course of the ongoing ‘professionalisation' of IPE as practised in the United States. Second, his analysis seems to incorporate a warning. The underlying grand question is nothing less than the bargain between capitalism and liberal democracy as we know it, since the present system undermines equality before the law – money trumps equal political rights – and undermines democratic accountability. One of the main achievements of the post-war Keynesian turn was the reappropriation of political space from anti-democratic forces. Therefore, the decline of Keynesianism could provoke a Polanyian nightmare in which the ‘double movement' by which the laissez-faire is answered by moves to protect society does not strengthen democracies, as in earlier times of ‘embedded liberalism', but undermines them instead.
Political Science; International Relations
Keywords: COHEN; Benjamin J.; Keynesian economics; capitalism; dependency; embedded liberalism; global governance; international finance; international relations; political realism; securities markets; structural power

The political economy of orphanage tourism in Cambodia - Guiney, Tess; Mostafanezhad, Mary (Tourist Studies, 2015)
A recent Aljazeera report on ‘Cambodia’s Orphan Business’ explains ‘how “voluntourism” could be fuelling the exploitation of Cambodian children’. Anti-orphanage tourism movements have emerged to resist the growth of Cambodia’s contested orphanage tourism industry, which is blamed for widespread corruption and the exploitation of children for profit. Taking a Polanyian political economy approach, this article illustrates how the emergence of and response to the orphanage tourism industry represent, in Karl Polanyi’s words, a ‘double movement’ between the neoliberalization of orphanages and the corollary protective countermovement by anti-orphanage tourism campaigns that challenge the industry’s morality and legitimacy. It argues that while resistance to the commodification of orphanages under the newly neoliberalized Cambodian economy reflects Polanyi’s double movement thesis, the limits of this resistance are also indicative of how countermovements are challenged by the broader political economy in which they operate.
Geography
Keywords: Cambodia; double movement; hospitality; leisure; sport & tourism; orphanage tourism; tourism; tourist studies; volunteer tourism

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda - Naybor, Deborah (Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 2015)
In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land. (English)
Geography
Keywords: Uganda; derechos de las mujeres; free enterprise; gender; género; land; land tenure; legal status of widows; legal status of women; property rights; tierra; viuda; widow; women's rights; 乌干达; 土地; 女性权利; 寡妇; 性别

Europe at a Crossroads: Failed Ideas, Fictional Facts, and Fatal Consequences - Thomasberger, Claus (Forum for Social Economics, 2015)
The crisis of the European Monetary Union has revealed the weakness and the fragility of the European integration process. The paper examines the institutional changes which are at the root of the instability. What are the driving forces behind the introduction of the euro? What role do theoretical considerations play in this process? What influence on European integration has been exerted by neoliberal beliefs and convictions? Relying on an approach that combines basic insights of Gunnar Myrdal with Karl Polanyi's idea of a "double movement," it concentrates on the institutional transformation that is at the basis of the European integration process. The relationship between (misleading) ideas and facts is at the center of the study. It examines the influence of ideas and theoretical models on European integration, the Single Market Program, the Maastricht process, the increasing imbalances since the introduction of the euro, and the strategies applied during the recent crisis.
Economics; Philosophy
Keywords: economic integration; financial aspects of economic integration; financial crises; international institutional arrangements

Hard cash, easy credit, fictitious capital: Critical reflections on money as a fetishised social relation - Jessop, Bob (Finance and Society, 2015)
Sociology
Keywords: Marxism; commodity; credit; debt; fictitious capital; money

Marketization: Theoretical Reflections Building on the Perspectives of Polanyi and Habermas - Ebner, Alexander (Review of Political Economy, 2015)
The concept of marketization denotes the expansion of market coordination into non-market coordinated social domains as well as its intensification in already market-dominated settings. This article sets out to reconstruct an institutionalist theory of marketization. As a point of departure, it critically examines the related contributions of Karl Polanyi and Jürgen Habermas. The analytical strength of Polanyi's theory of marketization lies in the discussion of the contested embeddedness of markets and the view of marketization as a politically shaped process of institutional change. This concern with the societal expansion of markets is further developed in the Habermasian thesis of the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’. However, both Polanyi and Habermas lack a specification of the social substance of markets and thus tend to underestimate the complexity of marketization. To address this issue, the present article utilizes the concept of collective goods to introduce new arguments about the institutional dynamics of marketization in the diverse fields of society.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: HABERMAS; Jurgen; collective goods; economics; embeddedness; marketization; markets; socioeconomics

Goody, Polanyi and Eurasia: An Unfinished Project in Comparative Historical Economic Anthropology - Hann, Chris (History & Anthropology, 2015)
Goody's essay overlaps with his recent work on the “search for metals” and, more generally, with his many books expounding the commonalities of Eurasian history. His critique of Eurocentrism remains invaluable. This review article argues that his emphasis on diffusion can be usefully supplemented with a concept of civilization, to facilitate comparative structural analysis. Goody's perspective might also be enhanced by an engagement with the literature on “Axial Age” cosmologies and with substantivist economic anthropology. It is worth revisiting Karl Polanyi's efforts to grasp the position of the economy in society, in order to recover in the neoliberal present the long-run Eurasian dialectic between redistribution and market exchange.
Anthropology
Keywords: Eurasia; GOODY; Jack; 1919-2015; civilization; culture diffusion; economic anthropology

Cultures régionales et développement économique dans l'espace rhénan et au-delà - Kahn, René (Revue d'Allemagne et des Pays de Langue Allemande, 2015)
Contemporary economic thought is overwhelmingly dominated by the dogma of the neoclassical school and the Austrian neoliberal school, according to which social organization can fully be understood from two hypotheses: the society can be reduced to its economic aspects, and economic activities are exclusively explained by the utilitarist rationality of individuals. This approach makes unnecessary, at least in the economic sphere, the construction of a collective cultural framework based on preferences and values specific of a "situated" community. Now, many multidisciplinary works confirm the validity of Karl Polanyi's observations and the embedment of cultural aspects in the economic activity, especially within the firms and the territories. This paper discusses the contributions of two collective works: the first book devoted to the Rhine area's model of firm; the second devoted to the relationships between regional cultures and economic development. Based on the literature on this subject, the paper questions the nature of such a model. It also shows how regional cultures succeed to enrich the economic sphere, beyond the methodological individualism, through the construction of a culture of development. (English)
Area Studies
Keywords: Germany; economic theory; embeddedness

Polanyi, Hayek, and the Impossibility of Libertarian Ideal Theory - Lindsay, Peter (Polity, 2015)
In 1944, two seminal works of political and social theory appeared: F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. Both works focused on society's spontaneous resistance to the 'marketization' of life. Yet, the authors arrived at opposite normative conclusions. This article attributes the normative distance to a methodological clash over the role and limits of normative theorizing in the concrete and sometimes uncooperative world of politics. This clash, in turn, illuminates recent debates about 'ideal' and 'non-ideal' theory, and suggests limits to the applicability of the former.
Political Science
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); HAYEK; Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August); 1899-1992; Road to Serfdom (book); free enterprise; free markets; ideal theory; laissez-faire; libertarian theory; non-ideal theory

¿Incrustamiento sin espacio? Situando el comercio justo en la industria florícola ecuatoriana - Lyall, Angus (Embeddedness without a space? Situating fair trade in the Ecuadorian flower industry., 2015)
In the last two decades, Fairtrade International has consolidated as the largest fair trade certifier in the world. Much of its growth has involved the expansion of its practices from exclusively certifying cooperatives of smallholder farmers to regulating agroindustries and nonagricultural companies. In hired labor contexts, Fairtrade claims to improve labor and environmental conditions and promote local development and many researchers praise Fairtrade for "re-embedding" economic relations in social and ethnical ones. In this article, I highlight the testimonies of workers on three certified Ecuadorian flower plantations, who acknowledge many of these claims, but remind us that framing Fairtrade as a mechanism for "re-embedding" economic relations elides the desire among workers to leave the flower industry and re-embed their economic relations in local social space. Whereas Polanyi conceives of embeddedness in historically and geographically situated relations, I argue that academic approaches to Fairtrade often misappropriate his notion of the concept by employing it to describe abstract relations between consumers and workers. I place this concept in dialogue with the work of Henri Lefebvre on social space and territory to re-conceptualize what an embedded territorial development might look like under Fairtrade and to foreground the limits and contradictions of this mechanism. (English)
Political Science
Keywords: Ecuador; LEFEBVRE; Henri; comercio justo; embeddedness; espacio social; fair trade; flower industry; incrustamiento; industria florícola; social economy; social space

Marketization and the public-private divide - Rekhviashvili, Lela (International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy, 2015)
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the reasons behind a decade long contestations between the Georgian government and the petty traders over the access to the public space for commercial use. Design/methodology/approach – The paper relies on the repeated ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tbilisi in 2012 and 2013. The ethnographic interviews with legally operating traders and illegal street vendors are supplemented by the in-depth interviews with the representatives of the city government and secondary literature on Georgia’s post-revolutionary transformation. Findings – Bridging the critical literature on the politics of the public space with Polanyi’s theory on commodification of fictitious commodities as a precondition of establishment of a market economy, the author argues that for the Georgian government control of the public space was necessary to pursue neoliberal marketisation policies. These policies required removal of the petty traders from public spaces because the state needed to restrict access to public space and limit its commercial usage to delineate public and private property and allow commodification of the urban land and property. As the commodification intensified and the rent prices started growing and fluctuating, the access to the public space became even more valuable for the petty traders. Therefore, the traders developed subversive tactics undermining the division between public and private space and property. Originality/value – The paper demonstrates the importance of enforcing the public-private divide in the process of establishing a market economy in transitional settings. Moreover, it illustrates little discussed social costs of establishing such a divide.
Sociology
Keywords: Tbilisi; commodification; fictitious commodities; informal economy; marketization; municipal government; neoliberalism; petty trade; public space; public spaces; public-private sector cooperation; transition economies

The Neoclassical Origins of Polanyi’s Self-Regulating Market - Gemici, Kurtuluş (Sociological Theory, 2015)
This article shows, through a detailed examination of Karl Polanyi’s published works and unpublished writings, that Polanyi relies heavily on the neoclassical economics of his time in his conceptualization of the market in capitalist societies. This approach is instrumental to the thesis of The Great Transformation concerning the destructive impact of the market on society. However, such an analytical perspective neglects the social character of the market economy. This perspective is also deficient in capturing why the market is destructive to the social fabric. By identifying the origins and limitations of Polanyi’s self-regulating market, this article contributes to critical reevaluations of his work that aim to expand the scope of Polanyian analysis. In particular, this article outlines how the analysis of the market’s contradictory place is not predicated on the notion of self-regulation. Polanyi’s own historical work, as opposed to his theoretical articulations, illustrates such an analysis.
Sociology
Keywords: double movement; neoclassical economics; self-regulating market

Migration, Precarization and the Democratic Deficit in Global Governance - Schierup, Carl-Ulrik; Ålund, Aleksandra; Likić-Brborić, Branka (International Migration, 2015)
This article attempts to provide a critical understanding of the dual signification of “precarity”. It explores what “precarity” as a concept may potentially offer to studies of the changing contemporary political economy of migration. It discusses shifting trends in global migration and point to tendencies for a possible convergence between “South” and “North”, “East” and “West”. Based on a review of current advances in research, it discusses, with reference to the classical work of Karl Polanyi, the potential for a contemporary “countermovement” which would challenge the precarity of migrants. Bringing forward the issue of the “space for civil society” the article addresses a still lingering democratic deficit in the global governance of migration. Policy Implications The article is relevant to policymakers, trade unions and civil society organizations. It contributes to the understanding of policy making processes in emerging multilevel global governance and focuses on issues of precarization, migration, and the implementation and accountability of human, migrant and labour rights.
Sociology; Anthropology
Keywords: countermovement; democratic deficit; ethnicity; global governance; migration; precarity; social welfare studies

Book Review Essay: The Environmental Crisis and Its Capitalist Roots: Reading Naomi Klein with Karl Polanyi*—Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate - Adler, Paul S. (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2015)
An essay is presented on the relationship between climate change and capitalism, offering a reading of the argument in "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate" by Naomi Klein through the lens of the analysis in "The Great Transformation" by Karl Polanyi. The author suggests that Klein's argument is not clear on whether capitalism in any form or only the current, neoliberal version of capitalism is incompatible with effective action to address the problem of climate change. Topics include environmental externalities and policies addressing them, the environmental record of corporations, and the theory of the self-regulating market.
Business; Management Studies; Administrative Science
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); KLEIN; Naomi; This Changes Everything (Book); business enterprises & the environment; capitalism; climatic changes; economic aspects; environmental policy; externalities

Between Marx and Polanyi: New labour mobilisations in the Italian crisis - Caruso, Loris (Capital & Class, 2015)
The current scenario in western countries is characterised by a crisis over the last thirty years of class conflict; by the mainly negative consequences of globalisation and of the transformations by production processes of the mobilising strength of work; by the cancellation of the relationship between labour and political representation; by the difficulties of traditional trade unionism; and by the emergence of the social movement unionism (SMU) paradigm. In this article, these phenomena are analysed from the point of view of the workers’ struggles against the closure of factories. The analysis concerns the mobilisation factors on which the struggle rests; the presence or absence, in the representations of workers, of references to class conflict; the major proximity of these mobilisations to the paradigm of traditional syndicalism or to the SMU paradigm; and the prevalence within them of the Marxist or the Polanyian root of conflict. This analysis is mainly based on an empirical study carried out in an engineering company in the province of Milan, Italy.
Sociology
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; class cleavage; class conflict; crisis; globalisation; globalizaton - research; labor mobility; labor unions; labour mobilisations; labour mobility; labour unions; research; social conflict; social movements

Hayek versus Polanyi: Espontaneidade e designio no capitalismo. (Hayek versus Polanyi: Spontaneity and Design in Capitalism. With English summary.) - de Almeida, Rafael Galvao; Garcia Fernandez, Ramon (Economica (Fluminense Federal University), 2015)
This work introduces the concept of spontaneous order, its development through many schools of economic thought and its importance to today's society. This paper gives emphasis to Friedrich Hayek, since he has the most known model of spontaneous order, how he started to elaborate from his research about the role of the information on the economy and his maturation in Law, Legislation and Liberty. As a counterpoint to the Hayekian model, this work includes criticism to the concept and the work of Karl Polanyi is analyzed. He diverged from Hayek about the role of the market in the society, when he affirmed that society protects itself from the invasion of the market in the other social spheres, through the process of double movement. Lastly, it is concluded that there is no evidence to discard the existence of spontaneous orders; the double, that double movement, because it is started with the individuals before taking legislative form, has the necessary characteristics to be considered a type of spontaneous order; and, due to the self-organizational trait of spontaneous order, there are practical problems in political anarchism.
Economics
Keywords: HAYEK; Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August); 1899-1992; belief; communication; elections; history of economic thought; information and knowledge; learning; legislatures; lobbying; market structure; pricing; and design; political processes: rent-seeking; lobbying; elections; legislatures; and voting behavior; rent-seeking; spontaneous order; unawareness; voting behavior

Polanyi e Granovetter a partir do olhar de Lukacs. (Polanyi and Granovetter from Lukacs Glance. With English summary.) - de Araujo, Paulo Henrique Furtado (Economica (Fluminense Federal University), 2015)
The article critically examines the contributions of Polanyi and Granovetter on the embeddedness notions and functioning of any individual in social networks from the construction proposed by Lukacs in "The Ontology of Social Being". It is proposed to rethink and point clues to an explanation, consistent with the Marxian thought, the necessary links between the decision-making done in the here and now, in the quotidian of world of men, and the legalities and more general trends produced by them and felt by the entire social being.
Economics
Keywords: GRANOVETTER; Mark; LUKACS; Georg; Marxian; Sraffian; current heterodox approaches: socialist; economic anthropology; economic sociology; history of economic thought: individuals; language; social and economic stratification

Strengthening Karl Polanyi’s Concepts of Reciprocity, Double Movement, and Freedom with the Assistance of Abductive Logic - Hayden, F. Gregory (Journal of Economic Issues (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 2015)
My purpose here is to strengthen Karl Polanyi’s work through critique of and extension to abductive processes. Polanyi presented history woven into a new paradigm for analysis of socioeconomic systems, demonstrated discovery similar to abductive processes, and extended abduction into a holistic context. One of Polanyi’s most important contributions to socioeconomic analysis is the explanation of three integrated network models of socioeconomic reciprocity. They are coadjuvancy, redistribution, and market exchange. Polanyi extended abductive reasoning in two ways. First, he extended it beyond the cognitive logic of a person to inferences and societal belief changes of institutions. Second, he showed that, in the real world, beliefs are not only fixed like an abductive process, they are fixed in law. Throughout Polanyi’s historical presentation, market beliefs are being revised, thus serving as a demonstration of the abductive process. I make both positive and negative critique of a number of Polanyi’s concepts, with special attention to reciprocity, the double movement, and freedom. This critique and abduction extension strengthens Polanyi’s paradigm for future socioeconomic analysis with his integrative network models.
Economics
Keywords: abductive logic; beliefs; double movement; economic theory; freedom; production; reciprocity; reciprocity (commerce); socioeconomic; socioeconomics; stock exchanges

Gellner’s genealogy of the open society: Biopolitics as fragment and remainder - Ryan, Kevin (Thesis Eleven, 2015)
A decade before Foucault began to work with the related concepts of biopolitics and biopower, Gellner posed a series of questions which are suggestive of a similar line of inquiry. Gellner did not pursue this strand of his thought as an historical sociologist however. Instead he packaged it into a functionalist account of how industrial society reproduces itself. In Gellner’s writings, biopolitics is both present and absent, like a redacted text. This is the focus of this article, which locates Gellner’s method of inquiry within a corpus of genealogical studies that includes the work of Polanyi, Weber and Foucault. What distinguishes Gellner is that the history he reconstructs is a story of achievement in the face of terrible historical odds, but this culminates in a normative genealogy that limits the scope for critical analysis. The article concludes by adopting an alternative – yet still Gellnerian – approach to the question of social reproduction, thereby using Gellner to critique Gellner.
Political Science; Sociology
Keywords: FOUCAULT; Michel; 1926-1984; GELLNER; Ernest; biopolitics; biopolitics (philosophy); biopower; genealogy; historical sociology; realism; social aspects

Basic Income, Full Employment, and Social Provisioning: Some Polanyian/Keynesian Insights - Seccareccia, Mario (Journal of Economic Issues (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 2015)
The purpose of this article is to offer a Polanyian perspective on the issue of guaranteed income (GI). In analyzing the debate over the Speenhamland system, especially as Karl Polanyi ([1944] 2001) describes it inThe Great Transformation, he offered an important criticism of a GI program that some contemporary Polanyian economists have been struggling to come to terms with in their writings. Instead of defending a GI policy by seeking to reject Polanyi’s analysis of the problem, I suggest that we should consider embracing Polanyi’s concern by proposing a comprehensive twin policy that would complement a basic income program with a Keynesian full employment commitment.
Economics
Keywords: English Poor Laws; Keynesianism; Speenhamland system; basic income; economists; full employment; full-time employment; guaranteed annual income; income; income supplementation

Provision of Social Costs and the Free Market: A Polanyian Perspective - Vidal, Gregorio; Marshall, Wesley; Correa, Eugenia (Journal of Economic Issues (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 2015)
In this article, we analyze at a conceptual level some of the more relevant effects of the neoliberal takeover on the provision of social costs, including employment, health care, and nutrition. Adopting key perspectives of Karl Polanyi and other thinkers, we develop our examination under the seemingly perpetual conflict between markets and social reproduction. We argue that financialization has both expanded market spaces and changed relationships within those spaces. The ever-greater domination of financial markets means that employment has become increasingly more precarious in the strict spaces of the labor market. At the same time, financialization has steadily eroded the social forms that exist outside of formal markets, greatly weakening the mechanisms through which societies can both defend themselves from predatory markets and reproduce themselves with some degree of purpose and hope for the future.
Economics
Keywords: employment (economic theory); externalities; externalities (economics); financialization; free enterprise; neoliberalism; nutrition; social reproduction

Corporate Power and Responsible Capitalism?: Towards Social Accountability - Jones, Bryn (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015)
In this important book, Bryn Jones uses insights from political economy, historical analysis and sociological concepts of the corporation, as a socially disembedded but political actor, to address concerns over the over-reach of Anglo-Saxon corporation KM – on page 6: "Following Karl Polanyi, I argue that ST/EM firms have outgrown and threaten to dominate, envelop and even undermine, some of the social and political institutions on which a sustainable market economy depends. Any rebalancing of the relationship between corporations and the rest of society must therefore interrogate the nature of the relationship between market organisations, such as firms, and the social institutions to which they are linked.
Economics; Business Studies
Keywords: ST/EM corporations; business & economics; business ethics; business systems; corporate governance; disembedding; executive managed corporations; industrial management; management; management science; organizational behavior; share-traded corporations; social embedding

The course, contradictions, and consequences of extending competition as a mode of (meta-)governance: towards a sociology of competition and its limits - Jessop, Bob (Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2015)
This article examines the use of competition as an object and mode of governance. It first considers how competition might become a principle of economic organization and, relatedly, how it may become part of state projects and practices. Second, it comments on the discursive and material dimensions of competition, considering it as a social construct and as a social constraint. Third, it examines the rather idealized representations of competition in the broader doxa of liberalism and neo-liberalism considered in terms of a rough threefold distinction among economic, political, and ideological imaginaries and the limits to the reproduction of these doxa in terms of the complexities of capitalist social relations. Fourth, it explores the complexities of competition in the actually existing world and their role in differential accumulation. In this context it distinguishes neo-classical, Austrian, and Schumpeterian views on competition and entrepreneurship and their contribution to equilibration or creative destruction. Fifth, it considers efforts to steer competition through, inter alia, the competition state and competition law. Sixth, it relates competition to other modes of governance and identifies limits to its role in this regard and introduces ‘meta-governance’ as a response to these limits. Finally, seventh, it comments on the fetishization of competition as a means to subsume society under the dominance of profit-oriented, market-mediated accumulation. It concludes with comments on the limits of competition in relation to fictitious commodities and goods and services that contribute to human flourishing.
Sociology
Keywords: commodification; competition; competition law; competition state; competitiveness; governance; neoliberalism; new public management; social theory

The Bioeconomy as Political Project: A Polanyian Analysis - Goven, Joanna; Pavone, Vincenzo (Science, Technology & Human Values, 2015)
The bioeconomy is becoming increasingly prominent in policy and scholarly literature, but critical examination of the concept is lacking. We argue that the bioeconomy should be understood as a political project, not simply or primarily as a technoscientific or economic one. We use a conceptual framework derived from the work of Karl Polanyi to elucidate the politically performative nature of the bioeconomy through an analysis of an influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiative, The Bioeconomy to 2030. We argue that this initiative is a response to some of the most acute challenges facing the current neoliberal-capitalist accumulation regime, which seeks to protect and extend that regime, through both what it occludes and what it promotes. Rather than taking the bioeconomy as a description of some subset of economic activity, we regard it as a promissory construct that is meant to induce and facilitate some actions while deterring others; most explicitly, it is meant to bring about a particular set of political–institutional changes that will shape the parameters of possible future action. The bioeconomy concept highlights the potential dangers of failing to situate ethnographic examinations of horizontal micro-relations within a political–economic macro-context that enables and constrains. Scholarly work in science and technology studies and elsewhere that does not recognize the wider politics of the bioeconomy risks unintentionally contributing to the legitimation of this political project.
Political Science
Keywords: bioeconomy; commodification; cooperation; economics; ethnographic analysis; futures; inequality; literature; markets/economies; neoliberalism; organization; politics

Authoritarian Liberalism in the European Constitutional Imagination: Second Time as Farce? - Wilkinson, Michael A. (European Law Journal, 2015)
The current crisis in Europe recalls the theory and practice of authoritarian liberalism, the idea that in order to protect economic liberalism and respect for fiscal discipline, representative democracy must be curtailed. This configuration was first identified by Hermann Heller in late Weimar as a response to the imperative to maintain the ideological separation of state and economy and presented by Karl Polanyi as conditioned by broader geo-political pressure to maintain the gold standard in the inter-war period. Authoritarian liberalism is now conditioned by conflicting imperatives to maintain the project of the single currency, respect ordo-liberal concerns of moral hazard, and protect 'militant democracy' but only in one country. Does this reflect a broader geo-political disequilibrium, due to tensions between market integration, constitutionalism and democracy?
Law
Keywords: Europe; European Sovereign Debt Crisis; 2009-; HELLER; Hermann; 1891-1933; POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; authoritarianism; constitutionalism; democracy; equilibrium (economics); liberalism

The Great Mindshift: Linking Forerunners of a New Sustainability Paradigm - Gopel, Maja (Brookings Inst Press, 2015)
Making sustainability a policy goal is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Calls for a paradigm shift are becoming increasingly frequent and urgent. In fact, change toward a sustainable form of society seems to be more within reach than ever before. The mindset of people has changed in the course of economic and environmental crises. This publication presents the current scientific and practical approaches that shape and empower the process of change toward true sustainability. It also raises the question as to the new possibilities that may arise from linking these approaches.
Political Science
Keywords: environmental policy; environmental science; global warming & climate change; public policy; science

After ideocracy and civil society Gellner, Polanyi and the new peripheralization of Central Europe - Hann, Chris (Thesis Eleven, 2015)
Behind only that of Bronislaw Malinowski, the influence of the Central European polymaths Ernest Gellner and Karl Polanyi on socio-cultural anthropology in the 20th century was profound. Gellner and Polanyi also influenced much wider swathes of scholarship. They belong to different generations and were raised in quite different settings in Prague and Budapest respectively. What these thinkers have in common is a philosophy of history which posits the industrial revolution in northwest Europe as a radical rupture in Weltgeschichte. Polanyi’s ‘great transformation’, with its focus on the economy, corresponds to Gellner’s metaphor of the ‘big ditch’ and focus on a new polity. The cultural homogenization of the nation-state and the disembedding of the economy from society in the era of free trade are two sides of the same coin. This paper argues that these complementary models derive to a considerable degree from the scholars’ background on the margins of industrializing Europe, in the ruins of the Habsburg Empire.
Anthropology
Keywords: Central Europe; GELLNER; Ernest; anthropology; civil society

Les paiements pour services environnementaux de la Fondation Natura Bolivia entre logiques réciprocitaires, redistributives et marchandes, - Bétrisey, Florence; Mager, Christophe (Revue Française de Socio-Économie, 2015)
La diffusion internationale des paiements pour services environnementaux (PSE) a été interprétée en 2010 par le gouvernement bolivien d’Evo Morales comme une réponse strictement néolibérale à la nécessité d’assurer une gestion durable des ressources naturelles. Supposée amener à terme à l’éviction de toute régulation autre que marchande – qu’elle s’applique à la nature ou aux rapports entre personnes –, la mise en place de PSE n’a pas été encouragée par les autorités nationales boliviennes. Des projets de PSE ont toutefois été lancés, dont les Acuerdos Reciprocos por el Agua (ARA), issus d’un partenariat public-privé dans le département de Santa Cruz. En analysant leur conception et leur fonctionnement au prisme du référentiel polanyien, nous montrons que, contrairement aux craintes gouvernementales, ces PSE ne font pas abstraction des logiques organisationnelles réciprocitaires et redistributives, ajustant au contexte local un objet global., ENG: The international dissemination of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has been interpreted in 2010 by the Bolivian government of Evo Morales as a strictly neo-liberal response to the need to ensure a sustainable management of natural resources. Supposed to contribute to the crowding-out of any other regulation than market – applied to the nature or the relationship between people – the implementation of PES was not encouraged by the Bolivian national authorities. However some PES projects stemming from a public-private partnership have been initiated at local level, as the Acuerdos Reciprocos por el Agua (ARA), in the department of Santa Cruz. Analysing their design and operating through the Polanyian framework, we show that, contrary to the government fears, these PES do not ignore the reciprocal and redistributive organisational logics, adjusting a global object to the local context.
Geography
Keywords: Bolivia; Bolivie; Polanyi; hybridity; hybridité; logique marchande; market logic; paiements pour services environnementaux; payments for ecosystem services; reciprocity; redistribution; réciprocité; sustainable management

Karl Polanyi et l’encastrement politique de l’économie : pour une analyse systémique des rapports changeants entre économie et société, Karl Polanyi and political embeddedness of economy: a systemic analysis of the changing relationships between economy and society - Chochoy, Nicolas (Revue Française de Socio-Économie, 2015)
Cette contribution défend la thèse selon laquelle une interprétation fidèle de l’encastrement au sens de Karl Polanyi nécessite une analyse qui se positionne dans la relation existante entre l’économie et l’institution organisatrice du social. Cette proposition s’étaye sur une analyse systémique des rapports changeants entre économie et société qui éclaire le désencastrement comme processus d’extériorisation du Marché imaginaire autorégulateur. Face à ce processus, l’enjeu d’une économie solidaire nous semble être de créer les conditions d’une réelle auto-organisation démocratique., This paper defends the idea that a faithful interpretation of Karl Polanyi’s embeddedness requires an analysis at the level of the relationships between economy and the institution which organises the social. This proposal is based on a systemic analysis of the changing relationships between economy and society that considers the disembeddedness as an externalisation process of imaginary self-regulating market. In front of this process, the issue of solidarity economy seems to be the creation of conditions for a real democratic self-organisation.
Economics
Keywords: autotranscendance; democracy; démocratie; embeddedness; encastrement; marché; markets; solidarity economy; économie solidaire

La pluralité des logiques d’action de la Banque Palmas au Brésil : entre développement local et partenariats au niveau national, The plurality of Banco Palmas’ strategies: between local development and partnerships at a national level - Meyer, Camille (Revue Française de Socio-Économie, 2015)
Actives dans plus de 100 communautés au Brésil, les banques communautaires de développement représentent un phénomène majeur de l’économie solidaire brésilienne. En se référant aux apports théoriques de Karl Polanyi, cet article propose une analyse des logiques d’action plurielles de la première banque communautaire de développement brésilienne, la Banque Palmas., Effective in more than 100 communities in Brazil, community development banks are a major phenomenon of Brazilian solidarity economy. Referring to the theoretical contributions of Karl Polanyi, this paper proposes an analysis of the plural organizational logics of the first Brazilian community development bank, Banco Palmas.
Economics
Keywords: Brésil; banque communautaire de développement; finances solidaires; social economy; économie plurielle

To boldly go (Fund Strategy, 2015)
The article provides the author's view on issues concerning free market economics. He mentions Mr. Spock, a fictional character in the "Star Trek," whom critics of free market economics often cite as the epitome of rational economic man or Homo Economicus, as well as features Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian-American economist, who opposed the idea of humans as rational economic agents in his work "The Great Transformation." He also mentions human reason and cultural pessimism.
Economics
Keywords: Spock; Mr.; capitalism; economists; free enterprise

The limits to China's non-interference foreign policy: pro-state interventionism and the rescaling of economic governance - Gonzalez-Vicente, Ruben (Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2015)
China's foreign policy has been long committed to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. While one could easily point out past and present-day inconsistencies in its implementation, this article argues that defenders and critics of the principle both rely on a limited interpretation of ‘interference’ or ‘intervention’ based on an ideology of Westphalian sovereignty. Particularly problematic is the conceptual distinction between the ‘political’ or ‘diplomatic’, on the one hand, and the ‘economic’, on the other. As Polanyi's concept of embeddedness reminds us, markets, society and politics occur simultaneously, and can only act as discrete realms in epistemological abstractions. It is thus argued that non-interference is a semi-formal institution that governs China's diplomatic engagements and affects its economic activities. While the totality of China's interactions with the world has diverse and sometimes contradictory impacts on global governance, non-interference itself has apparent consequences for the rescaling of regional economic governance. Specifically, this article contends that Chinese non-interference results in the empowerment of political elites at national levels, and thus in the (re-)emergence of the nation state as a gatekeeper and facilitator of the advancement of capitalist enterprises. As a result, through non-intervention, China's foreign policy undermines supranational regulatory approaches and fosters state-based regional architectures.
Development Studies; International Relations
Keywords: China; China - foreign relations; People's Republic of China; Westphalians - foreign countries; bilateralism; economic policy; embeddedness; foreign policy; non-interference; socioeconomic theory; supranationalism

Explaining Political Tunnel Vision: Politics and Economics in Crisis-Ridden Europe, Then and Now - Mudge, Stephanie L. (European Journal of Sociology, 2015)
The grip of austerity in European politics since 2008 presents a double puzzle: electorally weak center-left parties offering no definite alternative, and the surprisingly efficient pursuit of “fiscal consolidation”. To understand this double puzzle this article investigates the institutional bases of alternative economic thinking during the 1930s versus the post-2008 crisis years. Noting the recent prominence of a new social type, the European economist-technocrat (eet), I highlight the historically specific order to which the eet is indigenous: rarefied, international professional circuits that tend to work over, not through, party politics. This contrasts sharply with the nationally-based, party-connected economists who developed new economic orthodoxies between the 1930s and 1960s, including Keynes himself. Approaching the study of economic culture in the public sphere in a Polanyian moral markets framework, I argue that the linkages between European economics and financial technocracies help to explain Europe’s double puzzle. Theoretically, I argue that a focus on expertise and parties, and not just states, is central to our understanding of economic culture in the public sphere. (English)
Sociology
Keywords: European Union; Europäische Union; Frachkenntnisse; Sparmaβnahmen; Union européenne; austerity; austerité; compétence; economics; economists; expertise; partis politiques; political parties; politics and economics; politischen parteien; public sphere; technocracy; wirtschaft; économie

A Neo-Polanyian Theory of Economic Crises - Block, Fred (American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2015)
This article seeks to use Karl Polanyi's book, The Great Transformation, first published in 1944, to understand the global financial crisis that began in 2008. Polanyi's basic premise was that a great crisis must result from powerful causes. He argued that the crisis of the 1930s was a consequence of three distinct processes: deep imbalances in the global trading system, a crisis within the global financial mechanism that was supposed to manage those imbalances, and a failure of adaptation in the world's leading economy, the United States. The same processes can be seen at work in the last decade.
Sociology
Keywords: global financial crisis

Pursuing a Great Transformation - Evans, Peter (Sociology of Development, 2015)
Polanyi offers a powerful vision of a “great transformation” that will reverse the subordination of society to the economy and reassert the primacy of social protection in the context of modern society. Pursuit of the great transformation is one way of conceptualizing the quest for “development” in the positive sense of ecologically sustainable human flourishing. This paper explores how the contemporary interaction of national and global political dynamics affects the trajectory of Polanyi's “double movement.” Does the shift of economic power to globally organized capital while the space for contentious politics remains primarily at the national level “checkmate” the movement for social protection? Or is there more potential for political contestation and policies supporting social protection at the national level than the “global checkmate” thesis claims? And, if so, can this potential be magnified by productive, synergistic alliances between national and global movements, resulting in a global auxiliary effect instead of a global checkmate effect? Answering these questions requires analyzing the relative autonomy of national political regimes vis-à-vis global capital as well as evaluating the ability of movements to connect effectively across levels.
Sociology
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); double movement; global capital; social protection; transnational social movements

The power of market fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's critique - Gamble, Andrew (Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2015)
Political Science
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred; Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); SOMERS; Margaret R.; markets; nonfiction; review

Protecting Markets from Society: Non-Pecuniary Claims in American Corporate Democracy - Gershenson, Carl (Politics & Society, 2015)
The state incentivizes investors to entrust capital to public corporations by granting shareholders enforceable rights over managers. However, these rights create legal “access points” through which social movements can make nonpecuniary claims on the corporation. I use original historical research on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administration of federal securities law to show that concern over nonpecuniary claims motivates the state to enact the role of “market protector.” In this role, the commission insulates managers of corporations from shareholders’ claims that it deems illegitimate because they are insufficiently profit-oriented. Thus the inverse of Polanyi’s observation that society protects itself from markets is also true: the state creates market boundaries so that “always embedded” markets function more like autonomous, profit-oriented markets. Accordingly, the extent to which corporate democracy represents general, social interests or narrow, profit-oriented interests is largely a function of political contestation and state policy.
Sociology
Keywords: United States; United States Securities & Exchange Commission; corporate accountability; corporate democracy; corporations - government policy; economic sociology; legal status of stockholders; markets; markets - government policy; political sociology; social responsibility of business - United States

Reading The Great Transformation - Martin, Isaac William (Contemporary Sociology, 2015)
Karl Polanyi’s book The Great Transformation is a classic... it has come to be recognized as a founding charter for economic sociology. It anticipated major accomplishments of late-twentieth-century social science (including, among others, Ben Bernanke’s studies of the Great Depression and Amartya Sen’s work on famine). Its core problems—how do societies respond to globalization? how do they address the risks of market failure?—are central to contemporary macrosociology. It is probably time to recognize the canonical status of this book and put it on the classical theory syllabus alongside Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. But The Great Transformation is also—can we admit this about our classics?—a mess. It is conceptually sloppy. Some key terms (such as “market society” and “social dislocation”) are never explicitly defined. Others (such as “a ‘movement’”) are defined with pedantic care, and then used willy-nilly, as if Polanyi forgot what he said the words meant. Important steps in the argument assume what is to be proven. Inconsistencies abound. The treatment of historical sources is casual. To round it all off, the book concludes with a breathtakingly wrong prediction: namely, that the era of market liberalism is over for good—as of 1944. To salvage a theory from all this, let alone one that we can apply to societies in the present day, surely requires a heroic effort of interpretation. Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers undertake the salvage effort...
Sociology
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred L.; Great Transformation; The (Book); Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); SOMERS; Margaret R.; book review; nonfiction

Mobilizing the depths of the market: Motivation research and the making of the disembedded consumer - Schwarzkopf, Stefan (Marketing Theory, 2015)
Twentieth-century consumer society was characterized by a process of disembedding as described by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (2001 [1944]). The Austro-American consumer researcher Ernest Dichter played a key role in preparing the ideological framework necessary for this process to succeed. In order to assess Dichter’s role and that of psychoanalytic motivation research in general in the creation of the idea of the disembedded consumer, this article presents an analysis of Dichter’s unpublished consumer research reports ranging across different countries and industries between 1939 and 1973. Through content analysis and historical contextualization, I show that Ernest Dichter in particular and psychoanalytic motivation research in general were instrumental in removing from market relationships the invisible hand of social norms. The case of the consumer psychoanalyst Ernest Dichter thus provides new insights into the sociocultural mechanisms by which theorizing in consumer research can influence the objects of its theorizing.
Business; Marketing
Keywords: DICHTER; Ernest; consumer research; disembedding; interpersonal relations; market society; marketing; motivation research; pleasure principle; psychoanalysis; therapeutic ethos

Mutating Neoliberalism: The Promotion of Italian Investors in Slovakia before and after the Global Financial Crisis - Sellar, Christian; Pástor, Rudolf (International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 2015)
In the context of the literature on 'actually existing neoliberalisms', this article analyzes the policies and services supporting Italian foreign direct investment (FDI) in Slovakia. It identifies a group of organizations, both Slovak and Italian, which shape and deliver neoliberal pro-FDI policies. By studying such an 'investment promotion community' (IPC) before and after the global financial crisis of 2009, and during Italy's prolonged crisis, this article shows both the persistence and adaptability of neoliberal policies and institutions. In so doing, it highlights some of the transnational flows underpinning the 'domestication' of neoliberalism in Slovakia. These findings support recent literature arguing that post-crisis neoliberalism can be interpreted as a stunted Polanyian double movement, in which the state has improved some of its regulatory functions but without questioning the overarching neoliberal principles. Specifically, it shows that FDI policies and the support of Italian investors rest upon a professional community that has not changed much since the 2009 crisis. This community played a crucial role in embedding neoliberal rationalities in Slovakia and supports the persistence of this ideology in the post-crisis environment.
Political Science; Public Administration
Keywords: Bratislava; Italy; Košice; Kralovsky Chlmec; Slovakia; Slovakia - economic conditions; Slovakia - foreign economic relations; capitalists & financiers; double movement; financial crisis; foreign direct investment; foreign investments; global financial crisis; 2008-2009; neoliberalism

The Evolution of the Property Relation: Understanding Paradigms, Debates, and Prospects - Davis, Anne E. (Springer, 2015)
Evolution of the Property Relation defines an approach to economics which is centered around the concept of property and explores the historical evolution of the relationship of the individual, private property, and the state, and the distinctive changes wrought by the emergence of the market.
Economics; Sociology
Keywords: business & economics; economic development; economic history; economic theory; labor; labour; management; organizational behavior; social science; sociology; strategic planning

Embedding and disembedding of political elites: a filter system approach - Davis, Aeron (Sociological Review, 2015)
This article looks at the issue of political disengagement in mature democracies and the growing tendency towards disconnect between citizens and their political representatives. It locates itself in relation to 'demand-side' (external to politics) and critical 'supply-side' (focused on the political centre) explanations of disengagement. It concentrates on the latter and, accordingly, builds on critical, post-Marxist and elite-oriented work. As such it follows on from earlier calls in the journal for a return to elite-based research ( Savage and Williams, 2008). Drawing on general concepts in economic sociology ( Polanyi, Granovetter) the article presents an alternative embedding-disembedding paradigm for explaining and evaluating this tendency towards political elite disengagement. The propensity for politicians to disembed from wider society is explained by way of a series of eight 'filters'. Such filters work, alone or cumulatively, both to socially embed political elites within the institutions and networks of formal politics and also to disembed them from wider society and the populace they represent. The interpretive framework outlined here draws on a combination of secondary literature and ongoing interview-based research with some 150 political actors (politicians, journalists, officials) working at Westminster. As such, the filters and embedding-disembedding paradigm focuses primarily on the UK case. However, the framework is easily adaptable to other nations and systems.
Sociology
Keywords: Great Britain - politics & government; communication; disengagement; elite (social sciences); embedding/disembedding; organizations; political communication; political elites; political organizations; political participation laws; politicians

The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism - Wanner, Thomas (New Political Economy, 2015)
This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.
Geography
Keywords: GRAMSCI; Antonio; 1891-1937; environmental economics; fictitious commodities; green economy; green growth; neoliberalising nature; neoliberalism; passive revolution; privatization; research; social justice - environmental aspects; sustainable development

Żeby sprzedać – trzeba dać O rynku i jego nierynkowych fundamentach - Michalski, Michał A. (Prakseologia, 2015)
The paper analyzes interdependence of the market sphere which functions according to the logic of contract, and the sphere of non-market activity within economy, where the logic of gift dominates as a paradigm. The purpose of the analysis is to present how the above concepts of societal exchange intertwine and complete each other within the socio-economic order. This is followed by the description of 'pre-market' economic paradigms (based on Karl Polanyi's contribution) such as reciprocity, redistribution and household. Special attention is paid to category of gift, which is presented as prior to contract and being a necessary condition of the former one. The purpose of the analysis undertaken in this paper is to show how understanding of the interaction discussed here is necessary for creating integrated vision of how socio-economic order functions and offers adequate perspective for formulating recommendations within social and economic policy. (English) "To Sell One Has to Give – of Market and Its Non-Market Foundations"
Sociology; Philosophy
Keywords: contract; economy; gift; gospodarka; kontrakt; market; rynek; socio-economic order; ład społeczno-gospodarczy

Facing an unequal world - Burawoy, Michael (Current Sociology, 2015)
To face an unequal world requires us to interpret and explain it, to be sure, but also to engage it, that is, to recognize that we are part of it and that we are partly responsible for it. In other words, inequality is not just something external to us, but also invades our own world. I begin, therefore, by examining the global community of sociology through the lens of inequality. I then consider two recent perspectives on our unequal world from outside sociology: the moral radicalism of Pope Francis that emphasizes exclusion from market society, and the innovative research of the economist Thomas Piketty that emphasizes unequal inclusion in market society. These two faces of global inequality mirror the social movements reverberating from the economic crisis of 2008 but which have their roots in a reaction to a broader wave of marketization, the third to engulf modern capitalism. To explore the meaning of third-wave marketization, otherwise known as neoliberalism, and the social movements it provokes I draw on two concepts from Karl Polanyi – ‘fictitious commodities’ and ‘countermovement’ – as well as a theory of the dynamics of capitalism. I conclude with three challenges facing a global sociology that centers social movements: to develop a theory that speaks to the globally diverse experiences of commodification; to develop a methodology that recognizes that we are unavoidably participants in the world we study; and to develop a politics that defends a particular vision of that world, a vision that has defined the sociological tradition from its beginning, namely one that upholds the centrality of civil society against the over-extension of market and state.
Sociology
Keywords: globalization; inequality; markets; social movements; sociology

Reforming States, Agricultural Transformation, and Economic Development in Russia and Japan, 1853-1913 - Cohen, Mark (Conference Papers – American Sociological Association, 2015)
Capitalist economic development has occurred unevenly, as certain economies began sustained growth relatively early, opening up an increasingly large gap with lagging countries. This well-known fact has encouraged much research on the prospects for undeveloped economies to "catch up" to the earlier developers. Japan and Russia in the late nineteenth century were two of the first countries outside of western Europe to experience substantial catch-up growth. Beginning in the 1860s, political elites in both countries adopted wide-ranging reforms in pursuit of military modernization and its political and economic prerequisites. This paper analyzes the impact of the two states' reform programs on their countries' rural economies, which represented the vast majority of population and production. Adopting a Polanyian perspective on economic development, this paper finds that only in Japan were agrarian relations transformed so as to set off a process of capitalist economic development centered on rural areas. This divergence is explained by the different stances of the two reforming states towards landlords and peasant communities.
Sociology
Keywords: Japan; Russia; economic development; rural economies

Karl Polanyi's Environmental Sociology - Fenner, Weston Henry, IV; Brechin, Steven R. (Conference Papers – American Sociological Association, 2015)
Drawing upon The Great Transformation (1944), we outline Karl Polanyi's environmental sociology by presenting his major insights on economic substantivism, fictitious commodities, and double movements. Polanyi wrote his opus in challenge to Von Mises' Austrian School of Economics and its pursuit of an autonomous, self-regulating global free market. Polanyi's recognized the social and environmental limits of a fully free market and reasoned that inevitable market excesses would result in the rise of society self-protection to preserve land along with labor and money. We believe Polanyi's insights make him an important classical contributor to environmental sociology on par with Robert Malthus, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. We conclude by outlining possible connections to established environmental sociology theories and literatures.
Sociology
Keywords: double movement; double movements; economic substantivism; environmental sociology; fictitious commodities; market fundamentalism; social theory

Denaturalizing the Market: Primitive Accumulation, Class Reformation, and the Rise of Colombia's Anti-Neoliberal Countermovement - Hough, Phillip A. (Conference Papers – American Sociological Association, 2015)
This paper addresses what labor movement scholars are calling the "Polanyi-problem" - how societal movements can effectively re-embed neoliberal markets back into society - by drawing upon recent interpretations of Karl Marx writings on primitive accumulation and class formation. The author focuses on the case of Colombia's coffee farmers (cafeteros) - a class of producers whose historically-privileged modality of class reproduction was undermined by the liberalization of the coffee market in the 1990s and who have engaged in two major waves of protest aimed at re-embedding the coffee market back into society (1993-2001; 2013-2014). While similar in terms of movement targets, tactics, and general goals, a significant shift has occurred in the cafeteros' demands which is reflective of a fundamental transformation of their class identity away from one that 'naturalized' their dependence upon the coffee market to meet their subsistence needs and towards one that 'de-naturalizes' their dependence upon this market. This 'denaturalizatization of the market' undermined their ability to mobilize around a privileged form of class identity. Yet, it provided them with the ability to generalize their struggle beyond the confines of the coffee economy and therefore develop into a broad, national anti-neoliberal agrarian Polanyian counter-movement.
Sociology
Keywords: Colombia; Polanyi problem; countermovement; primitive accumulation; reembedding

Challenging Dominant Market Theories in Five Ways[1] - Janoski, Thomas (disClosure, 2015)
This article discusses why many social scientists including Karl Polanyi, Max Weber, and Karl Marx are dissatisfied with an overreliance on markets, and a conceptualization of markets being efficient, fair and rational. Topics include five types of arguments critical of markets including the Marxian approach to markets, the rise of Karl Polanyi's view that markets are fragile, and a more complex decision-making approach starting with Max Weber's view of social action.
Sociology
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; WEBER; Max; 1864-1920; markets; social action; social scientists

Toward a Sartrean Economics - Kail, Michel; Sobel, Richard (Rethinking Marxism, 2015)
Despite the absence of a systematic analysis of economics in Sartre's work, we argue that a Sartrean economics can indeed be said to exist, even if it is an economics that still awaits development. The status that Sartre accords to the concept of scarcity allows him to advance the critique of economism begun by Karl Polanyi, who, for his part, had been satisfied simply to challenge the reduction of economics to its formal definition. Scarcity, Sartre teaches us, should not be submitted to the process of instrumental reason but should be considered as a fact of human history. Economic analysis, meanwhile, should not be based solely on the theme of man's confrontation with a typically ungrateful nature but should rather be articulated through the concept of the world as elaborated in Sartrean philosophy.
Political Science; Philosophy
Keywords: POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; SARTRE; Jean-Paul; 1905-1980; economic systems; economism; scarcity; world

The Limits of Transformation: Contemporary Applications of Karl Polanyi - England, Christopher (Journal of Australian Political Economy. Summer2015/16, Issue 76, 2015)
The article explores the conception of the Great Transformation (GT) by economic historian Karl Polanyi and its contemporary applications. Topics covered include the continued existence of free market fundamentalism as a prominent ideology and as a living political project, the persistence of free market utopianism, and Polanyi's genealogy of the market system. Also discussed are his conception of industrialism and his use of functionalist theory to build a unified image of the social system.
Political Science
Keywords: economics; free enterprise; functionalism; industrialism; political economy; social systems; utopias

A Reversed Double Movement in Brazil: The (Controversial) Evolution of the Partido dos Trabalhadores' Education Policy since 1980 - Guedes-Neto, Joao Victor (Journal of International Studies, 2015)
Karl Polanyi identified a double movement which took place during the bourgeoisie hegemony when, instead of liberalism, it has made use of interventionism to perpetuate its domination over the working class. Several studies have tried to update his analysis by identifying the double movement nowadays. Nevertheless, the academia has not addressed the possibility of a reversed phenomenon where the working class would make use of liberalism to perpetuate itself in power. This paper aims at analyzing the Brazilian case where the Partido dos Trabalhadores, a proxy for the working class, has implemented pro-market policies in higher education. Whereas the party has not passed through structural reforms such as the British and German working class parties, it has drastically changed its approach to policy-making and campaigning since its origin in 1980. The study concludes that a reversed double movement may occur when the working class is in charge of the government.
Political Science; International Relations
Keywords: double movement; economic development; education; education: government policy; human development; human resources; income distribution; migration; national government expenditures and education

Law, Fugitive Capital and Karl Polanyi's the Great Transformation - Kendall, Walter J. III (Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law, 2015)
Law
Keywords: embeddedness; law and economics; law and society; legal philosophy; legal reform; liberalism

Critique and transformation: On the hypothetical nature of ecosystem service value and its neo-Marxist, liberal and pragmatist criticisms - Melathopoulos, Andony; Stoner, Alexander (Ecological Economics, 2015)
Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) the pragmatist criticism of “value monism”. Although each form of criticism provides insight into the limitations of ESV, all share ESV's inability to discern what kind of social transformation is possible . Unable to provide an account of their own immersion in social and historical context, these approaches operate in the hypothetical . In light of these shortcomings, this paper advances a critical theory approach, which we contend provides conceptual tools uniquely well-suited to more adequately address the question of social transformation.
Economics
Keywords: Marxian economics; ecosystem services; neoliberalism; pragmatism; social development

Economics Humanized - Pearson, Dan (Issues in Science & Technology, 2015)
Science & Technology
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred L.; Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); SOMERS; Margaret R.; book review; economics; nonfiction; science and technology

Le syndicat chinois: Une institution au coeur du rapport salarial. (The Chinese Trade-Union: A Core Institution of the Wage-Earning Relationship. With English summary.) - Perisse, Muriel (Mondes en Developpement, 2015)
The official Chinese Trade Union has gained strength during the reforms, to the point that it must be considered as a central institution of the contemporary Chinese wage ratio. As a quasi-governmental organization, it belongs to the evolutionary institutional design and must find new solutions to the labor problems resulting from the reforms. However, its creativity only produces organizational solutions that are far from achieving a real counter-movement in a Polanyian sense.
Economics
Keywords: countermovement; economic development: human resources; economic integration; human development; income distribution; industry studies; international linkages to development; migration; population; role of international organizations; socialist institutions and their transitions: international trade; finance; investment; relations; and aid P33; socialist systems and transitional economies: factor and product markets; wage differentials; wage level and structure

Contesting 'Actually Existing' Neoliberalism - Ryan, Matthew (Journal of Australian Political Economy, 2015)
The article explores the established conception of actually existing neoliberalism. Topics covered include free-market neoliberalism, the nature of neoliberal theory, and the distinction between esoteric and exoteric neoliberalisms. Also discussed are the ideas of scholars Karl Polanyi and Ha-Joon Chang about the role of the state in capitalist development, and scholar Damien Cahill's idea that neoliberalism is defined by microeconomic policies of privatization, marketization and deregulation.
Political Science
Keywords: CAHILL; Damien; CHANG; Ha-Joon; esotericism; free enterprise; neoliberalism; political economy

Greening of Capitalism: How Asia Is Driving the Next Great Transformation - Mathews, John (Stanford University Press, 2014)
As China, India, and other industrializing giants grow, they are confronted with an inconvenient truth: They cannot rely on the conventions of capitalism as we know them today. Western industrialism has achieved miracles, promoting unprecedented levels of prosperity and raising hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet, if allowed to proceed unencumbered, this paradigm will do irreversible harm to the planet. By necessity, a new approach to environmentally conscious development is already emerging in the East, with China leading the way. Positioning its argument against zero-growth advocates and free-market environmentalists, Greening of Capitalism charts this transformation and sketches out a framework for more sustainable capitalism. State-mandated changes in energy use (as opposed to carbon taxes), a circular flow of resources (as opposed to emissions standards), and the introduction of new financial instruments that support green growth are cornerstones of China's framework. John A. Mathews argues that these tenets will be emulated around the worldfirst in India and Brazil. In light of this emerging shift, Mathews considers core debates over national security, international relations, and economic policy, ultimately addressing the question of whether these measures will be far-reaching or timely enough to prevent further damage.
Economics; Political Science
Keywords: business & economics; economic policy; energy; government & business; industries; public policy; sustainable capitalism

Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e totalitarismi - Gentile, Emilio (Gius.Laterza & Figli Spa, 2014)
La sacralizzazione della politica accade ogni volta che un'entità politica – la nazione, la democrazia, lo Stato, la razza, la classe, il partito, il movimento – è trasformata in una entità sacra, in un oggetto di devozione e di culto, ed è collocata al centro di un sistema di credenze, di simboli e di riti. Nascono allora le religioni della politica, che non si identificano con un unico tipo di ideologia e di regime: esse possono sacralizzare la democrazia o l'autocrazia, l'eguaglianza o la disuguaglianza, la nazione o l'umanità.
Philosophy
Keywords: essence of fascism; fascism; history / modern / 21st Century; political philosophy

The politics of Piketty: what political science can learn from, and contribute to, the debate on Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Hopkin, Jonathan (The British Journal of Sociology, 2014)
Thomas Piketty's imposing volume has brought serious economics firmly into the mainstream of public debate on inequality, yet political science has been mostly absent from this debate. This article argues that political science has an essential contribution to make to this debate, and that Piketty's important and powerful book lacks a clear political theory. It develops this argument by first assessing and critiquing the changing nature of political science and its account of contemporary capitalism, and then suggesting how Piketty's thesis can be complemented, extended and challenged by focusing on the ways in which politics and collective action shape the economy and the distribution of income and wealth. Although Capital's principal message is that ‘capital is back’ and that without political interventions active political interventions will continue to grow, a political economy perspective would suggest another rather more fundamental critique: the very economic forces Piketty describes are embedded in institutional arrangements which can only be properly understood as political phenomena. In a sense capital itself – the central concept of the book – is almost meaningless without proper consideration of its political foundations. Even if the fact of capital accumulation may respond to an economic logic, the process is embedded in a very political logic. The examples of housing policy and the regulation, and failure to regulate, financial markets are used to illustrate these points.
Sociology
Keywords: capital; inequality; institutions; political science

Environmental protection as market pathology?: carbon trading and the dialectics of the 'double movement' - Carton, Wim (Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, 2014)
Polanyi's concept of the 'double movement' is frequently interpreted as the opposition between the problematic and unsustainable dynamics of the market and the benign and normatively desirable reaction against this by 'society'. This paper questions this dualistic interpretation of the double movement and undertakes a problematization of the Polanyian idea of social and environmental protection. It does this by revisiting the concept of the double movement in light of the recent proliferation of market-based mechanisms for environmental regulation. Through an exploration of the different interpretations of Polanyi's work, the paper presents a dialectical reading of the double movement that conceptualizes the idea of social protection within a broader capitalist framework. This is then illustrated with the case of emissions trading as a particular form of environmental protection. Carbon trading as a mitigation strategy, it is argued, corresponds to the Polanyian idea of 'social protection' in that its protective potential to reduce emissions is itself constrained by the socioeconomic framework within which it operates. This in turn points to the need for a critique of climate mitigation efforts that goes beyond a focus on current problems with emissions trading schemes.
Geography
Keywords: EU Emissions Trading Scheme; carbon offsetting; climate change; countermovement; emissions trading; environmental protection; pathology; socioeconomics

Towards a Polanyian Sociology - Gemici, Kurtuluş (European Journal of Sociology, 2014)
Sociology
Keywords: BLOCK; Fred L.; Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique; The (Book); SOMERS; Margaret R.; anthropology; nonfiction; review

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2014) - Milkman, Ruth (European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 2014)
KM - A book review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century that points out the glaring omission of Polanyi.
Sociology
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); PIKETTY; Thomas; book review

Polanyian Reading of the Socio-Economic Transformations of the European Union - Savevska, Maja (Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2014)
In an attempt to analyse the socio-economic transformations of the European Union, an increasing number of scholars have resorted to Polanyi's double movement thesis. In doing so, some scholars, by looking at the evidence of intensified marketisation of social relations, consider the EU disembedded; whereas others identify a re-embedding tendency in the recent surge of socio-environmental protection. The paper follows Lacher, Burawoy, Dale and Streeck's readings of Polanyi and argues that the exiting socio-environmental provisions do not re-embed the economy. Socio-environmental protection does not eclipse the neoliberal accumulation strategy which continues to propagate the disembedding tendency, because it fails to decommodify fictitious commodities. The EU is characterised by a heightened intensification of both disembedding and protective tendencies, which Polanyi contends is disruptive in nature. What emerges out of the dialectics between neoliberalisation and socio-environmental provisions is a decelerated rate of change, which, although it temporarily secures the habitation of man, prevents the inception of a synthesis that is capable of sublating the contradictions of the marketisation/protection binary. Moreover, we have a paradoxical situation wherein the socio-environmental measures, despite their protective invocation, are predicated on deepened commodification.
Political Science
Keywords: European Union; commodification; disembedded; double movement; international political economy; neoliberalism; socioeconomics

Polanyian Themes: From Budapest to the Caribbean - Block, Fred (Development & Change, 2014)
KM: Book review of "From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization"
Sociology
Keywords: FROM the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization (Book); From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization (Book); LEVITT; Kari; 1923-; POLANYI LEVITT; Kari; economic development; nonfiction

Towards a neo-Polanyian approach to money: integrating the concept of debt - Saiag, Hadrien (Economy & Society, 2014)
This paper aims to reconsider Polanyi's approach to money. His best-known writing on money uses is deeply original and presents strong insights that dissociate money from the concept of the market. Polanyi also developed an interesting non-dichotomous understanding of money in hisThe great transformation. However, taken together, these two contributions lead to some unresolved questions: his critique of the orthodox approach to money is ambivalent; his argument to separate payment from account is weak; and, most important, he ultimately makes an incomplete break with the classical real/monetary dichotomy. This paper proposes a distinction between money as a set of instruments and practices and money as a concept, through the integration of John Commons's concept of debt into Polanyi's framework. This reformulation allows us to resolve Polanyi's unresolved questions while preserving his major contributions, and leads to a more complex understanding of money.
Economics; Anthropology
Keywords: COMMONS; J.R.; COMMONS; John; Great Transformation; The (Book); debt; debt management; economic anthropology; economic aspects; economics; money plurality; political aspects; theories of money

The Precariat - Standing, Guy (Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social Worlds, 2014)
Economist Guy Standing explains how millions of people are in the precariat, and in defining this emerging class, points to the dangerous political and social consequences as well as the exciting progressive revival that this class could produce.
Economics
Keywords: Great Transformation; The (Book); POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; class inequality; economics; labor; labour; politics; precariat; precarity; social classes; welfare economics

Socioéconomie et démocratie – l'actualité de Karl Polanyi Isabelle Hillenkamp & Jean-Louis Laville (éd.) - Maucourant, Jérôme (Revue de philosophie économique, 2014)
A book review in a French journal
Economics
Keywords: book review; economic philosophy

Karl Polanyi: New Perspectives on the Place of the Economy in Society - Harvey, Mark; Ramlogan, Ronnie; Randles, Sally (Oxford University Press, 2014)
The work of Karl Polanyi has gained in influence in recent years to become a point of reference to a wide range of leading authors in the fields of economics, politics, sociology and social policy. Newly available in paperback, this volume is a combination of reflections on, and assessment of, the nature of Polanyi's contribution and new strands of work, both theoretical and empirical, that has been inspired by Polanyi's insights. It gathers together the key contributions to the first ever workshop on the work of Karl Polanyi held in the United Kingdom. Several of the contributions develop Polanyian ideas in relation to contemporary capitalism. However, in a critical spirit, other contributions in the volume substantially transform his concept 'instituted economic process' in considering a broad range of contemporary socio-economic change: markets for mobile telephony, call centre operations and European labour markets.
Sociology; Economics
Keywords: business & economics; economic theory

The Anthropology of Money and Finance: Between Ethnography and World History - Hart, Keith; Ortiz, Horacio (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2014)
We review here recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its achievements, shortcomings, and prospects, while referring back to the discipline's founders a century ago. We take our departure from the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, both of whom combined openness to ethnographic research with a vision of world history as a whole. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and marginal debates. The anthropological study of money and ethnographies of finance, in particular, have been the focus of much research since the 1980s. Despite taking on new objects and directions, anthropologists still find it difficult to connect their situated analyses with global processes and world history. We propose some conceptual and empirical directions for research that would seek to overcome these limitations by integrating ethnography more closely with human history, while stressing the importance of money in shaping world society and attempts to reform it.
Anthropology
Keywords: MAUSS; Marcel; 1872-1950; distribution; economic anthropology; ethnology; exchange; finance; globalization; history; money; politics; world society

A Missed Opportunity - Kesting, Stefan; Hughes, Peter (Erwägen Wissen Ethik, 2014)
The authors respond to arguments raised by political scientist Hartmut Elsenhans in his article "Capitalism and Global History: Some Thoughts on History and Theory," published within the issue. Topics discussed include the double movement theory of political economist Karl Polanyi, social factors that influence capitalism, and the way Elsenhans interpreted modern capitalism using Marxian materialism concepts.
Political Science; Business
Keywords: ELSENHANS; Hartmut; capitalism; history; materialism

Income Inequality in Advanced Capitalism: How Protective Institutions can Promote Egalitarian Societies - Kollmeyer, Christopher (Comparative Sociology, 2014)
This study develops a Polanyian perspective on income inequality in advanced capitalist countries. Polanyi's historical account of the rise and fall of classic liberalism in Britain illustrated how social groups and society at large devised "protective institutions" to shield themselves from socially destructive market forces. Recent qualitative applications of this idea identify three protective institutions as being the most important - the public sector economy, trade unions, and the family. Using data from 16 Western countries from 1970 to 2010, this study demonstrates that cross-national and temporal variations in these protective institutions explain a considerable amount of the observed patterns of income inequality among these countries, helping to explain why some countries have recently experienced rising inequality but others have not. The study ends by arguing that a Polanyian perspective provides more analytical and theoretical leverage than other sociological approaches to understanding income inequality.
Sociology
Keywords: The Great U-Turn; capitalism; economic sociology; income distribution; income inequality; labor unions; labour unions; liberalism; protective institutions; research; social groups - research

On the Dialectics of Global Governance in the Twenty-first Century: A Polanyian Double Movement? - Patomäki, Heikki (Globalizations, 2014)
Following decades of economic globalisation and market-oriented reforms across the world, Karl Polanyi'sdouble movementhas been invoked not only to explain what is happening but also to give reasons for being hopeful about a different future. Some have suggested a pendulum model of history: a swing from markets to society leading, in the next phase, to a swing from society to markets, and so on. The double movement can also be understood dialectically as a description of an irreversible historical development following its own inner laws or schemes of development. Going beyond a thesis–antithesis–synthesis pattern, I maintain that conceptions and schemes drawn from dialectics, and especiallydialectical critical realism, can provide better geo-historical hypotheses for explaining past changes and for building scenarios about possible future changes. I analyse political economy contradictions and tendencies, and focus on normative rationality, to assess substantial claims about rational tendential directionality of world history. I argue that democratic global Keynesianism would enable processes of decommodification and new syntheses concerning the market/social nexus. A learning process towards qualitatively higher levels of reflexivity can help develop global transformative agency. Existing contradictions can be resolved by means of rational collective actions and building more adequate common institutions. These collective actions are likely to involve new forms of political agency such as world political parties. (English)
Political Science
Keywords: 21st century; Keynesian economics; contradiction; critical realism; dialectic; double movement; economics - history; global governance; globalization; market; political economy; political parties; scenario; utopia

Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx, Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation - Selwyn, Benjamin; Miyamura, Satoshi (New Political Economy, 2014)
Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.
Political Science; Economics
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; Polanyi; commodification; exploitation; historical materialism; institutionalism

Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Social Question at a Global Level - Breman, Jan; van der Linden, Marcel (Development and Change, 2014)
The classical conceptualization of the working class, of workers’ collective action and, especially, of trade unionism, was implicitly or explicitly based on the Standard Employment Relationship that, for a few decades, has been dominant in North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia. The ‘classical’ model of collective bargaining, which has shaped the world's traditional labour movements, was based on this conceptualization. However, it is now increasingly undermined by the rapid spread of ‘informal’ or ‘precarious’ labour in the global North. It is our contention that the ‘classical’ view of the working class and workers’ collective action is fundamentally biased and takes as a norm or standard what was in fact an historical exception. The real norm or standard in global capitalism is insecurity, informality or precariousness, and the Standard Employment Relationship is an historical phenomenon which had a deep impact in a limited part of the world for a relatively short period of time. If, as we argue, the ‘Rest’ is not now becoming like the ‘West’, but the other way round, then the ‘traditional’ forms of collective action that have developed in the North Atlantic region during the last two centuries are gradually losing much of their impact. New forms of collective action are emerging, though these are often still at an embryonic stage. It is, therefore, high time to rethink the concept of the working class and the ways in which it can further its interests.
Sociology
Keywords: informalization; precarity

Introduction: The ‘Labour Question’ in Contemporary Capitalism - Chhachhi, Amrita (Development and Change, 2014)
The recent upsurge in workers’ struggles globally has bought labour again to the forefront, despite predictions that the working class was no longer relevant as a force for social transformation. Neoliberal globalization, with the hypermobility of capital, has led to the emergence of new forms of flexible work/labour, the co-existence of old and new working classes, and an extreme rise in inequality, realigning class structures nationally and globally. Financialization has ushered in a new regime of accumulation and there is a deepening crisis of reproduction. Can a Marx plus Polanyi theoretical integration capture contemporary dynamics of capitalist globalization and the role of labour? What do the trajectories of such struggles in the South tell us about the limits and potentialities for a counter-capitalist movement? More crucially, is the route to full social citizenship entitlements still possible via employment (with its further extension universally), or is it to be reached by directly demanding citizenship rights, bypassing labour-based demands? How do recent collective actions express workers’ interests/identities as workers, citizens and consumers? What role is the state playing in responding/mediating/facilitating these struggles? The Introduction delineates some of these contentious issues which frame this Forum Debate. The contributors all offer different perspectives and critical insights on the connections between forms of labour, possibilities for action and organization, the relationship between labour struggles and social citizenship and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. The conclusion reflects on some of the equally controversial proposed alternatives and argues for going beyond minimalism and for the imperative of radical rethinking to ensure dignified work and full social citizenship entitlements as part of a new social emancipatory political project.
Development Studies
Keywords: MARX; Karl; 1818-1883; capitalism; globalization; labor question; labour question; neoliberalism

Reclaiming Karl Polanyi, Socialist Intellectual - Clark, Timothy David (Studies in Political Economy, 2014)
The crisis of neoliberal globalization has led many scholars back to Karl Polanyi in their search for alternatives to the present malaise. The dominant reading appropriates the concepts of embeddedness and the double movement in support of a system of regulated, welfare-state capitalism. This article contends, however, that the concepts of embeddedness and the double movement point not towards the need to regulate capitalist markets, but towards the radical supersession of capitalism itself.
Political Science
Keywords: Canada; capitalism; globalization; radical change

Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency and the Paternalistic State in China - Friedman, Eli (Development and Change, 2014)
Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of ‘alienated politics’. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm because of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The consequence of this is that worker unrest has produced important political shifts at the national level, but these have come about without workers’ direct involvement in the process. In other words, workers are alienated from the political object that they themselves have produced. As a consequence, when the state intervenes in labour politics, it appears to be doing so of its own accord, i.e. paternalistically. This framework helps us to understand how worker unrest in China has become highly antagonistic towards employers and the local state, while maintaining the stability of the system as a whole.
Sociology; Labor Studies
Keywords: China; alienated politics; labor movement; labour movement; paternalistic state

Capital–Labour and State Dynamics in Export Horticulture in North-east Brazil - Selwyn, Ben (Development and Change, 2014)
This article argues for the primacy of class relations and struggles as determinants of developmental processes and outcomes, emphasizing the evolving, dialectical nature of these relations. It does so by providing a case study of export horticulture in North-east Brazil. It documents how the region's rural trade union has been able, through mobilizing its membership base, to achieve significant improvements in their livelihoods, pay and conditions. It also shows how the region's employers have responded to these gains by restructuring the labour force in order to attempt to fragment and weaken it. The article pays particular attention to the gender dynamics of class relations.
Development Studies
Keywords: Brazil; Polanyian approaches; class relations; development

Understanding the Precariat through Labour and Work - Standing, Guy (Development and Change, 2014)
This article sets out a framework for analysing the globalizing labour process, arguing that the old dualisms of ‘capital’ versus ‘labour’ and ‘formal sector’ versus ‘informal sector’ are inadequate and unhelpful. It begins by making conceptual distinctions between work and labour and between labour and labour power, and goes on to identify a globalizing class structure in which a ‘precariat’ is emerging as a potentially transformative new mass class. Denied so-called ‘labour rights’ and social entitlements that went with twentieth century industrial citizenship, the growing precariat needs new systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution. These should be based on work and occupation rather than subordinated labour, will require new forms of collective action and representation, and should seek to redistribute the key assets of twenty-first century tertiary societies, including income security, control of time, financial capital and the commons. INTRO: That should be the starting point in trying to come to terms with what has been happening in the ‘Global Transformation’, the painful construction of a global market system, analogous to Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation (1944), which was about the construction of national market systems. The Global Transformation, in which the globalization era may be seen as the disembedded phase, has yielded global class fragmentation, or a globalizing class structure superimposed on preceding class structures across the world. This contention has raised the hackles of some Marxists adhering to nineteenth century imagery. But understanding twenty‐first century developments is surely easier if we see a more nuanced structure than the old Marxist dualism of capitalist (bourgeoisie) and proletariat.
Economics
Keywords: precariat

The Food-Energy-Climate Change Trilemma: Toward a Socio-Economic Analysis - Harvey, Mark (Theory, Culture & Society, 2014)
The food-energy-climate change trilemma refers to the stark alternatives presented by the need to feed a world population growing to nine billion, the attendant risks of land conversion and use for global climate change, and the way these are interconnected with the energy crisis arising from the depletion of oil. Theorizing the interactions between political economies and their related natural environments, in terms of both finitudes of resources and generation of greenhouse gases, presents a major challenge to social sciences. Approaches from classical political economy, transition theory, economic geography, and political ecology, are reviewed before elaborating the neo-Polanyian approach adopted here. The case of Brazil, analysed with an `instituted economic process’ framework, demonstrates how the trilemma is a spatial and historical socio-economic phenomenon, varying significantly in its dynamics in different environmental and resource contexts. The paper concludes by highlighting challenges to developing a social scientific theory in this field.
Sociology
Keywords: climate change; climatic changes; economic geography; energy consumption; energy shortages; food consumption; food security; instituted economic process; limits to growth; peak oil; political ecology; socioeconomics; sociogenesis

Making Capitalism Fit For Society - Crouch, Colin (John Wiley & Sons, 2014)
Capitalism is the only complex system known to us that can provide an efficient and innovative economy, but the financial crisis has brought out the pernicious side of capitalism and shown that it remains dependent on the state to rescue it from its own deficiencies. Can capitalism be reshaped so that it is fit for society, or must we acquiesce to the neoliberal view that society will be at its best when markets are given free rein in all areas of life? The aim of this book is to show that the acceptance of capitalism and the market does not require us to accept the full neoliberal agenda of unrestrained markets, insecurity in our working lives, and neglect of the environment and of public services. In particular, it should not mean supporting the growing dominance of public life by corporate wealth. The world’s most successful mature economies are those that fully embrace both the discipline of the market and the need for protection against its negative outcomes. Indeed, a continuing, unresolved clash between these two forces is itself a major source of vitality and innovation for economy and society. But maintenance of that tension depends on the enduring strength of trade unions and other critical groups in civil society - a strength that is threatened by neoliberalism’s increasingly intolerant onward march. Outlining the principles for a renewed and more assertive social democracy, this timely and important book shows that real possibilities exist to create a better world than that which is being offered by the wealthy elites who dominate our public and private lives.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: business & economics; capitalism; economic theory

Penser la pluralité des monnaies à partir de Polanyi : un essai de typologie - Blanc, Jérôme (ERES, 2014)
A large number of currencies has emerged for thirty years, far beyond the national currencies alone. It includes systems created by groups of citizens, others by territorial communities, and others by private companies for their own benefit. These currencies take various forms, ranging from electronic money on smart cards to settlement systems ...
Sociology
Keywords: currencies; modern currencies

Maintenir l'ordre économique, Maintaining the economic order - Gayon, Vincent; Lemoine, Benjamin (Politix, 2014)
La sociologie des politiques économiques défendue dans cet article prend pour objet le travail permanent de construction, de naturalisation et de maintien de l’ordre économique déployé par une multitude d’acteurs et d’instruments techniques. Il s’agit d’ouvrir des enquêtes sur la façon dont prennent forme les processus de désencastrement et de réencastrement de l’économie vis-à-vis des institutions politiques et sociales. Cette piste est suivie en quatre temps. D’abord en soulignant la portée sociogénétique de l’œuvre de Karl Polanyi et son insistance sur l’émancipation disputée et incertaine des pratiques de production et d’échange à l’égard des tutelles traditionnelles. Puis en montrant comment l’invention de l’économie en tant que sphère d’activité autonome suscite foule de résistances et de « mondes économiques renversés », opposant leurs propres normes aux « lois » supposées de l’économie. La configuration de l’après Seconde Guerre mondiale est revisitée comme un laboratoire exemplaire de réencastrement politico-étatique de l’économie. Le désencastrement néolibéral des marchés financiers à l’échelle internationale recompose ensuite les comptes de la puissance publique et privée. Ces ordres économiques balisent simultanément des zones d’accès et, réciproquement, de non-droit à la discussion publique et politique., ENG: The sociology of economic policies argued in this article investigates the permanent work of construction, naturalization and maintenance of the economic order made by a multitude of actors and technical instruments. It consists in describing how the doctrinal project of economy disembeddedness takes shape, detaching itself from the political and social institutions. This program is developed through four steps. First, by offering a constructivist reading of Karl Polanyi writings and highlighting the author’s insistence on the uncertain and contested process of production and exchanges’ practices emancipation vis-à-vis traditional guardianship. Then, by showing how the invention of the economy as an autonomous sphere of activity raises crowd resistance and « reversed economic worlds » settling their own standards and laws by opposition to the economy « rules » and values. The after World War Two configuration is revisited as an exemplary laboratory of Politics and State re-embeddedness of the economy. Then, neoliberal disembeddedness of global capital markets reshapes accounts of public and private powers. These economic orders simultaneously mark out areas of access to and, conversely, of non-entitlement to public and political discussion.
Sociology
Keywords: constructivist; embeddedness

Spatial egalitarianism as a social ‘counter-movement’: on socio-economic reforms in Chongqing - Lim, Kean Fan (Economy & Society, 2014)
Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi's substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in south-western China. Illuminating the tensions arising from two interrelated reforms, namely the ambitious attempt to construct 40 million m2of public rental housing between 2010 and 2012, and the large-scale drive to ensure peasant migrants enjoy equal access to social benefits as current urban residents, the paper explains how the quest for equitable urbanization magnifies two nationwide dimensions of institutionalized uneven development, namely (i) the caste-like categorization of populations according to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’; and (ii) the coastal bias in national economic development. The paper concludes that this state-driven pursuit of spatial egalitarianism in Chongqing expresses the dialecticism of economic development in China: it is a social ‘counter-movement’ against the effects of an uneven spatiality that was instituted to drive and deepen the marketization of Chinese society.
Geography; Sociology
Keywords: China; Chongqing; double movement; economic reform; equality; hukou; public welfare; social change; spatial egalitarianism; state–market relations; substantivist; urban–rural integration

Communication Policy and the "Double Movement" - Ashley, Seth (Javnost-The Public, 2014)
Karl Polanyi's concept of a "double movement" has been used to describe the protectionist measures taken by governments to mitigate damage caused by the expansion of markets. Through a lens of political economy and historical institutionalism, this article uses Polanyi's framework to examine competing notions of the public interest as exemplified by the socially constructed nature of American and British broadcasting and the legitimating discourse that produced divergent outcomes. A historical analysis points to a decline of the double movement in communication policy, particularly in the U.S., and lends support to calls for noncommercial, public media structures and increased regulation of communication industries.
Communication Studies; Sociology
Keywords: communication policy; double movement; economic research; institutionalism (religion); marketing research; media system structure; protectionism

White Knights from the Gulf: Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment and the Evolution of German Industrial Finance - Haberly, Daniel (Economic Geography, 2014)
The period leading up to and following the global financial crisis has been characterized by rising global financial diversity and multipolarity, a process underscored by the growth of so-called sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). To date there has not been any systematic examination of the interactions between this rising global financial diversity and national economic institutional diversity. Here I apply an institutional 'comparative capitalisms' perspective to the analysis of Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC) SWF investment in German industry since the onset of the global financial crisis. The evidence demonstrates that a growing number of German industrial firms-particularly the major automotive firms at the heart of German industry-have recruited long-term GCC SWF investment as an adaptive response to the stresses of financial restructuring, most importantly the appearance of hostile takeovers as a feature of the German corporate governance landscape. These patterns lend partial support to 'varieties of capitalism' ( VOC) arguments that institutional complementarity and comparative institutional advantage are likely to produce path dependent trajectories of national institutional evolution. They also lend partial support to critiques of VOC, emphasizing, on the one hand, the importance of the Polanyian 'double movement' of market expansion and containment and, on the other, the transnational foundations of national institutional diversity. I conclude that to fully explain these patterns, both VOC theories of institutional complementarity and comparative advantage, and Polanyian theories of the double movement, must be grounded in a 'generalized Darwinian' analysis of population-level selection dynamics.
Geography
Keywords: Germany; Gulf Cooperation Council; Polanyian double movement; capitalism; economic geography; financial globalization; foreign investments; generalized Darwinism; industries; liberalization (finance); sovereign wealth funds; variegated capitalism; varieties of capitalism

Embracing ambiguity - lessons from the study of corporate social responsibility throughout the rise and decline of the modern welfare state - Schneider, Anselm (Business Ethics: A European Review, 2014)
In the work of Karl Polanyi, the negative effects of a self-regulating market economy are described as being limited by societal forces such as the policies of the welfare state. With the decline of the modern welfare state since the late 1970s, social activities of business firms are increasingly regarded as an important complement to or even as a substitute for welfare state policies by a part of the literature. However, and controversially, another stream of argumentation regards these activities as being aimed at advancing the reach of market forces. To fully grasp the ambiguous nature of the social activities of business, in this paper I provide an account of affirmative as well as of critical interpretations of these activities throughout the history of modern capitalism. On this basis, the power of critique to disentangle the diverse motivations that underlie the social engagement of business is highlighted as a condition for facilitating a role of business in society that balances economic and social considerations.
Business
Keywords: POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; business ethics; capitalism; public goods; research; social responsibility of business; value creation; welfare state

The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State - Marramao, Giacomo (Verso Books, 2014)
In this ambitious work, Giacomo Marramao proposes a radical reconceptualization of the world system in our era of declining state sovereignty. He argues that globalization cannot be reduced to mere economics or summarized by phrases such as ‘the end of history’ or the ‘westernization of the world’. Instead, we find ourselves embarking on a passage to a new, post-nation state age destined to transform all civilizations – and to disrupt Western geopolitical dominance. To confront the challenges of this interregnum one must think in terms of a new and radical universalism, a universalism of difference able to revitalize politics and to demythologize identity.Building on the great interwar discussion between Spengler, Junger, Schmitt and Heidegger, Marramao’s new work engages with Habermas, Derrida and post-colonialism. Arguing against the classic Western pretension to universal norms of democracy and reason, he develops instead the idea of a ‘universal politics of difference’. KM - contains chapter: Gift, exchange, obligation: Karl Polanyi and social philosophy
Philosophy; Political Science
Keywords: exchange; international relations; religious philosophy; social philosophy

Law and Politics in Europe's Crisis: On the History of the Impact of an Unfortunate Configuration - Joerges, Christian (Constellations, 2014)
EXCERPT [KM]: Karl Polanyi has experienced a renaissance in recent years.13 We refer to his work in our remarks on the failures of the European project for three interrelated reasons: (1) Polanyi has underlined that modern markets were not generated by some evolutionary process but established by political planning.14 Europe's “internal market project” is the best conceivable confirmation of his thesis. (2) One of the most important insights of his work concerns the “social embeddedness” of markets and the economy.15 These insights are of crucial importance because Europe has on the one hand realized that the functioning of markets requires comprehensive regulatory activities but at the same time tends to disregard the economic, political and cultural variety and dependence of markets. (3) Polanyi can also provide clarity with regard to the growing skepticism about so many firmly held beliefs about the benefits of ever more European integration. EXCERPT 2: Led by the prompting of its highest court, Europe is waving the flag of economic freedoms of Europe's market citizens and is retreating from its commitment to collective labor law – once the institutionalized countermovement to the commodification of labor.1
Law; Political Science
Keywords: European Union; economic law; fictitious commodities; internal market project; social embeddedness

Polanyi in Brussels or Luxembourg? Social rights and market regulation in European insurance - Mabbett, Deborah (Regulation & Governance, 2014)
The decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union to ban sex discrimination in insurance has shown the potential reach of the principle of non-discrimination. This paper discusses the different positions taken by participants in the policy process leading up to the decision, in order to reveal the potential and limitations of non-discrimination as the basis for market-regulatory social policy. It is shown that the European Commission's initial support for prohibiting insurance discrimination faltered with the realization that the measure would have little efficacy as a distributive social policy. It was left to the Court to assert that non-discrimination rights are constitutive for European markets, regardless of their functional and instrumental limitations. The Court's focus was on the market-integrative potential of rights as sources of norms for the conduct of insurance relationships. It is argued that this form of constitutive regulation is distinct from distributive social policy as it does not require that outcomes are egalitarian, but, rather, that the processes governing market relations should respect fundamental rights.
Political Science
Keywords: Gender Directive; discrimination; insurance; rights; social regulation

Can productivity be socially embedded? Reflections on some productivity measures of 2000s - Kocer, Ruya Gokhan (International Journal of Productivity & Performance Management, 2014)
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of items that are included in recent productivity programmes in various countries and integrate these items with the ideas of virtuous circuit of productivity and socially embedded productivity. Design/methodology/approach – In depth analysis of an illustrative set of productivity measures. The analysis reveals how each measure/programme could make sense to the industrial relations actors. A new conceptual reformulation of analysed measures and programmes. Findings – Bilateral productivity deals between trade unions and employers are not necessarily good from the perspective of national policy making. For this kind of uncoordinated productivity measures, though may be good for individual enterprises, may increase unemployment by pushing other domestic competitors out of the market or compelling them to lay-off workers in a reactive fashion. By drawing on Polanyi, one may argue that it is possible to strike a good balance between productivity concerns and societal interests by embedding the former into the latter. Research limitations/implications – The purpose is to introduce a new conceptualization, thus the empirical material is meant to be illustrative rather than extensive. Originality/value – By using graphical displays and empirical argumentation two new concepts are introduced: first, virtuous circuit of productivity and second, socially embedded productivity.
Sociology
Keywords: employees; employers; industrial relations research; labor productivity; labor unions; labour productivity; labour relations; labour unions; productivity; research; social embeddedness; social partners

Living permanent liminality: the recent transition experience in Ireland - Szakolczai, Arpad (Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014)
Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven by technological progress, we are led to believe, is the end-state of history; the glorious condition of a fully enlightened society of free citizens equipped with equal rights at which all traditional societies are bound to arrive, after a period of transition which might involve some temporary difficulties or 'sacrifices'. However, and in contrast to this, modernity rather involves an infinite period of transition, in which the stable elements of social life, representing not just rigid external constraints on individual freedom, but also the condition of possibility of meaningful life, are one by one liquidated. This article argues that the anthropological concept 'liminality' is particularly helpful in understanding the formative aspects of transition experiences, like the Celtic Tiger phenomenon in Ireland. It also helps to move beyond the conventional 'transition to modernity' framework by pointing out that advanced modernity is identical to a permanent state of transitionality.
Sociology
Keywords: FOUCAULT; Michel; 1926-1984; Ireland; POLANYI; Karl; 1886-1964; capitalism; genealogy; liminality; manners & customs; modern society; modernity; technological innovations & economics; tradition; trickster

Moral versus Commercial Economies: Transylvanian Stories - Velicu, Irina (New Political Science, 2014)
Historically, the production of a market society has depended on the commodification of valuables such as land and labour, which has also meant the disembedding of capital from elements of the “primordial,” such as kinship, spiritual relations, and identities. Today we are still witnessing the invocation of such elements of moral economies as a basis for people's collective mobilization against market pressures. The case study in this article refers to Rosia Montana, a semi-urban village in Transylvania where a Canadian corporation is planning to create the largest cyanide opencast mine in Europe. Through attempts at privatizing and commodifying whole areas of social life, the market logic promoted by the corporation in the last twelve years portrays the mine as the “only alternative” for the development of the region. Rosieni and activists have blocked the project for more than fourteen years by reclaiming other fundamental values related to spirituality, ancestry, land, and nature. They challenge the prevailing violence of the market by problematizing the logic of the commercial economy and by re-evaluating what the corporate project devalues. How does the post-communist context inspire a moral critique of global corporate capitalism and a democratic socialist alternative? In this article Polanyi's argument related to the “fictitious commodities” of the market will be used to support the argument that moral principles inspire forms of resistance against commodification in the former Eastern bloc and may produce future alternative forms of development. If one noticed an increase in social and environmental activism in Romania over the last five years would it also be due to the perseverance of Rosieni and its supporters in challenging not only a corporation and some co-opted/corrupted officials, but an entire dominant discourse of neoliberalism?
Political Science
Keywords: Canadian corporations; Rosia Montana; Transylvania (Romania); commodification; corporate capitalism; disembeddedness; economic aspects; moral economy; neoliberalism

Different Meanings of ‘Knowledge as Commodity’ in the Context of Higher Education - Kauppinen, Ilkka (Critical Sociology (Sage Publications, Ltd.), 2014)
Commodification has been and still is one of the key processes within capitalist market economies. Since the 1970s, different forms of knowledge have increasingly been subjected to this process. In this paper the commodification of knowledge in the field of higher education is defined in a broad sense as an example of the intensive enlargement of capitalism. I argue that knowledge shares some features of public goods and can be subjected to commodification both as an educational product and academic research itself. However, the simple dichotomy of public vs. private good is not nuanced enough to understand the status of knowledge within higher education. How to reconstruct this dichotomy, whether knowledge should be commodified, and how to justify one’s normative stance in this respect are three important issues for further study.
Sociology
Keywords: academic capitalism; capitalism; capitalists & financiers; commodification; commodification of knowledge; commodity; higher education; knowledge; public goods

Urban poverty and regulation, new spaces and old: Japan and the US in comparison - Mahito Hayashi (Environment & Planning A, 2014)
After the 1970s the new urban poverty (NUP) ballooned in Japan and the US, and it evoked policy responses that produced new, rescaled regulatory spaces to contain the poor on the fringe of social rights and the capital circuit. The paper illuminates this process through the comparison of Japanese and US trajectories, both of which, evolving through economic crises, have established unique pathways. The author first constructs a theoretical framework based on Marxian, Polanyian, and Lefebvrean traditions. Then, he compares national-scale poverty regulation in Japan and the US from the 1950s through the 2000s. Lastly, the author examines how the countries' regulation of a major aspect of the NUP–homelessness–intensified multiscalar reseating processes. The paper concludes that regulation of the NUP represents a significant instance of uneven spatial development of capitalism mediated by the state that requires synthetic research.
Geography
Keywords: Japan; United States; capitalism; comparative studies; economic development; financial crises; financial crisis; ghettoization; homelessness; rescaling; the capital circuit; the new urban poverty; the regulation approach; uneven spatial development; urban poor

Cartographie des échanges - Steiner, Philippe (Nouvelles Perspectives en Sciences Sociales, 2014)
In this article, I examine the main typologies of transaction that have been built from Auguste Comte to Karl Polanyi, Marcel Mauss, and Philippe Descola. Then, I suggest to reconsidering Polanyi's typology, the most common in contemporary economic sociology, and to limit the time span to modern societies. Accordingly, it is possible to map seven forms of transaction and the related institutions at work in our societies. In conclusion, the political consequences of the existence of these different forms of transaction are highlighted. (English)
Sociology
Keywords: don; exchange; gift; héritage; inheritance; marché; market; solidarity; solidarité; échange

Karl Polanyi Explains It All - Kuttner, Robert (The American Prospect, 2014)
Want to understand our market-crazed era? Rediscover the 20th century’s most prophetic critic of capitalism.
N/A
Keywords: intellectual biography

The Return of Karl Polanyi - Somers, Margaret; Block, Fred (Dissent, 2014)
In the first half century of Dissent’s history, Karl Polanyi almost never made an appearance in the magazine’s pages. On one level this is surprising, because Polanyi was a presence in socialist circles in New York City from 1947 through the mid-1950s, the period of Dissent’s gestation. On another level it is unsurprising, in that Polanyi was a heterodox thinker—even among fellow socialists. With some significant exceptions, it has taken decades to recognize the extraordinary theoretical contributions to socialist thought that he made in his masterpiece, The Great Transformation: The Social and Political Origins of Our Time,first published in 1944.
Sociology
Keywords: Vienna (Austria); democracy; economics; primacy of politics; socialism

The Power of Market Fundamentalism - Block, Fred; Somers, Margaret R. (Harvard University Press, 2014)
What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our time.Polanyi contends that the free market championed by market liberals never actually existed. While markets are essential to enable individual choice, they cannot be self-regulating because they require ongoing state action. Furthermore, they cannot by themselves provide such necessities of social existence as education, health care, social and personal security, and the right to earn a livelihood. When these public goods are subjected to market principles, social life is threatened and major crises ensue.Despite these theoretical flaws, market principles are powerfully seductive because they promise to diminish the role of politics in civic and social life. Because politics entails coercion and unsatisfying compromises among groups with deep conflicts, the wish to narrow its scope is understandable. But like Marx's theory that communism will lead to a "withering away of the State," the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous.
Sociology; Political Science
Keywords: United States history; business & economics; economic history; economic policy; economic theory; free enterprise; political economy; political science; public policy; sociology

Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work, Social Reproduction, and Jurisdiction - Fudge, Judy (Feminist Legal Studies, 2014)
Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction.
Legal Studies; Labor Studies
Keywords: decommodification; feminist theory; fictitious commodities; labour law; triple movement