Karl Polanyi Research Articles

The Last Gasp of Neoliberalism

:The ideas of both Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi shed light on understanding the last gasp of neoliberalism. The last gasp refers to Donald Trump’s abandonment of free trade, long considered a cornerstone of the neoliberal agenda, and his overt attacks on democratic institutions. In Trump, neoliberalism’s attempt to overcome the gridlock of liberal democracy has revealed its fascist leanings. Both Polanyi and Veblen warned about the trend towards fascism. Trump was elected, in part, by filling the void left by the factioning of neoliberalism, in part by the injustice felt by people in rural areas, those with stagnant incomes, white males, and others. Trump has transcended the neoliberal agenda, approaching market relations from the point-of-view of the fight. The emergence of a predatory culture, in both the domestic and international realms, resembles the culture outlined in Veblen’s The Theory of Business Enterprise. Trump’s actions reveal the need to extend Polanyi’s idea of social protection given the negative effects of modern technology and Trump’s efforts to dismantle or reduce some regulatory agencies. Changing demographics and the adverse reaction to Trump’s fascist leanings may yet see the emergence of a new progressive era, suggesting, at least, that Trump represents the last gasp of neoliberalism.

Remittances and Households in the Age of Neoliberal Uncertainty

:International migration and remittance flows have been reframed as catalysts for poverty reduction and development through marketization. Growth, measurement, and promotion of global remittances have emerged against the backdrop of neoliberal structural adjustment programs and financialization. Those processes have paralleled the emergence of the transnational household as a global institution. The article suggests that transnational households characterize a new stage of neoliberal capitalist development. The article revisits Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation and discusses how active governance and neoliberal discourse regulate and frame labor and remittances as “fictitious commodities.” Further, it is argued that transnational households take active roles in Polanyi’s “double movement,” by providing social protection amidst narrow public responsibility for provisioning. The article identifies this as a new element of “the great transformation,” and referring to J. K. Galbraith, as a new age of neoliberal uncertainty.

정치와 경제의 분열과 화해 : 칼 폴라니와 사회 민주주의

신자유주의를 거치며 불평등의 확대와 사회정책의 미비가 문제로 등장하고 있는 지금, 그래서 민주주의 정치와 자본주의 경제 사이의 모순이 다시금 표면으로 올라오는 지금 칼 폴라니(Karl Polanyi)의 자본주의 비판, 그리고 민주주의 정치와 자본주의 경제 사이의 갈등에 대한 연구는 새롭게 주목을 받고 있다. 그리고 폴라니에 대한 논의는 사회 민주주의적 복지국가의 재조명과 함께 이어지는 경우가 많다. 그러나 폴라니의 아이디어들이 사회민주주의와 잘 부합하는 것인가에 대하여 먼저 논의할 필요가 있다. 이 글은 폴라니의 아이디어가 사회 민주주의와 부합하는 면도 있지만 그렇지 않은 면도 있다는 것을 보여준다. 민주주의와 계급 간 연대에 대한 강조라는 측면에서는 둘 간에 부합하는 면이 있지만, 폴라니가 자본주의 시장경제의 존속에 대하여 부정적이었던 점, 그리고 정치와 경제보다 사회의 우위를 강조하였던 점에서는 부합하지 않는 면도 있다. 그리고 폴라니가 현재의 상황에 대해 사회 민주주의를 뛰어넘는 새로운 대안을 제시하는가에 대해서는 아직 확답을 하기 어렵다고 볼 수 있다.

The New Alchemy: Economic liberalism, neoliberalism, and Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day

ABSTRACTThis article utilises Karl Polanyi’s landmark 1944 text The Great Transformation to explicate economic liberalism as it is represented in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day. Polanyi argues that a fundamental flaw of economic liberalism is its treatment of labour and land as commodities. This commodification leads to economic and ecological disasters. Pynchon demonstrates these disasters throughout his encyclopaedic novel. Further, using Pynchon’s metaphor of bilocation – literally being in two places at the same time – this article ‘bilocates’ the economic liberalism represented in the novel with contemporary neoliberalism, specifically as neoliberalism is characterised by David Harvey and Wendy Brown. Ultimately, this exploration leads to a discussion of freedom within a neoliberal society, particularly as it is envisioned in Pynchon’s novel.

Ritual Matters

Karl Polanyi (1944, 1968) argued that the 'disembedding' of the economy from society entailed a curtailment of social constraints on economic transactions. This disembedding coincided with what Max Weber (1946) called disenchantment, and the erosion of cognitive-experiential reciprocity between humans and nature. Following Lynn White Jr. (1967), many scholars of religion and ecology have argued that losing the sense of divinity immanent in the world caused the modern devaluation of nature. But the loss of ritual practices is key to this. Integrating Roy Rappaport's (1968, 1979, 1999) understanding of the regulative ecological functions of ritual with a processual understanding of ontology following Norbert Elias (1939, 1978, 1989) suggests that reviving ritual gifting practices may be a vehicle for ecological conscience formation and the social-ecological transformation of modern society. Removing the rituals surrounding the giving of gifts removed crucial informal governance structures from pre-modern cultures, resulting in a general collapse of meaning structures in modern market societies, producing a pervasive individualized ontology and what Elias (1991) called 'the society of individuals'. A revival of ritual gifting practices that re-enchant human relations with other than human persons, such as found in what Graham Harvey (2006, 2016) has called 'the new animism', may revive relational ontology and shift modern society toward a more sustainable path by re-embedding the economy in society.

A global labour constitution?

This article explores the argument that the idea of the labour constitution, as developed by Hugo Sinzheimer, offers a useful perspective for thinking about labour law today. With reference to the work of Wolfgang Streeck and Karl Polanyi, it highlights the potential benefits of the labour constitution as a framework for analysis. With a view to developing and updating Sinzheimer’s blueprint for a – national – labour constitution, it then engages with two lines of theoretical enquiry into the nature of constitutionalism under conditions of advanced economic globalisation. It concludes by outlining an agenda for further research, informed and inspired by the idea of a global labour constitution.

Local development versus neoliberal globalization project: reflecting on market-oriented cities

Abstract The purpose of this article is to discuss what has being disseminated and reproduced as local development, seeking to understand the problems arising from this phenomenon, particularly highlighting the promotion of market-oriented cities. We question the processes of development and public policies, advancing in the debate based on Karl Polanyi’s double-movement thesis duly revisited and updated historically and geographically. As contributions, we highlight the engagement with de-coloniality to treat temporal and geo-epistemic gaps of the Polanyian thesis. In addition, it is possible to identify that the Polanyian counter-movement depends on the actions of several social actors, with emphasis on societies and governments, through public policies.

Alasdair MacIntyre as an Aristotelian Economic Sociologist: Reading After Virtue with Dependent Rational Animals

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory presents a complex argument that spans numerous academic disciplines and combines empirical and theoretical analyses. Its radical conclusion has inspired activists and social critics from all sides of the ideological spectrum. Critics and commentators have questioned MacIntyre’s critique of modern moral philosophy and the plausibility of the concluding prescription, concerning the need to create new forms of community. But it has less often been asked in what sense the book presents a unified perspective. In other words, how do the premises of MacIntyre’s argument, presented and defended throughout the text, warrant the conclusion? In this article, I partially formalize the main argument of After Virtue, discussing the grounds for each premise, and explaining how they ground the book’s radical conclusion. In doing this, I argue that economic sociology, specifically Karl Polanyi’s theory of the modern market economy, plays a large role in supporting MacIntyre’s claims. After presenting the main argument of the text, I draw upon the social theory elaborated in Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, specifically its theory of the relationship between vulnerability, dependence, and virtuous networks of giving and receiving, while briefly noting recent sociological criticisms of Polanyi, to argue that we have reason to be skeptical of MacIntyre’s empirical claims concerning the vicious character of modern social structures in After Virtue.

Embedded Countermovements: The Forging of Protected Areas and Native Communities in the Peruvian Amazon

ABSTRACTWith the progressive establishment of protected areas for conservation and communal indigenous land, market economy has been regulated in the Peruvian Amazon. Interlinked networks and institutions situate the agency of institutional entrepreneurs championing forest protection and indigenous peoples’ rights over territory and resources. This paper shows how a critical integration of new institutionalisms in the social sciences provides a suitable theory frame to study the process of protectionist institutional change as envisioned by Karl Polanyi. The cumulative result of socially-embedded state activism –that is, regulatory activism that is embedded in society– is an institutional regime that strengthens the resources and capabilities of conservationist groups and Amazonian indigenous peoples’ organisations as collective constructs while facing the social forces of commodification.

Political-Economy of Social Entrepreneurship in Indonesia: A Polanyian Approach

This paper attempts to develop a critical analysis on the concept of social entrepreneurship (SE) in Indonesia in comparison to that in the Global North. Departing from Karl Polanyi’s theorization of market society, this paper asserts that the concept of SE embodies a ‘double movement’. It embodies a tension between the ‘dis-embedding movement’ (attempts to organize society according to market rationality) and the ‘re-embedding movement’ (attempts to ensure that the market works to serve society’s interests), that is, between a formal and a substantive approach to the economy. The rise of SE, therefore, is always situated within a particular politico-economic context. Using Indonesia’s experience as a case study, this paper argues that the emergence of SE is strongly influenced by Widodo’s economic nationalism ideology. In this regard, SE is largely a part of Widodo’s strategy for bolstering economic growth, particularly by stimulating the rise of local entrepreneurs. Within such a framework, the nature of SE as a tool for addressing social problems is insufficiently recognized. SE in Indonesia therefore embodies tensions between the dis-embedding and re-embedding movements. The dis-embedding movement, however, prevails in Indonesia.

Karl Polanyi and discussions on a renewed socialism

Karl Polanyi and discussions on a renewed socialism

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

Czy istnieje ekonomia kapitalizmu?

Purpose – It is argued that a significant strand of economic thought which remains outside the mainstream has been built on the reflection on different capitalism configurations. Description – First, it is claimed that the free-market economy is not identical with the economy of capitalism since capitalism is not market itself. Next, the paper dwells on some “non-orthodox” theories while striving to show their compatibility with capitalism configurations. The examples chosen derive from wartime and postwar intellectual debates which resulted, among others, in the works of Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Polanyi and Walter Eucken, which still constitute reference points in current debates on capitalism.

Viewing Embeddedness and Ethnic-Solidarity in Economics of Exchange: Reflections from Economic and Cultural Practices of Tibetan Community in India

Karl Polanyi argues that the discipline of economics has emerged from the observations of human beings and their practices existing in a society. Since humans are perceived primarily as social beings rather than economic ones, embeddedness is a necessary and basic condition of the economy. It is critical for an attempt to view a given economic structure with respect to the given social order in which it is embedded. And the social order prevailing in a society is determined by a community’s values, culture, political environment and history. Similarly, some economic frameworks and market systems emerge from a social order of communities that seeks to preserve, establish and promote its identity, and is rarely motivated by economic profit. ‘Solidarity economies’ like these can then be viewed as organizations or communities that tend to organize themselves into an enclosed solid framework to confront their problems and cater to their needs. When such solidarity is evident in the economic framework of an ethnic community, we refer to this as ethnic-solidarity. This paper attempts to study the inter-sectional application of these concepts, that is, of embeddedness and ethnic solidarity, in the socio-economic context of the Tibetan community residing in India. Our study’s field work was divided in two parts; the first phase of the study was conducted in the Majnu Ka Tilla (New Delhi), and the second (more detailed) phase was conducted in Mcleodganj (Dharamshala). The paper's findings and observations focus on this second phase. Two Tibetan knowledge systems here: the Thangka art and the Tibetan healing system, were identified during field-work as mirrored images of the Tibetan cultural identity, its history, and the community’s effort to preserve, promote it in different economic forms.

A Study on the Pluralism of Social Economy -Focused on Substantive Economy Theory of Karl Polanyi-

A Study on the Pluralism of Social Economy -Focused on Substantive Economy Theory of Karl Polanyi-

On the Origins and Legacies of Really Existing Capitalism: In Conversation with Kari Polanyi Levitt

On the Origins and Legacies of Really Existing Capitalism: In Conversation with Kari Polanyi Levitt

Neoliberalismo: La perspectiva polanyiana

<p align="right">Karl Polanyi demostró que el liberalismo clásico y el actual neoliberalismo fueron movimientos políticos organizados, pero sus éxitos produjeron una adversa<strong> </strong>reacción social y política. Esta dialéctica continua dando forma al debate doméstico e internacional y a los movimiento sociales. Inspirados por el la obra maestra e Karl Polanyi, <em>La Gran Transformación</em>, este artículo ofrece una periodización de la interaccción dialéctica, o el “doble movimien-to”, para guiar nuestra comprensión del neliberallismo de nuestros días. También se busca arrojar luz sobre algunos cambios recientes en el discurso político desde la crisis financiera mundial de 2008.</p><p>JEL: B15; B17; B25</p><div><br clear="all" /><div><p> </p></div></div>

A liberdade em Polanyi

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is a powerful criticism of free market ideology and its intrinsic assumptions that is based on an implicit political theory of freedom. The attempt is made here of reconstructing and making explicit Polanyi’s concept of “freedom in a complex society” in light of his commitment to a sui generis form of socialism and his lifelong opposition to arguments as found typically in Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

The Moral Economists: R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson and the Critique of Capitalism, by Tim Rogan

The Moral Economists: R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson and the Critique of Capitalism, by Tim Rogan

Terrains of Civil and Uncivil Society in Post-Apartheid Durban

Post-apartheid Durban civil society politics reflects not only durable anti-racist activism, but primarily, Karl Polanyi’s pendulum of a ‘double movement’ of the market against people and environment on the one hand, and social backlashes against neoliberalism on the other. The most important movements and campaigns of a socioeconomic nature can be summarised as follows: local resistance to economic disempowerment and lack of service delivery in various trade union strikes (1994–present), South Durban’s fight against polluters and the port’s expansion (1996–present), Chatsworth’s water and electricity battles (1999–2012), the Treatment Action Campaign’s access to AIDS medicines (early 2000s), Abahlali baseMjondolo’s anti-eviction campaigns (2005–present), the defence of the Early Morning Market (2009–10), the Umlazi Occupy (2012), and sporadic community protests throughout. Resistance has occurred in urban poor neighbourhoods and townships and also penetrated the Durban inner city and university campuses. Durban activists’ tactics range from militant protests to ‘occupation’ of space ranging from townships to the Speaker’s Corner next to the Convention Centre, innovative door-to-door campaigning and court action. While the limits of single-issue and often assimilationist civil society politics are becoming obvious in one of the world’s most unequal cities, there still has not yet been a successful ‘united front’ project to fuse interests, in part due to ideological division and the geographical diffusion of dissent.