Social Embeddedness within Political Economy: The Work of Karl Polanyi

2005 ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Matthew Watson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Karl Polanyi

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Characteristic Features

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.

Beyond Weimar: The Long Crisis of Liberalism, the Political Economy of the Interwar Conjuncture and the Foundations of Neo-liberalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 44-72
Author(s):  
Michael A. Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
Crisis Of Liberalism

<Online Only>This chapter examines authoritarian liberalism as a more general phenomenon ‘beyond Weimar’. It looks outside Weimar Germany and takes a longer historical perspective, revealing deeper tensions in liberalism itself, specifically its inability to respond to the issue of socio-economic inequality in a mass democracy. The major Weimar constitutional theorists—Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt, and Hermann Heller—had no answer to the social question as a matter of constitutional self-defence. The chapter then discusses the political economy of the various crises across Europe—in Italy, France, and Austria—revealing a similar quandary. As Karl Polanyi argued, in these contexts, the turn to authoritarian liberalism fatally weakened political democracy and left it disarmed when faced with the fascist countermovement. Later in the interwar period, proposals for neo-liberalism would be introduced, symbolized by the organization of the Walter Lippman Colloquium in 1938.</Online Only>

scholarly journals Karl Polanyi in the context of “non-death” of neoliberalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Alpár Losoncz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Economic Sociology ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
The Third ◽  
Great Transformation

Karl Polanyi’s works have been widely thematized regarding the transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The transition was viewed as the “second great transformation”. Polanyi’s works undoubtedly have numerous followers and it is owing to them that his works have started to be critically interpreted. We are here considering the possibility of reconceptualization of the works after the crisis of neoliberalism. The paper consists of three parts, each focusing on the selected points of Polanyi’s work. In the first part, the goal was to confront Polanyi’s thought with the consequences of neoliberalism; this part is explicitly involved in politicaleconomic reflection. The second part focuses on the discussion about the meaning of embeddedness, and the third part shows the relevance of some reflexions with respect to the money. The second and third part make a dialogue between political economy and economic sociology, economic anthropology, and economic theory.

The Historical Significance and Contemporary Relevance of Conservative Liberalism and Ordo-Liberalism: A Hollow Promise?

2020 ◽  
pp. 410-450
Author(s):  
Kenneth Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Balanced Assessment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Liberalism

This chapter attempts to assess the significance of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism in the larger context of liberalism by examining five questions. Why have they been marginalized? How have their ideas fared in Germany, the epicentre of Ordo-liberalism? What is the position of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism in the intellectual history of political economy? What are their prospects in a new transformational crisis of liberalism? Are they likely to prove no more than a ghostly shadow in liberal political economy? Or can they act as a source of liberal rejuvenation? Finally, do conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism offer no more than a hollow promise of disciplining capitalism and democracy? Do the gaps in their thinking—their focusing illusion—disable them as a source of intellectual insight and as a relevant influence on debate, institutions, and policies? Or do they contribute to the overall strength and resilience of liberalism by complementing the contributions of social liberalism and laissez-faire liberalism? The chapter examines conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism using the insights from the Austrian School, the new Chicago School, and libertarian thought; from Karl Polanyi and Michel Foucault; from critics of authoritarian liberalism and of the long shadow of Carl Schmitt; and from writers on the moral economy, including John Rawls and Amartya Sen. It concludes by offering a balanced assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this liberal tradition and its place in wider liberalism.

scholarly journals In search of Karl Polanyi’s International Relations theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Dale
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
European Integration ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Order ◽  
New Regionalism ◽  
Karl Polanyi

AbstractKarl 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.

The Political Economy of Revolution: Karl Polanyi in Tahrir Square

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642098452
Author(s):  
Hany Zayed
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Egyptian History ◽  
Theoretical Apparatus

The causes and consequences of revolutionary change have long been the subject of scholarly debate. Through a systematic integration of political economic elements into an analysis of contemporary social transformations, this article joins this conversation by asking how Karl Polanyi’s double movement framework can clarify, and be extended by, the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. By embedding a nuanced account of neoliberalism in Egypt’s modern politics and by bringing those in dialogue with Polanyi’s theoretical apparatus, this article contends that there is a broad alignment between the first movement and the Egyptian neoliberal experience, a partial alignment between the second movement and the Egyptian Revolution, and a multilayered entanglement that implicates and encircles both movements. Not only does this research demonstrate that contemporary Egyptian history can find new currency in and be further illuminated by Polanyi’s political economy, it also critiques, complicates, reconceptualizes and extends Polanyi’s theoretical framework. In so doing, it redresses the underfocus of Polanyian political economy on the theory of revolution in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, problematizes extant accounts on neoliberalism and the double movement, and extends analyses between neoliberalism and revolution in political economy literatures. By clarifying our understanding of contemporary social change, this essay underscores how Polanyi’s work remains a pertinent, viable and valuable prism to examine momentous social transformations.

Aristotle’s Political Economy: Three Waves of Interpretation

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Dinneen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
William James ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Three Stages

Aristotle’s thoughts on economic matters are included in his inquiry into the nature of politics. They are certainly ancillary to his thoughts on the education requisite for excellence. Yet this ranking should not cause one to overlook Aristotle’s contributions to the field of normative political economy. To appreciate these contributions, it is helpful to look to the scholarship on Aristotle’s political economy. In this essay such an inquiry is approached through categorizing the scholarship into three stages or waves of interpretation: 1) ‘Aristotle’s Economic Thought’ (Karl Polanyi and M.I. Finely), 2) ‘Aristotle’s “Political” Economy’, (William James Booth, Abram Shulsky, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.), and 3) ‘Aristotle on the Best Possible Political Economy’ (Michael D. Chan, Victor Davis Hanson, and Judith Swanson). The overall goal of this essay is to provide an account of the stages by which it might be useful to think through Aristotle’s political economy.

scholarly journals Economic process as institutionalization of values. Karl Polanyi’s institutional theory and its ethical consequences

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Maciej Kassner
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Economic Problem ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Institutional Integration ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Social

This article is devoted to a critical reconstruction of Karl Polanyi’s institutional theory and its ethical consequences. Starting with the distinction between the formal (neoclassical) and the substantive (institutional) understanding of the economy, the article proceeds to discuss the main forms of institutional integration of economic life described by Polanyi: reciprocity (symmetry), redistribution (centricity), and exchange (market). In this context, the author examines the connection between the work of Karl Polanyi and the economic anthropology represented by the works of Richard Thurnwald and Bronisław Malinowski. The author argues that three main forms of institutional integration of economic life introduced by Karl Polanyi can be interpreted both as analytical tools to describe institutions and as a grand scheme for the classification of different economic systems. The next section of the article is devoted to a comparison between the institutional theories of Douglass North and Karl Polanyi. For North, the main explanatory category is the idea of transaction costs, whereas for Polanyi the key idea is that of the social embeddedness of the economy. When speaking about the social embeddedness of the economy, Polanyi draws our attention to the inseparable bonds which exist between economic institutions on the one hand, and culture, social structure and politics on the other. This theoretical difference between North and Polanyi, the author argues, has important ethical consequences. If Polanyi is right, then institutions are not only alternative solutions to a certain economic problem (i.e. the efficient allocation of resources, the reduction of transaction costs) but above all they are the embodiment of different conceptions of a good life. In conclusion, the author emphasizes the political dimension of Karl Polanyi’s institutional theory, along with its intriguing promise of liberating our social and political life from the economistic fallacy, that is, from the unfortunate tendency to think about society in market terms.

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