Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century Market Economy as a Political Project

by Bugra, Ayse; Agartan, Kaan

• ISBN13: 9781403983930
• ISBN10: 1403983933
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780230607187
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• More Book Details
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Summary

This volume revisits Karl Polanyi's analysis of the institutional separation of politics and the economy in the context of the nineteenth century market society to argue that the market economy is not a spontaneous process, but a "political project" realized through institutional changes whereby labor, land, money, and currently knowledge appear as commodities. The contributions explore the political dynamics of this commodification process, its implications for human life and livelihood, and the possibilities for the advent of a more viable order where the economy would be replaced under social control. With its interdisciplinary reach, the book is of interest to academics and graduate students in different fields such as economic sociology, political economy and social policy.

Author Biography

Ayse Bugra completed her Ph.D. in economics at McGill University. She is currently a professor at Ataturk Institute of Modern Turkish History and the founding director of the research center 'Social Policy Forum' at Bogazici University, Istanbul. Her fields of specialization are History and Methodology of Economics, Development Economics, and Comparative Social Policy. Her publications include On Economics and Human Behavior (in Turkish, 1989, 1994, 2001, 2003, 2005), State and Business in Modern Turkey: A Comparative Study (1994), State, Market and Organizational Form (co-edited with Behlül üsdiken, Walter de Gruyter, 1997), and Islam in Economic Organizations (1999). She has published articles in different edited collections and in such journals as South Atlantic Quarterly, Economics and Philosophy, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Technological Change and Social Forecasting, Current Anthropology, Review of Radical Political Economy, MAUSS. She translated The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi into Turkish (1986, 2000, 2003, 2005).

Kaan Agartan is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and currently a research fellow at the research center 'Social Policy Forum' at Bogazici University, Istanbul.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Reflections on Disembeddedness: Welfare State and Beyond

Suppressing the Double Movement to Secure the Dictatorship of Finance

The 1970's and After: The Political Economy of Inflation and the Crisis of Social Democracy

The Slight Transformation

Contesting the Legacy of Karl Polanyi

Commodity Fiction in Contemporary Market Economies: Work Today

Labor Re-Commodification in the New Transformation

The Right to Work, Way of Social Exclusion?

Basic Income as a Guarantee to the Right to Work

Commodity Fiction in Contemporary Market Economies: Knowledge Today

Knowledge as a Fictitious Commodity: Insights and Limits of a Polanyian Perspective

Commodification of Science in a Neoliberal World

Intellectual Property: Commodification and Its Discontents

Patterns of Resistance and Adaptation

Polanyi's Concept of Double Movement And Politics in the Contemporary Market Society

Reforming East Asian Labor Systems: China, Korea, and Thailand

The Strong Embrace of Weak Actors: Explaining Social Support for Economic Liberalization Through the Case Study of SMEs in the EU

Corporate Social Responsibility and Market Society: Credit and Banking Inclusion in Brazil

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