Market and Society
The Great Transformation Today

Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, offered a radical critique of how the market system has affected society and humanity since the industrial revolution. This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in economic anthropology, sociology and political economy to consider Polanyi's theories in the light of circumstances today, when the relationship between market and society has again become a focus of intense political and scientific debate. It demonstrates the relevance of Polanyi's ideas to various theoretical traditions in the social sciences and provides perspectives on topics such as money, risk, work and the family. The case studies present materials from around the world, including Britain, China, India, Jamaica and Nigeria. Like Polanyi's original work, the critical engagement of these essays will be of interest to a wide readership.

1. Introduction: learning from Polanyi 1 Chris Hann and Keith Hart; 2. Necessity or contingency: mutuality and market Stephen Gudeman; 3. The great transformation of embeddedness: Karl Polanyi and the new economic sociology Jens Beckert; 4. The critique of the economic point of view: Karl Polanyi and the Durkheimians Philippe Steiner; 5. Towards an alternative economy: reconsidering the market, money and value Jean-Michel Servet; 6. Money in the making of world society Keith Hart; 7. Debt, violence and impersonal markets: Polanyian meditations David Graeber; 8. Whatever happened to householding? Chris Gregory; 9. Contesting The Great Transformation: work in comparative perspective Gerd Spittler; 10. 'Sociological Marxism' in Central India: Polanyi, Gramsci and the case of the unions Jonathan Parry; 11. Composites, fictions and risk: towards an ethnography of price Jane I. Guyer; 12. Illusions of freedom: Polanyi and the third sector Catherine Alexander; 13. Market and economy in environmental conservation in Jamaica James Carrier; 14. Embedded socialism? Land, labour and money in eastern Xinjiang Chris Hann; 15. Afterword: learning from Polanyi 2 Don Robotham.