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Ah my, if the discussion is going to die down I better get my two 
cents in.  Unfortunately, my illness precludes reading much of the 
previous posts (still disabled with chronic fatigue syndrome -- the 
DD, or d----ed disease, we call it) -- but from past debates: 
 
First, no doubting the significance of Polyani's "Great Transformation" 
in terms of its impact upon historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. 
 
But ... you eventually end up with a simple dichotomy -- the market 
and the non-market, and that is just not sophisticated enough to  
analyze important issues either in the past or the present. 
 
As a deductive theory, it leads to analysis by classification rather 
than by observation or logic.  That is, first we figure out whether 
we are dealing with a "market" society or a "nonmarket" society, 
and then everything else flows from that one decision point. 
 
Or, conversely, the search is on for a particular marker (such as 
the use of "cash") that will "prove" we have found a "market" society 
(rather like HIV is a "marker" for the later development of AIDS). 
Find the marker, then we know which side of the dichotomy we're on 
and can just assume the rest. 
 
Other types of power or interpersonal relationships or 
institutional complexities fall by the wayside as we focus on this  
single dichotomy, single point of inflection. 
 
Inter-cultural analysis too easily becomes one series of euphamisms 
for "developed" and "nondeveloped" (or market and traditional or 
western and nonwestern or ...) after another. 
 
Historical analysis is reduced to "before" and "after", to "acceptance" 
and "resistance" and to an inevitable perception of history as 
a linear timeline -- depending on one's tastes -- either progressive 
or regressive. 
 
The irony is that, at the time he wrote, I believe Polanyi was trying 
to escape the dichotomous political language of the mid-1900s.  But 
that language itself pervades his writing, and, unfortunately, most 
of the uses of his theories. 
 
The question for today is not whether Polanyi was "right" or "wrong", 
nor is it whether he was influention (unequivocably YES, he was  
influential) -- but whether the forms of analysis generated by his 
work has played out its usefulness for now, and those seeking energetic 
interpretations should search elsewhere.   
 
To the extent this is directed at economists, I would argue:  look at 
what Polanyi had to offer non-economists that was missing from the economic 
interpretations available to them from economics itself.  To historians I  
would say, time to move on from the "market vs. nonmarket" dichotomy.  The  
tools for both already exist in both disciplines. 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on medical leave since January 1995) 
 
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