================== HES POSTING ==================== 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) ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]