ABSTRACT
Karl Polanyi elaborated the “double movement” to explain the rise and fall of liberal capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on Europe, especially England. He formulated the concept to analyse this particular social and historical context and made no claims about its wider validity. Nonetheless, numerous scholars have detected similar dynamics in the Global South in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, suggesting the contradiction of the double movement is a more enduring and widespread feature of capitalism. In this chapter, I will critically review this literature and link it to decolonial and postcolonial critiques of Polanyi. I will seek to show that the complexities of social and political change in the Global South and the colonial character of capitalism are best captured by reading the double movement as a continuous historical process, which takes distinct forms in different social and historical contexts and comprises a plurality of movements and countermovements. This formulation builds on the work of scholars who take a more radical reading of Polanyi as well as research that I have undertaken on land and water in Ecuador. Conceptualising the double movement as a continuous historical process captures long run processes of commodification and contention and reveals fundamental tensions and contradictions in capitalism. Only by taking such a view is it possible to comprehend the impact of capitalist-colonial expansion in the Global South and the enduring influence of unequal global structures and relations.
