ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 (“The Dynamics of Market Society”) begins by exploring the dichotomy of embedding and disembedding within Polanyi’s argument about the double movement and suggest ways in which these concepts can be usefully united within a single framework. I present a critical reconstruction of diverse threads within the book to argue for three core processes of a market society. The imperialism of the market investigates the way in which market imperatives are progressively extended and deepened into more and more spheres of social and cultural life. The corrosion of the market investigates the way in which the market erodes non-market domains, practices and norms. The insulation of the market examines how market actors and institutions are protected from social obligations and political oversight and the process whereby market power is translated into political power. In these sections, I offer a critical reading of some of Polanyi’s most celebrated insights about 19th-century society: the social and cultural calamity of industrial capitalism, market-driven famines in India, and the evolution of the contradictory system of capitalist democracy. I then conclude with a critique of his unique account of the “hundred years’ peace”, a period of pacific international relations during 1814–1914, which he argued was the result of the crucial influence of the double movement system.
