Karl Polanyi e a Nova Sociologia Económica: Notas sobre o conceito de (dis)embeddedness

• Main Author: Nuno Miguel Cardoso Machado
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra 2010-09-01
• Series: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: capitalism; market economy; embeddedness; Karl Polanyi; new economic sociology
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rccs/1771

Within the context of New Economic Sociology, Karl Polanyi is almost universally considered the “father” of the concept of embeddedness. However, this concept has been subject to selective appropriation by this discipline and its relationship to the remaining theoretical edifice constructed by Polanyi has been neglected. It is, in fact, possible to refer to the “great transformation” to which the concept of embeddedness has been subjected: whereas in Polanyi’s work it is associated with the macro(economic) level and is used as evidence of the exceptional nature of the capitalist market economy – disembedded from society – in NES, it is normally associated with the meso (and even micro) level, on the assumption that all economies – including capitalist economies – are embedded.