Margaret Somers | University of Michigan (original) (raw)
Papers by Margaret Somers
Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2022
In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to th... more In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to the work of Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty. Both have written magisterial volumes on the historical dynamics, social depredations, and risks to democracy endemic to market capitalism. This and a
companion article look at each individual thinker and put the two into dialogue, with the goal of generating principles of a new democratic political economy. The dialogue has two axes of inquiry. First, how to explain and deconstruct the social exclusions and dedemocratization institutionalized in
the heart of the existing market economy. Second, how to use legal predistributive institutionalism to upend the deep structures of market justice and the outsized legal powers of property and political economic domination. This article addresses these issues by constructing a neo-Polanyian law and
political economy and exploring four Polanyi-inspired themes: (1) a bifurcated capitalist order; (2) market justice as capitalism’s moral economy; (3) the economy as a predistributive “instituted process” of law and coercion; and (4) market capitalism’s anti-democratic infrastructure.
Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2022
In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to th... more In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to the work of Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty. Both have written magisterial volumes on the historical dynamics, social depredations, and risks to democracy endemic to market capitalism. This and a companion article look at each individual thinker and put the two into dialogue, with the goal of generating principles of a new democratic political economy. The dialogue has two axes of inquiry. First, how to explain and deconstruct the social exclusions and dedemocratization institutionalized in the heart of the existing market economy. Second, how to use legal predistributive institutionalism to upend the deep structures of market justice and the outsized legal powers of property and political economic domination. This article addresses these issues by constructing a neo-Polanyian law and political economy and exploring four Polanyi-inspired themes: (1) a bifurcated capitalist order; (2) market justice as capitalism’s moral economy; (3) the economy as a predistributive “instituted process” of law and coercion; and (4) market capitalism’s anti-democratic infrastructure.
Citizenship Studies, 2022
Twenty-five years ago the new citizenship studies rightly predictedthe egregious inegalitarian effe... more Twenty-five years ago the new citizenship studies rightly predictedthe egregious inegalitarian effects of neoliberalism’s dismantling ofthe social welfare state, but misrecognised the cause as a retreat ofthe state and the return of unfettered market forces. That continu-ing misrecognition obscures the roots of today’s surging author-itarianism and the dedemocratization of citizenship. The attack onsocial citizenship was instead a battle over control of the predis-tributive powers that engineer the market economy. Because socialcitizenship is not merely an effect of democracy but also one of itsconditions, neoliberalism weaponized the moral economy of mar-ket justice and the mechanisms of dedemocratization againstexpanded social rights to give cover to its now increasingly success-ful war against democratic citizenship.
Sociologica, 2022
Margaret R. Somers is a leading comparative historical sociologist and social theorist specializi... more Margaret R. Somers is a leading comparative historical sociologist and social theorist specializing in law and political economy, citizenship and rights, and the work of Karl Polanyi. After pathbreaking work early in her career on the origins of modern citizenship rights as well as on the logic and practice of comparative historical sociology, historical epistemology, and narrative analysis she turned to problems of escalating social exclusion, statelessness, and the threat to citizenship rights in the context of intensifying neoliberalism. Author of multiple articles and books and winner of numerous prizes, Somers is Professor Emerita of Sociology and History at the University of Michigan. Strongly influenced by the writing of Karl Polanyi, she has been a key contributor to debates on English legal history; dedemocratization and the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism; the political economy of predistribution, moral worth and market justice; and the political power of knowledge cultures and ideas. She also writes about contemporary social policy for a broader public in The Guardian, the Washington Post, Open Democracy, and other venues. In this interview with Daniel Hirschman, conducted between 2021-2022 in a multiplicity of synchronous and asynchronous formats befitting the pandemic moment, Somers discusses her intellectual and political trajectories and how they shaped her intersecting research programs, including her latest work on moral economy, predistribution, and the contemporary authoritarian moment.
The Condition of Democracy: Neoliberal Politics and Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 1, 2021
In an age of egregious inequality and authoritarian threats to democracy, many call for a ‘moral ... more In an age of egregious inequality and authoritarian threats to democracy, many call for a ‘moral economy’. Yet inequality, economic domination, and dedemocratization do not signal the absence of morality; they are signature expressions of the dominant neoliberal moral economy of market justice – the claim that market outcomes are morally just because rooted in the unbiased naturalism of economic society. Polanyi demystified market justice to reveal its origins not in naturalism but in a market constituted by the power of predistributive political and legal engineering, the extraction of social wealth, and the enchainment of democracy. An alternative political economy of predistributive democracy aims to mobilize countervailing predistributive powers to decommodify and redemocratize.
Theory and Society, 2021
Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit... more Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit of our book, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique (2014). Lacher claims his interpretation of Polanyi to be the only acceptable one, and vociferously alerts readers to beware the dangerous influence of our work. Because we continue to believe that familiarity with Polanyi's theoretical framework is valuable for those resisting the depredations of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, we restate our commitment to interpreting Polanyi's work in the most capacious way possible, treating it not as Scripture but as a body of work multidimensional enough for varying perspectives. In our reply to Lacher, we revisit several themes central to our book, including Polanyi's complex use of "utopianism"; the "always-instituted econ-omy"; the gold standard's attack on the "democratic virus" and the rise of fascism; and Polanyi's socialist commitment to democratizing the economy. We also suggest that by exploring several apparent puzzles in the text of GT it is possible to derive a more fruitful and powerful interpretation of Polanyi's thinking.
International Karl Polanyi Society, 2020
I’m especially struck by the wide gap between the surface of the election drama— the polls, the p... more I’m especially struck by the wide gap between the surface of the election drama— the polls, the policy positions, race relations–and the election’s structural underpinnings, or background conditions. While they may not completely determine the outcomes, they certainly delimit the spectrum of possibility, yet they are of course never discussed openly. The most important of these background conditions comes to us from Polanyi: We’re performing a democratic ritual against the underlying reality of a basic incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. And at some point—under certain conditions, but not inevitably—that incompatibility may well be resolved by a capitalist accommodation with fascism. That possibility is heightened by the fact that we’re performing this post-democratic ritual in the context of the most hypercapitalist oligarchic regime in recent American history, which has already moved far along the continuum to an autocracy. We’re not there yet, but we’re on the spectrum.
The Guardian, 9/14/2020, 2020
The 31 million Americans struggling with unemployment today are not a whit less desperate and fea... more The 31 million Americans struggling with unemployment today are not a whit less
desperate and fearful now that Mitch McConnell’s “skinny” Covid-19 relief bill failed to
pass the US Senate. Thursday’s performative theatrics did little more than provide cover to
vulnerable Republicans and add one more day to the now six weeks since Senate
Republicans refused to extend the extra $600 in Covid-related weekly jobless benefits.
With McConnell sounding all but liberated from any more pressure to show compassion
before the election, and the media’s attention pinned to shinier Trumpian objects, it is even
more imperative to refocus on the crisis at hand and to dig beneath the hollow excuses for
such demonstrable indifference on the part of lawmakers. It is time to find an answer to the
question: how is such unnecessary suffering justified?
Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp. 227-234, 2020
In age of egregious inequality and rising authoritarian, many call for a new “moral economy” and ... more In age of egregious inequality and rising authoritarian, many call for a new “moral economy” and turn to Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation for inspiration. Yet Polanyi’s great insight is that those who cannot reckon with the moral economy of “market justice”—the claim that market outcomes, however unequal, are morally just—fail to understand the power of capitalism. Justified by its original claim to rest on natural science, market justice laid the predicate for democracy as mortal threat. Polanyi reveals market justice as based not on natural law but on predistributive political power, and builds his democratic socialist vision on the “reality of society.”
Karl Polanyi: The Life and Works of an Epochal Thinker, 2020
One of Karl Polanyi’s fundamental concepts is ‘the reality of society’, a term he uses in The Gre... more One of Karl Polanyi’s fundamental concepts is ‘the reality of society’,
a term he uses in The Great Transformation (TGT) (Polanyi 1944/2001) to
contest the idealised model of the autonomous self-regulating market.
Modern economies, he argues, are comprised as much by ‘society’ –
our collective social interdependence and political institutions – as
they are by ‘market forces’. Polanyi’s concept is both descriptive and
normative, macro and micro: at the micro level, not only are we inextricably
socially interconnected so that each person’s actions affect
the fates of unknown numbers of others; we are also ethically responsible
for the far-reaching consequences of our own behaviours. And at
the macro, really existing markets, even in a so-called ‘free-market’
regime, are fundamentally constituted by political power and civil
society institutions.
Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First Century Capitalism, eds. Radhika Desai, Kari Polanyi Levitt, University of Manchester Press, 2020
2014 was a remarkable year for political economy. It was the seventieth anniversary of The Great ... more 2014 was a remarkable year for political economy. It was the seventieth anniversary
of The Great Transformation (TGT), Karl Polanyi’s groundbreaking volume which
is now recognized as one of the most influential works of twentieth-century social
science. Unlike most other books, Polanyi’s becomes ever more indispensable
because of the destructive consequences of the market fundamentalism that he critiques.
But 2014 also marked another milestone in the revival of interest in political
economy with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (C21).
An unexpected bestseller, C21 is a highly intelligible economic and social history,
accompanied by graphs and tables that document and explain the trajectory of
inequality since the eighteenth century.
Karl Polanyi's Vision of a Socialist Transformation, eds. Michael Brie, Claus Thomasberger, 2018
A careful reading of TGT suggests that, for Polanyi, utopianism is more than just a proxy for tra... more A careful reading of TGT suggests that, for Polanyi, utopianism is more than just a proxy for tragic impossibility. After all, if market utopianism's only feature was its unrealizability, its seductive and enduring appeal would be utterly inexplicable. As a rich and capacious concept, utopianism is simultaneously a genre of social theory, a means of normative analysis, and a form of historical political practice with which Polanyi was deeply versed, and which he used as a methodological diagnostic of the past, present, and future.
Similarly, the "reality of society"-the necessary coexistence of freedom and power-is not merely a rhetorical afterthought. As becomes so poignantly clear in TGT's final chapter, it is the propulsive center of Polanyi's post-utopian vision of socialism, freedom-and even fascism. But the post-utopianism of the reality of society is not sequential; rather, it is utopianism's ever-present epistemological and ontological counterpoint, its immanent opposition. For Polanyi's diagnosis of the self-regulating market as utopian only has purchase if we simultaneously accept his thesis that endows existential primacy to the reality of society-that all markets are sites of power that depend upon non-market relations to function. The reality of society is thus not merely utopianism's bookend; it is the dynamic driving force of the market's historical momentum, and the reason why the attempt to remake society in the image of the market will prove futile and dangerous. Together the two concepts establish TGT's explanatory spine.
The Transformation of Citizenship, eds. Jürgen Mackert, Bryan Turner, 2017
This is what makes a recent tum of events so rhetorically shocking and sociologically puzzling: ... more This is what makes a recent tum of events so rhetorically shocking and sociologically puzzling: there is a widespread and increasingly strident chorus of elite voices calling Social Security participants nothing less than 'welfare junkies', 'greedy geezers', 'government dependents' and 'personally irresponsible', among other derisive monikers. Accusations of freeloading, social parasitism and moral unworth have been perversely 'democratised' and extended to a population once thought invulnerable to such aspersions. This is a remarkable transformation; it calls out for an answer to the question of how and why the bright line has dissolved that so long divided welfare's 'culture of dependency' from the dignified class of retired wage-earners. What accounts for both Social Security and welfare recipients now being lumped together derisively as members of the 47 per cent of Americans who are indicted for feeling themselves 'entitled' to other people's money?4 We are witnessing, I argue, a new full-scale political economy of moral worth: all claimants and beneficiaries of public social programmes are subject to a new level of shaming and humiliation. A decades-long potent anti-Social Security crusade has morphed grandpa into a 'welfare queen'.
Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, London School of Economics, 2016
OpenDemocracy.net, 2014
According to many politicians, removing benefits is necessary to compel the unemployed to work ev... more According to many politicians, removing benefits is necessary to compel the unemployed to work even if their children suffer as a consequence. What’s the origin of this idea?
Erzählungen im Öffentlichen. Über die Wirkung narrativer Diskurse (Narratives in the Public Sphere: On The Effects of Narrative Discourses), edited by Markus Arnold, Gert Dressel, and Willy Viehöver. Wiesbaden (Germany) VS-Verlag, 2012
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Jul 4, 2008
Although a thriving social science literature in citizenship has emerged in the past two decades,... more Although a thriving social science literature in citizenship has emerged in the past two decades, to date there exists neither a sociology of rights nor a sociology of human rights. Theoretical obstacles include the association of rights with the philosophical discourse of normativity, the abstraction of universalism, and the individualism attributed to rights-bearers. Parallel historical obstacles dating from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 include American exceptionalism and racism, cultural relativism, the institutional primacy of sovereignty, and the privileging of human rights over socioeconomic rights. Except in the United States, today civil rights discourse is the lingua franca of global struggles; building a sociology of rights as a collective project is now imperative. This article unearths and reconstructs 60 years of political clashes, intellectual debates, and struggles for inclusion and recognition surrounding human rights and citizenship-much of which has been hidden from history (especially African American human rights movements). We introduce a nascent but uncoordinated social science attention to rights and develop criteria for a new sociology of rights. At the nexus of human rights and citizenship rights we identify the public good of a "right to have rights," which expresses the institutional, social, and moral preconditions for human recognition and inclusion. The concept offers a promising avenue of social science inquiry.
The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 10:3 (Fall), 2008
American Sociological Review, 2006
Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2022
In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to th... more In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to the work of Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty. Both have written magisterial volumes on the historical dynamics, social depredations, and risks to democracy endemic to market capitalism. This and a
companion article look at each individual thinker and put the two into dialogue, with the goal of generating principles of a new democratic political economy. The dialogue has two axes of inquiry. First, how to explain and deconstruct the social exclusions and dedemocratization institutionalized in
the heart of the existing market economy. Second, how to use legal predistributive institutionalism to upend the deep structures of market justice and the outsized legal powers of property and political economic domination. This article addresses these issues by constructing a neo-Polanyian law and
political economy and exploring four Polanyi-inspired themes: (1) a bifurcated capitalist order; (2) market justice as capitalism’s moral economy; (3) the economy as a predistributive “instituted process” of law and coercion; and (4) market capitalism’s anti-democratic infrastructure.
Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2022
In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to th... more In the face of today’s twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to the work of Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty. Both have written magisterial volumes on the historical dynamics, social depredations, and risks to democracy endemic to market capitalism. This and a companion article look at each individual thinker and put the two into dialogue, with the goal of generating principles of a new democratic political economy. The dialogue has two axes of inquiry. First, how to explain and deconstruct the social exclusions and dedemocratization institutionalized in the heart of the existing market economy. Second, how to use legal predistributive institutionalism to upend the deep structures of market justice and the outsized legal powers of property and political economic domination. This article addresses these issues by constructing a neo-Polanyian law and political economy and exploring four Polanyi-inspired themes: (1) a bifurcated capitalist order; (2) market justice as capitalism’s moral economy; (3) the economy as a predistributive “instituted process” of law and coercion; and (4) market capitalism’s anti-democratic infrastructure.
Citizenship Studies, 2022
Twenty-five years ago the new citizenship studies rightly predictedthe egregious inegalitarian effe... more Twenty-five years ago the new citizenship studies rightly predictedthe egregious inegalitarian effects of neoliberalism’s dismantling ofthe social welfare state, but misrecognised the cause as a retreat ofthe state and the return of unfettered market forces. That continu-ing misrecognition obscures the roots of today’s surging author-itarianism and the dedemocratization of citizenship. The attack onsocial citizenship was instead a battle over control of the predis-tributive powers that engineer the market economy. Because socialcitizenship is not merely an effect of democracy but also one of itsconditions, neoliberalism weaponized the moral economy of mar-ket justice and the mechanisms of dedemocratization againstexpanded social rights to give cover to its now increasingly success-ful war against democratic citizenship.
Sociologica, 2022
Margaret R. Somers is a leading comparative historical sociologist and social theorist specializi... more Margaret R. Somers is a leading comparative historical sociologist and social theorist specializing in law and political economy, citizenship and rights, and the work of Karl Polanyi. After pathbreaking work early in her career on the origins of modern citizenship rights as well as on the logic and practice of comparative historical sociology, historical epistemology, and narrative analysis she turned to problems of escalating social exclusion, statelessness, and the threat to citizenship rights in the context of intensifying neoliberalism. Author of multiple articles and books and winner of numerous prizes, Somers is Professor Emerita of Sociology and History at the University of Michigan. Strongly influenced by the writing of Karl Polanyi, she has been a key contributor to debates on English legal history; dedemocratization and the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism; the political economy of predistribution, moral worth and market justice; and the political power of knowledge cultures and ideas. She also writes about contemporary social policy for a broader public in The Guardian, the Washington Post, Open Democracy, and other venues. In this interview with Daniel Hirschman, conducted between 2021-2022 in a multiplicity of synchronous and asynchronous formats befitting the pandemic moment, Somers discusses her intellectual and political trajectories and how they shaped her intersecting research programs, including her latest work on moral economy, predistribution, and the contemporary authoritarian moment.
The Condition of Democracy: Neoliberal Politics and Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 1, 2021
In an age of egregious inequality and authoritarian threats to democracy, many call for a ‘moral ... more In an age of egregious inequality and authoritarian threats to democracy, many call for a ‘moral economy’. Yet inequality, economic domination, and dedemocratization do not signal the absence of morality; they are signature expressions of the dominant neoliberal moral economy of market justice – the claim that market outcomes are morally just because rooted in the unbiased naturalism of economic society. Polanyi demystified market justice to reveal its origins not in naturalism but in a market constituted by the power of predistributive political and legal engineering, the extraction of social wealth, and the enchainment of democracy. An alternative political economy of predistributive democracy aims to mobilize countervailing predistributive powers to decommodify and redemocratize.
Theory and Society, 2021
Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit... more Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit of our book, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique (2014). Lacher claims his interpretation of Polanyi to be the only acceptable one, and vociferously alerts readers to beware the dangerous influence of our work. Because we continue to believe that familiarity with Polanyi's theoretical framework is valuable for those resisting the depredations of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, we restate our commitment to interpreting Polanyi's work in the most capacious way possible, treating it not as Scripture but as a body of work multidimensional enough for varying perspectives. In our reply to Lacher, we revisit several themes central to our book, including Polanyi's complex use of "utopianism"; the "always-instituted econ-omy"; the gold standard's attack on the "democratic virus" and the rise of fascism; and Polanyi's socialist commitment to democratizing the economy. We also suggest that by exploring several apparent puzzles in the text of GT it is possible to derive a more fruitful and powerful interpretation of Polanyi's thinking.
International Karl Polanyi Society, 2020
I’m especially struck by the wide gap between the surface of the election drama— the polls, the p... more I’m especially struck by the wide gap between the surface of the election drama— the polls, the policy positions, race relations–and the election’s structural underpinnings, or background conditions. While they may not completely determine the outcomes, they certainly delimit the spectrum of possibility, yet they are of course never discussed openly. The most important of these background conditions comes to us from Polanyi: We’re performing a democratic ritual against the underlying reality of a basic incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. And at some point—under certain conditions, but not inevitably—that incompatibility may well be resolved by a capitalist accommodation with fascism. That possibility is heightened by the fact that we’re performing this post-democratic ritual in the context of the most hypercapitalist oligarchic regime in recent American history, which has already moved far along the continuum to an autocracy. We’re not there yet, but we’re on the spectrum.
The Guardian, 9/14/2020, 2020
The 31 million Americans struggling with unemployment today are not a whit less desperate and fea... more The 31 million Americans struggling with unemployment today are not a whit less
desperate and fearful now that Mitch McConnell’s “skinny” Covid-19 relief bill failed to
pass the US Senate. Thursday’s performative theatrics did little more than provide cover to
vulnerable Republicans and add one more day to the now six weeks since Senate
Republicans refused to extend the extra $600 in Covid-related weekly jobless benefits.
With McConnell sounding all but liberated from any more pressure to show compassion
before the election, and the media’s attention pinned to shinier Trumpian objects, it is even
more imperative to refocus on the crisis at hand and to dig beneath the hollow excuses for
such demonstrable indifference on the part of lawmakers. It is time to find an answer to the
question: how is such unnecessary suffering justified?
Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp. 227-234, 2020
In age of egregious inequality and rising authoritarian, many call for a new “moral economy” and ... more In age of egregious inequality and rising authoritarian, many call for a new “moral economy” and turn to Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation for inspiration. Yet Polanyi’s great insight is that those who cannot reckon with the moral economy of “market justice”—the claim that market outcomes, however unequal, are morally just—fail to understand the power of capitalism. Justified by its original claim to rest on natural science, market justice laid the predicate for democracy as mortal threat. Polanyi reveals market justice as based not on natural law but on predistributive political power, and builds his democratic socialist vision on the “reality of society.”
Karl Polanyi: The Life and Works of an Epochal Thinker, 2020
One of Karl Polanyi’s fundamental concepts is ‘the reality of society’, a term he uses in The Gre... more One of Karl Polanyi’s fundamental concepts is ‘the reality of society’,
a term he uses in The Great Transformation (TGT) (Polanyi 1944/2001) to
contest the idealised model of the autonomous self-regulating market.
Modern economies, he argues, are comprised as much by ‘society’ –
our collective social interdependence and political institutions – as
they are by ‘market forces’. Polanyi’s concept is both descriptive and
normative, macro and micro: at the micro level, not only are we inextricably
socially interconnected so that each person’s actions affect
the fates of unknown numbers of others; we are also ethically responsible
for the far-reaching consequences of our own behaviours. And at
the macro, really existing markets, even in a so-called ‘free-market’
regime, are fundamentally constituted by political power and civil
society institutions.
Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First Century Capitalism, eds. Radhika Desai, Kari Polanyi Levitt, University of Manchester Press, 2020
2014 was a remarkable year for political economy. It was the seventieth anniversary of The Great ... more 2014 was a remarkable year for political economy. It was the seventieth anniversary
of The Great Transformation (TGT), Karl Polanyi’s groundbreaking volume which
is now recognized as one of the most influential works of twentieth-century social
science. Unlike most other books, Polanyi’s becomes ever more indispensable
because of the destructive consequences of the market fundamentalism that he critiques.
But 2014 also marked another milestone in the revival of interest in political
economy with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (C21).
An unexpected bestseller, C21 is a highly intelligible economic and social history,
accompanied by graphs and tables that document and explain the trajectory of
inequality since the eighteenth century.
Karl Polanyi's Vision of a Socialist Transformation, eds. Michael Brie, Claus Thomasberger, 2018
A careful reading of TGT suggests that, for Polanyi, utopianism is more than just a proxy for tra... more A careful reading of TGT suggests that, for Polanyi, utopianism is more than just a proxy for tragic impossibility. After all, if market utopianism's only feature was its unrealizability, its seductive and enduring appeal would be utterly inexplicable. As a rich and capacious concept, utopianism is simultaneously a genre of social theory, a means of normative analysis, and a form of historical political practice with which Polanyi was deeply versed, and which he used as a methodological diagnostic of the past, present, and future.
Similarly, the "reality of society"-the necessary coexistence of freedom and power-is not merely a rhetorical afterthought. As becomes so poignantly clear in TGT's final chapter, it is the propulsive center of Polanyi's post-utopian vision of socialism, freedom-and even fascism. But the post-utopianism of the reality of society is not sequential; rather, it is utopianism's ever-present epistemological and ontological counterpoint, its immanent opposition. For Polanyi's diagnosis of the self-regulating market as utopian only has purchase if we simultaneously accept his thesis that endows existential primacy to the reality of society-that all markets are sites of power that depend upon non-market relations to function. The reality of society is thus not merely utopianism's bookend; it is the dynamic driving force of the market's historical momentum, and the reason why the attempt to remake society in the image of the market will prove futile and dangerous. Together the two concepts establish TGT's explanatory spine.
The Transformation of Citizenship, eds. Jürgen Mackert, Bryan Turner, 2017
This is what makes a recent tum of events so rhetorically shocking and sociologically puzzling: ... more This is what makes a recent tum of events so rhetorically shocking and sociologically puzzling: there is a widespread and increasingly strident chorus of elite voices calling Social Security participants nothing less than 'welfare junkies', 'greedy geezers', 'government dependents' and 'personally irresponsible', among other derisive monikers. Accusations of freeloading, social parasitism and moral unworth have been perversely 'democratised' and extended to a population once thought invulnerable to such aspersions. This is a remarkable transformation; it calls out for an answer to the question of how and why the bright line has dissolved that so long divided welfare's 'culture of dependency' from the dignified class of retired wage-earners. What accounts for both Social Security and welfare recipients now being lumped together derisively as members of the 47 per cent of Americans who are indicted for feeling themselves 'entitled' to other people's money?4 We are witnessing, I argue, a new full-scale political economy of moral worth: all claimants and beneficiaries of public social programmes are subject to a new level of shaming and humiliation. A decades-long potent anti-Social Security crusade has morphed grandpa into a 'welfare queen'.
Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, London School of Economics, 2016
OpenDemocracy.net, 2014
According to many politicians, removing benefits is necessary to compel the unemployed to work ev... more According to many politicians, removing benefits is necessary to compel the unemployed to work even if their children suffer as a consequence. What’s the origin of this idea?
Erzählungen im Öffentlichen. Über die Wirkung narrativer Diskurse (Narratives in the Public Sphere: On The Effects of Narrative Discourses), edited by Markus Arnold, Gert Dressel, and Willy Viehöver. Wiesbaden (Germany) VS-Verlag, 2012
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Jul 4, 2008
Although a thriving social science literature in citizenship has emerged in the past two decades,... more Although a thriving social science literature in citizenship has emerged in the past two decades, to date there exists neither a sociology of rights nor a sociology of human rights. Theoretical obstacles include the association of rights with the philosophical discourse of normativity, the abstraction of universalism, and the individualism attributed to rights-bearers. Parallel historical obstacles dating from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 include American exceptionalism and racism, cultural relativism, the institutional primacy of sovereignty, and the privileging of human rights over socioeconomic rights. Except in the United States, today civil rights discourse is the lingua franca of global struggles; building a sociology of rights as a collective project is now imperative. This article unearths and reconstructs 60 years of political clashes, intellectual debates, and struggles for inclusion and recognition surrounding human rights and citizenship-much of which has been hidden from history (especially African American human rights movements). We introduce a nascent but uncoordinated social science attention to rights and develop criteria for a new sociology of rights. At the nexus of human rights and citizenship rights we identify the public good of a "right to have rights," which expresses the institutional, social, and moral preconditions for human recognition and inclusion. The concept offers a promising avenue of social science inquiry.
The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 10:3 (Fall), 2008
American Sociological Review, 2006
Socio-Economic Review, 2018
Review Essay: Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left, by Gareth Dale. NY: Columbia University Press, 20... more Review Essay:
Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left, by Gareth Dale. NY: Columbia University Press, 2016.
For a New West: Essays, 1919-1958, by Karl Polanyi. Polity Press, 2014.
Socio-Economic Review 10 (3): 617-623, 2012
For most readers of Socio-Economic Review, the outpouring of handwringing over the 2008 financi... more For most readers of Socio-Economic Review, the outpouring of handwringing over the 2008 financial crisis provided long-awaited vindication. After all, while the conventional wisdom was apparently shocked to find gambling in Casablanca, for devotees of Keynes and Polanyi the dangers of increasing subordination of the social to the market have long been alarmingly obvious. Indeed, if ever there was proof positive of Polanyi’s Delphic pronouncement that the ‘reality of society’ would eventually commit revenge on the ‘stark utopia’ of the self-regulating market, this was it. Who could help but indulge in a bit of long-anticipated Schadenfreude at watching Alan Greenspan back off a cliff into a momentary lapse of truthfulness when, under interrogation by a Democratic Congress, he admitted to ‘a fatal flaw’ in his theory of how the world works? Like Polanyi writing in 1944, it was a moment to sit back and take gallows pleasure in the utopian ideology’s long-awaited doom.
Cambridge University Press, 2008
Genealogies of Citizenship is a remarkable rethinking of human rights and social justice. As glob... more Genealogies of Citizenship is a remarkable rethinking of human rights and social justice. As global governance is increasingly driven by market fundamentalism, growing numbers of citizens have become socially excluded and internally stateless. Against this movement to organize society exclusively by market principles, Margaret Somers argues that socially inclusive democratic rights must be counter-balanced by the powers of a social state, a robust public sphere and a relationally-sturdy civil society. Through epistemologies of history and naturalism, contested narratives of social capital, and Hurricane Katrina's racial apartheid, she warns that the growing authority of the market is distorting the non-contractualism of citizenship; rights, inclusion and moral worth are increasingly dependent on contractual market value. In this pathbreaking work, Somers advances an innovative view of rights as public goods rooted in an alliance of public power, political membership, and social practices of equal moral recognition - the right to have rights.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, April 1, 2014
Description from publisher: What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying ... more Description from publisher:
What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our time.
Polanyi contends that the free market championed by market liberals never actually existed. While markets are essential to enable individual choice, they cannot be self-regulating because they require ongoing state action. Furthermore, they cannot by themselves provide such necessities of social existence as education, health care, social and personal security, and the right to earn a livelihood. When these public goods are subjected to market principles, social life is threatened and major crises ensue.
Despite these theoretical flaws, market principles are powerfully seductive because they promise to diminish the role of politics in civic and social life. But like Marx’s theory that communism will lead to a “withering away of the State,” the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous.