Karl Polanyi

About the author

Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic sociologist, and politician whose work fundamentally challenged the assumptions of mainstream economics. His landmark book *The Great Transformation* argues that self-regulating markets are not inevitable but historically contingent, and introduces the concept of the Double Movement — the tension between marketization and social protection against it. Polanyi is best remembered as the originator of substantivism, which holds that economies are embedded in society and culture, an idea that proved especially influential in anthropology, economic sociology, and political science.