The Social Economics of Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) was educated in Hungary, worked in exile in Vienna in the 1920s, and after 1933 alternated his residence between England and the USA. His early career was in law and philosophy, then international relations. From 1940 to his death, he concentrated on universal economic history, a broadly defined area encompassing fields that are more conventionally known as economic anthropology, economic history, and comparative economic systems. This work aimed ultimately at the creation of a new and more universal economic theory, founded on the interaction of economy and society, i.e., social economics.