Environmental Sociology

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Karl Polanyi’s environmental sociology: a primer

Steven R. Brechin & Weston Henry Fenner, IV

To cite this article: Steven R. Brechin & Weston Henry Fenner, IV (2017): Karl
Polanyi’s environmental sociology: a primer, Environmental Sociology, DOI:
10.1080/23251042.2017.1355723

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Published online: 28 Jul 2017.

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ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2017.1355723

ARTICLE

Karl Polanyi’s environmental sociology: a primer

a
Steven R. Brechin and Weston Henry Fenner, IVb
a
Department of Sociology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; bSociology Department, Syracuse
University, Syracuse, NY, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Drawing upon The Great Transformation (1944), we outline Karl Polanyi’s environmental Received 22 February 2017
sociology by providing a primer for emerging and other scholars with little exposure to this Accepted 30 June 2017
major work. While best known for his critique of laissez-faire/liberal economics, particularly KEYWORDS
reflecting upon the works of the Austrian School of Economics, we believe his unique and Karl Polanyi; environmental
broad insights give particular grounding to environmental sociology itself. In addition to sociological theory;
illustrating Polanyi’s more well-known concepts of economic substantivism, fictitious com- economic substantivism;
modities and the double movement, we highlight Polanyi’s deeper argument for morality in fictitious commodities; the
society-environmental affairs. Polanyi offers a critique of the market that is not Marxian. double movement; morality
Rather, he focuses explicitly on the unnaturalness and immorality of an economy that does in environment–society
not place the needs of full society and the environment at its centre. Hence, Polanyi does not relationships; ecological
sustainability
reflect on the growth or the eventual collapse of capitalism, but rather the importance of an
activist government and alternative forms of organizing that protects people, society and the
environment. We include a brief discussion on how the current US politics and the Trump
Administration’s actions illustrate some of Polanyi’s insights. We also apply Polanyian thinking
to current research on the new sharing economy, connecting it with a theoretical foundation.
To conclude, we present new lines of inquiry for environmental sociologists to consider.

With this article, we present Karl Polanyi’s environmental
sociology to those environmental sociologists unfamiliar
with his main contributions to environment–society the-
ory. To be clear, we draw specific inspiration from his
magnum opus, The Great Transformation: The Political and
Economic Origins of Our Time (2001/1944) (TGT), and do
not include here his other writings. In addition, we argue
that environmental sociologists should consider Polanyi,
another supportive pillar of environmental sociology’s
theoretical foundation. Most scholars associate Karl
Polanyi (1886–1964) with his insightful critique of market
fundamentalism, or in his terms, the self-adjusting (unre-
gulated) global market (Block and Somers 2014) and
discussion of nature cotion that everything could be
commodified for sale in the market. Polanyi fiercely
rejected this idea. He insisted that three critical economic
inputs – land, labour and money – were not ‘genuine
commodities’, or items produced specifically for sale in
the market; hence, they were fictitious (2001/1944,
75–79). Since these critical inputs to the free market
were not genuine commodities, Polanyi believed the
entire Austrian School project deeply flawed from the
start. Society would rise up eventually and demand
their strict regulation by government. Moreover, ignoring
this truth would make society itself subordinate to the
market economy, which Polanyi described as, ‘an econ-
omy directed by market prices and nothing but market
prices’ (2001/1944, 45). The economic liberalism project
would rupture moral relationships of interdependence
with one another and create ecological dislocation by
placing the market at the centre of society regardless of
those relationships.
For Polanyi, labour, land and money were fictitious
commodities because labour was really a form of
human activity; land nothing more than subdivided
nature; and money (and its supply) was a government
creation, requiring its close attention (Block 2001, xxv).
Because labour, land and money were fictitious com-
modities, they could not survive against the extremes of
a free market; society would demand their preservation.
Due to limited space, we will focus more specifically on
Polanyi’s idea of land (nature) as a fictitious commodity.
When it comes to the discussion of land as a fictitious
commodity, Polanyi (2001/1944, 187) is quite direct:
‘What we call land is an element of nature inextricably
interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form
a market for it was perhaps the weirdest of all the under-
taking of our ancestors’. Polanyi notes that land is ‘only
another name for nature’, and our ‘natural surroundings’
(Polanyi 2001/1944, 75). Block (2001, xxv) presents the
Polanyian conceptualization of land as, ‘subdivided nat-
ure’, which is forced into commodification under the
logic of the free market economy. Here, bits of nature
are parcelled out and sold. Nature in its various forms,
such as the land, rivers, forests, wildlife, soil, etcetera were
never commodities produced for ‘sale on the market’,

CONTACT Steven R. Brechin Steven.Brechin@Rutgers.edu

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. R. BRECHIN AND W. H. FENNER
and thus are to Polanyi ‘fictitious’ (2001/1944, 75).
Subjecting elements of nature to the demands of the
market will lead to conditions where nature would be
fragmented and exploited to the point of exhaustion,
threatening the natural substance (ecological systems)
upon which society exists. He states: ‘The economic argu-
ment could be easily expanded so as to include the
conditions of safety and security attached to the integrity
of the soil and its resources – such as the vigour and
stamina of the population, the abundance of food sup-
plies, the amount and character of defence materials,
even the climate of the country, which might suffer
from the denudation of forests, from erosions and dust
bowls, all of which ultimately depend upon the factor
land, yet none of which respond to the supply-and-
demand mechanism of the market’ (193).
All of this takes us to the question of how much
commodification can nature be subjected to before
its destruction? We know from Polanyi it is impossible
for nature to reach wholesale commodification;
society will demand government action to manage
fictitious commodities (Block 2003). Thus, it is neces-
sary to look at this as a matter of degrees. To delve
into this question we must look into the process that
brings about the regulations and safeguards for nat-
ure that come through the political process – the
double movement.
Polanyi’s the double movement and nature
protection
With discussions of substantivism and fictitious com-
modities, we now turn to Polanyi’s third core element
of his environmental sociology, the double move-
ment, likely his most well-known concept. Polanyi
defined the double movement as follows:
the action of two organizing principles in society, each of
them setting itself specific institutional aims, having the
support of definite social forces and using its own dis-
tinctive methods. The one was the principle of economic
liberalism, aiming at the establishment of a self-
regulating market, relying on the support of the trading
classes, and using largely laissez-faire and free trade as its
methods; the other was the principle of social protection
aiming at the conservation of man [sic] and nature as well
as productive organization, relying on the varying sup-
port of those most immediately affected by the deleter-
ious action of the market … using protective legislation,
restrictive associations, and other instruments of inter-
vention as its methods. (Polanyi 2001/1944, 138–139)
Space limitations do not allow us to present a full
accounting of Polanyi’s rich insights captured by this
concept. The double movement is a notion that is
particularly important to environmental sociology for
two essential reasons. The first is it represents
the second half of the interaction equation how envir-
onmental dislocation affects society, forcing a
response. More specifically, it provides a perspective
to understand the ups and downs of environmental
(and labour) movements. There will be always pecuni-
ary interests (trading classes) pushing for greater eco-
nomic liberalization, and then eventually followed by
public uprising demanding redress from government
due to unbearable pain from excessive commodifica-
tion of labour and nature. From this, one can get the
sense of a constant battle between titans – those
supporting economic liberalism and those opposing
its excesses. It also raises questions of a movement to
counter the free market excesses. Since the free mar-
ket cannot fully subsume the complex needs of nat-
ure and people, it directs us to our primary question
of how much market intrusion can land (along with
labour and money) sustain before the consequences
become too great? This is a pressing question given
the rise of neoliberalism, starting in the 1970s and
accelerating in the 1980s, which has spread free mar-
ket and market society values across the world at an
accelerated pace, subjecting aspects of nature to
commodification that had previously been unima-
gined (Harvey 2005).
Before we move into these questions, we must delve
into Polanyi’s original conception of the double move-
ment. For Polanyi, the demands of a self-regulating mar-
ket on people and nature would be unsustainable, giving
rise to countermovements that serve to protect people
and nature from the unregulated highs and lows of the
market. It is here that Polanyi brings the double move-
ment into play, which can be thought of as swinging
pendulum, where free market excesses come about and
are then are met by waves of social protests from people
and their countermovements that demand safeguards
for land, labour and money.4 It is important to remember
that in Polanyi’s conceptualization of the double move-
ment, countermovements manifest themselves specifi-
cally to protect the fictitious commodities from the full
impact of the free market economy. Thus, the double
movement does not necessarily include all countermove-
ments, only those reacting to specific market extremisms.
For Polanyi, the ‘main function of interventionism’, that
countermovements demand from the state, ‘consisted in
checking the action of the market in respect to the factors
of production, labor, and land’ (2001/1944, 137). The
protection of labour and land from wholesale commodi-
fication and subsequent destruction is the chief concern
of Polanyi’s double movement.
The double movement is as evident in the market
fundamentalism of today, renewed under the current
Trump Administration in the US, in spite of its initial
nationalist leanings. One can characterize this concept
simultaneously by the rapid expansion of market
organization and a slew of free market interventions
globally. These interventions – safeguards, regula-
tions, etcetera – are worked into social institutions
with the intention of protecting the fictitious com-
modities from the potential harm of the free market.

The state executes market restrictions after they have
made their way through the political process, only
because of countermovements.
The double movement, imagined as a swinging
pendulum, swings repeatedly from economic liberal-
ism to market regulation. From the environmental
perspective, one can see the first swing of double
movement as the push towards deregulation that
produces environment degradation. In the swing
back, worried individuals and groups create social
movements to curb the damage through interven-
tions, such as regulation by government. In response
to these interventions, the swings continue and there
are further free market enhancements at the request
of industry that are once again met by countermove-
ments (Rudel, Roberts, and Carmin 2011). Relatedly,
James O’Connor’s (1998a, 1998b) essays on ecological
Marxism, inspired by and partially based on Polanyi’s
arguments in TGT, particularly with regard to the
commodity fiction and the double movement, shows
the importance of these pendulum like swings. We
can see this in O’Connor’s second contradiction of
capitalism, which can be broadly interpreted as the
tension fostered in capitalism by its dependency on
the systematic exploitation of nature (and other ‘con-
ditions of production’) to the point where capital
accumulation becomes impossible. The point here
that matches with Polanyi is that the environment
becomes so exploited that it is no longer capable of
supporting capitalism, the environment faces destruc-
tion, and in response, there are calls from numerous
countermovements to preserve and save the environ-
ment (Rudel, Roberts, and Carmin 2011).
Polanyi’s environmental sociology: moral-
realism
Polanyi’s insights offer environmental sociologists some
fresh perspectives to consider. Most critically, Polanyi
offers a critique of capitalist markets, more appropriately,
liberal economics, which is not Marxist-driven. Polanyi’s
focus is neither specifically on the development nor
decline of capitalism per se, but rather on the role of
markets in society throughout history. We introduce
here a fourth element to Polanyi’s environmental sociol-
ogy that we have named ‘moral-realism’. It emerges from
Polanyi’s economic substantivism already discussed.
Polanyi found throughout history, moral relationships as
represented through social ties to one another, grounded
in human institutions. Human institutions arose to pro-
vide for the material and social well-being of people
living in communities as a collective enterprise, built on
moral commitments to each other and the responsibil-
ities that followed. Polanyi saw destruction of society
coming from a combination of various forms of free
market actions. For example, a free market may force
wages below the ability to support a family, or through
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 3
the destruction of the environment making economic
activities more difficult, or even make life itself impossi-
ble, e.g. Dust Bowl. It would reshape societal values by
placing the needs of the market before the needs of
people and their environment. He labelled such a ‘market
society’. This would be distinct from societies of history
that rested on a moral foundation, appreciating the social
ties of human relationships and the environment that
supports those needs. Block (2001, xxv–xxvi) observes
Polanyi’s morality in the TGT as follows:
….that immodification (Prudham 2009).1 Missing in
environmental sociology is a fuller overview of his think-
ing on society–environment relationships. While
Polanyi’s views on the market and society are central,
our purpose here is to expand that discussion to examine
more generally how his views connect more specifically
to environmental sociology.
We begin with a brief introduction to Polanyi himself,
and TGT. We then present Polanyi’s three core ideas –
economic substantivism, fictitious commodities and the
double movement. We then attempt to add to these core
ideas by presenting in our view his central contribution to
environment–society relationships, the moral-realism of
social-environmental relations. We follow with a brief
critique of Polanyi’s environmental sociology. We then
attempt to illustrate how Polanyian thinking fits into
recent political events, including the current Trump
Administration unusual nationalist-neoliberal agenda.
Then we illustrate how one might apply Polanyi’s views
to current interest in the new sharing economy and
sustainable lifestyles. We conclude by presenting a few
possible research topics for consideration.
Early in TGT, Polanyi presents his central argument:
‘Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market
implied stark utopia. Such an institution could not
exist for any length of time without annihilating the
human and natural substance of society; it would
have physically destroyed man and transformed his
surroundings into a wilderness’ (3). He pointed to the
Great Depression, two world wars, environmental dis-
asters and the rise of Fascism as consequences,
directly or indirectly, from Western governments’ pur-
suit of a self-regulating (i.e. unregulated), global mar-
ket. Polanyi argued that the resulting disasters from
implementing such a vision would cause society to
rise up forcing government to provide the self-
protection needed to address the inventible abuses
to society and nature.
Polanyi’s inspiration for this work developed while
living in Vienna, Austria in the 1920s and early 1930s.
While there, he participated in a number of intellec-
tual salons, including one led by the economist
Ludwig von Mises. von Mises, with others, continued
the project of liberal economic thought (neoliberalism
today) particularly around marginal utility begun ear-
lier by Carl Menger, redefining the classical works of
4 S. R. BRECHIN AND W. H. FENNER
Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus,
among others (Block 2001; Block and Somers 2014).
This revived intellectual tradition became known as
the Austrian School of Economics. With his most
famous student Friedrich A. Hayek, von Mises worked
on the importance of economic freedom and indivi-
dual choice, attempting to re-energize the theory of
laissez-faire economics that had been ‘shaken by the
First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the
appeal of socialism’ (Block 2001, xx). Polanyi’s thinking
developed around challenging some of their project’s
core building blocks. Polanyi drew inspiration for his
critique from a wide range of intellectual traditions
(Dale 2010). Although steeped in Marx’s writings,
Polanyi was not a devoted Marxist, but rather a demo-
cratic socialist who drew inspiration from many intel-
lectuals, including Robert Owen, an industrialist
turned utopianist, and a founder of the cooperative
movement (Block and Somers 2014; Dale 2010;
Polanyi 2001/1944). He found great hope in US
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) New
Deal as a political model for emulation as a means
to address the devastating consequences from the
market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The
Great Depression provided the yet another example
of the failure of laissez-faire economics. For Polanyi,
the New Deal provided a political realism he sought.
He appreciated FDR’s activist government, directed
towards curbing free market abuses and providing
needed social safety nets for citizens, as well as eco-
logical reconstruction (Polanyi 2001/1944; Block and
Somers 2014).2 Polanyi writes in TGT (211): ‘A decade
of prosperity in the twenties sufficed to bring on a
depression so fierce that in its course the New Deal
started to build a moat around labor and land, wider
than any ever known in Europe. Thus America offered
striking proof, both positive and negative, of our the-
sis that social protection was the accompaniment of a
supposedly self-regulating market’.
We examine next Polanyi’s most well-known compo-
nents of Polanyi’s environmental sociology. First is his
unifying theme of economic substantivism, or society’s
embeddedness in culture (i.e. social ties and human insti-
tutions) and ecology, and the problem of pursuing dis-
embeddedness. Polanyi rejected the Austrian School’s
belief that one should construct the market as indepen-
dent of social and ecological constraints. We then discuss
the importance of labour, money and especially land
(nature) as fictitious commodities. Polanyi fiercely chal-
lenged again the Austrian School’s belief that the market
could commodify everything for its sale. The third major
component is his concept of the double movement, or
the inevitable rising up of society to self-protect, when
abuses from a free market inevitability becomes too
severe for people and nature. To be clear, Polanyi does
not delve deeply into explaining his society–environment
relationships; see two short chapters, Chapter 11, ‘Man,
Nature and Productive Organization’, and Chapter 15
‘Market and Nature’ in TGT. Still, Polanyi refers to
society–environment relations throughout TGT. One can
easily grasp his fundamental, yet nuanced appreciation
for them as he presents his core arguments.
Karl Polanyi’s economic substantivism:
embeddedness and the problem of
dis-embeddedness
Environmental sociology’s uniqueness rests on its
inclusive pursuit of understanding social phenomena.
Environmental sociologists differ from traditional
sociologists by rejecting Durkheim’s ‘insistence that
social facts can be explained only by other social
facts’ (Dunlap and Catton, Jr. 1979, 244). In their foun-
dational article, Riley Dunlap and Bill Catton, Jr. define
environmental sociology as the ‘Study of interactions
between environment and society’ (251). In short,
society can affect the environment and those envir-
onmental changes can in return affect society, as well
as vice versa.
Environmental sociologists were attempting to under-
stand as well a moment in history, the rise of the modern
environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement
that could not be explained by more traditional explana-
tions of capitalist–worker conflicts. Still, Dunlap and
Catton’s definition does not articulate much in its critical
components to its definition, other than to include the
environment, including the built environment, into social
analysis. This broadened its appeal, but left its refinement
to others. Since the discipline’s founding, environmental
sociologists have attempted to find supportive pillars in
classical sociological theory, particularly in Marx, Weber
and even Durkheim (e.g. Foster 1999; Foster and
Holleman 2012; Rosa and Richter 2008). We should add
Karl Polanyi to this list. Fredrick Buttel came closest to
defining environmental sociology in Polanyian terms
when he defined it ‘as an effort to understand the mate-
rial embeddedness of social life’ (Humphrey, Lewis, and
Buttel 2002, 6; Buttel 1996). Central to Polanyi’s environ-
mental sociology is indeed the concept of ‘embedded-
ness’ (see Dale 2011).
Polanyi highlights embeddedness through his con-
cept of economic substantivism. In TGT he states
‘societal substance’ is embedded in ‘natural sub-
stance’ or the ecological remains integrated in all
social relations, especially the market. The Austrian
School’s proposition that the market should be inde-
pendent of all social and ecological constraints con-
tradicted history. Even with the rise of the more
modern industrialized economy, which Polanyi called
the ‘Satanic Mill’, did not change economy’s embedd-
edness in society and nature, regardless of liberalism’s
claims otherwise. In TGT (44), Polanyi warns: ‘The
conclusion, though weird, is inevitable; nothing less
will serve the purpose: obviously, the dislocation

caused by such devices must disjoint man’s relation-
ships and threaten his natural habitat with
annihilation’.
Polanyi’s views on embeddedness emerged from his
historical studies of human societies. Economic systems
across time were integrated through interpersonal
norms, the cultural milieu and ecology of that society.3
To Polanyi, the modern market economy was not
exempted from that reality, no matter how liberal econ-
omists tried to argue for its dis-embeddedness. To
Polanyi, the market is nothing more than a means for
society’s provisioning, i.e. meeting the material needs of
society. It was not, as argued by the Austrian School,
simply a vehicle for individualized utility maximization
as ‘natural law’ (Block and Somers 2014). In short, to
Polanyi, economic activities, exchanges, the market,
arose to serve the needs of people and society, and not
the other way around, with society and people serving
the needs of the market, as under liberalism. Polanyi
believed the economy remains tethered to social rela-
tions and the environment of society. To do otherwise
treats people and nature as simply objects for sale in the
market, nothing more, leading inevitability to social and
ecological dislocation. This was Polanyi’s most critical
insight and served as his central touchstone in his critique
of a self-regulating market. For Polanyi, a self-regulating
market was a myth, never fully achievable because the
social ties to one another, that is, morally as well as
economically based relationships, and society’s interde-
pendence with its functioning ecosystems. Polanyi sum-
marized his understanding with this famous quote:
…To allow the market mechanism to be sole director
of the fate of human beings and their natural envir-
onment, indeed, even of the amount and use of
purchasing power, would result in the demolition of
society………… Robbed of the protective covering of
cultural institutions, human beings would perish from
the effects of social exposure; they would die as the
victims of acute social dislocation through vice, per-
version, crime, and starvation. Nature would be
reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and land-
scapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopar-
dized, the power to produce food and raw materials
destroyed… (Polanyi 2001/1944, 76)
If the market ignored these social-ecological con-
straints, society would have no choice but to rise up
to protect itself.
Fictitious commodities and ecological
concern: a focus on land
Central to the Austrian School’s economic liberalism pro-
ject was its assumpt is simply wrong to treat nature and
human beings as objects whose price will be determined
entirely by the market. Such a concept violates the prin-
ciples that have governed society for centuries. Nature
and human life have almost always been recognized as
having a sacred dimension. Hence, the difficulty is to
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 5
reconcile as sacred dimension with the subordination of
labor and nature to the market.
So morality, built on social relations with one another,
sits centre stage in Polanyi’s view. It is a ‘realism’ that
emerged organically through history. On the other hand,
the Austrian School’s economic liberalism, as a socially
constructed ideology, altered the moral, as well as eco-
nomic and social relationships by placing market transac-
tions ahead of people, their obligations to one another,
and environmental well-being. Polanyi lends insight into
how people will respond living under such an economic
system. He argued that people will rise up through coun-
termovements and demand not just material well-being,
but justice and restitute a morality of mutual care. While
environmental sociology has embraced aspects of mor-
ality, especially illustrated by environmental justice move-
ments, Polanyi provides a theoretical foundation for this
work and beyond in a much more fundamental way.
Critiquing Polanyi’s environmental sociology
Polanyi’s environmental sociology must not escape
critique. We acknowledge several potential weak-
nesses. One, he writes about ‘society’ and ‘market’ as
singular constructs without definition. Likewise, he
presents little insight on the scale of activities and
impacts; they seem to range from local to global.
Similarly, Polanyi never addressed the importance of
scale for countermovements concerning their success,
nor did he examine what degree of success counter-
movements had to have in their obstruction of commo-
dification in order to keep commodification from
becoming so entrenched that it would tear apart the
social-ecological fabric of society. For example, Polanyi
did not elaborate on when society self-protection efforts
were sufficient to stem environmental dislocation. It is
surprising that Polanyi did not address the matter of
degrees in countermovements, given his concept of
embeddedness that recognizes that wholesale commo-
dification is never a possibility. Thus, we have to instead
look into what degree of commodification fictitious
commodities like nature can endure. It is not simply
that human beings and nature cannot survive wholesale
commodification that is in question, but what level of
commodification can be endured before social and
environmental destruction.
Also, he does not talk about the particularities of
these countermovements – how big they have to be,
what kind of group they need to be, what kind of
power they have to have at their disposal, the types of
goals they have – in order to succeed. Instead, it
appears that he assumes these countermovements
will succeed in the end, but only temporarily. He
provides little discussion as to how they would be
able to out power the demands of the market econ-
omy, beyond moral outrage.5
6 S. R. BRECHIN AND W. H. FENNER
Polanyi does not theorize the state or state power.
While not fully developed, Polanyi certainly viewed the
state as a critical player in addressing problems affecting
both society and nature.6 An unregulated market would
eventually go too far inflicting sufficient social and eco-
logical destruction concern resulting in countermove-
ments demanding the state take sufficient interventions
to address the fuller needs of human and environmental
welfare. Although he does not fully articulate this point,
he would likely see the rise of the environmental state as
an essential development resulting from countermove-
ments (see Mol and Buttel 2002). Still, Polanyi presents
refreshing perspectives on environmental sociology and
early insights on sustainability that require further
exploration by environmental sociologists.
Applying Polanyi to current environmental
events
The recent resurgence of interest in Polanyi speaks to
his connection to today’s political controversies. The
Austrian School’s economic thought provides the
foundational pillars of our current dominant ideology
of neoliberalism/market fundamentalism. This is belief
that free markets solve all problems. One maximizes
personal freedoms through less regulation and smal-
ler government; privatization of public goods expands
the role of markets. It is an ideological push to return
to laissez-faire political-economic system as much as
possible as existed before the Great Depression, and
what many conservatives view as FDR’s US socialist
experiment of expansive, activist government, illu-
strated by his New Deal programmes of safety nets
such as social security.
Ironically, von Mises and Hayek did not realize their
project following the end of WWII, as they expected, and
as Polanyi feared; this was the reason he wrote the TGT to
begin with. The economic boom following WWII kept
reformers away until the economic troubles of the
1970s. The return of economic liberalism came in the
late 1970s with the ‘Volcker Shock’, and early 1980s with
the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, both of
whom pushed programmes of economic deregulation,
privatization and austerity. Institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund and World Trade
Organization took on neoliberal policies, leading to struc-
tural adjustment lending and various deregulatory and
austerity policies. All of which are policies that deepened
the commodification of nature and labour. Though
unevenly, neoliberalism spread across globe, allowing it
to become a hegemonic force (Harvey 2005). And thus,
domestically and internationally neoliberal ideology
replaced Keynesian economics that had dominated for
decades, along with FDR’s expansive government that
continued through its apex in the L.B. Johnson
Administration’s Great Society programmes, continuing
at lower ebbs until Reagan. Following the 2008 Great
Recession, the Obama Administration attempted to roll
back the neoliberalism agenda, as represented by the
Affordable Care Act, expanded health coverage, mostly
via government-funded coverage, to millions who pre-
viously were without health insurance, returned to stricter
regulations of the financial sector, and its active engage-
ment in the Paris Accords to address global climate
change.
The Trump Administration’s current attack on environ-
mental regulation and radical downsizing of the
Environmental Protection Agency (as well as other envir-
onmental-science-based programmes), the possibility of
rescinding national monuments and privatizing public
lands, the push to undo Wall Street financial regulations,
the Affordable Care Act, public education, etcetera illus-
trates the continually swinging pendulums between eco-
nomic liberalism ideologies and those who want to
protect people and the environment from excessive
harm from a less regulated economy. The most recent
being the disaster of the 2008 economic meltdown and
following Great Recession. Climate change denialism (e.g.
McCright and Dunlap 2010; Brulle 2014) is a political
project that draws deep inspiration from market funda-
mentalism and related Libertarian ideals promoted by the
Austrian School challenged by Polanyi. The fight over
climate change becomes the modern illustration of yet
another continuing pendulum struggle concerning envir-
onmental protection and economic liberalism, as outlined
by Polanyi. This is clearly illustrated by the wide scale
regional and international backlash from the Trump
administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords, as
seen through cities, states and other countries reinforcing
their commitments to reduce carbon pollution.
Sustainability and new forms of organizing:
building upon Polanyi
Polanyi can also take us into other responses to eco-
nomic liberalism. These include new forms of organiz-
ing designed to better address issues of social
injustice, community engagement and environmental
sustainability. With the rise of neoliberalism in the late
1970s, we have witnessed rapidly growing social and
economic inequality, rampant individualism and
accelerated global environmental decline. Our current
neoliberal economic philosophy promotes ecological
unsustainability and aggravates social injustices such
as widening income inequality, as Polanyi warned us
about decades ago. A Polanyian view highlights the
rise of a market society, where the centrality of mar-
kets and money redefines whom and what are
worthy. Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy: The
Moral Limits of Markets (2012) has brilliantly captured
the value reorientation that Polanyi worried about,
exploring how social relations are reshaped to fit the
market or more succinctly, how market norms, devoid
of moral reasoning, are invading our everyday lives.

Parts of our lives, like our attitudes towards nature
become instrumental, as is seen though market-based
solutions to environmental degradation, which as
Sandel argues, lessens the ‘shared spirit’ required to
lessen environmental harm (75). Non-market norms
and their attached morals, like ones that would stig-
matize excessive carbon emissions, are crowded out
by market norms. Though Sandel’s arguments are
aligned with Polanyi, he does not draw on him
directly.
This leads us to the critical question – what new
institutional arrangements would place us on a
more moral and sustainable path? Is it only demo-
cratic socialism, where regulation of the economy is
more robust? Or, might we find in other models of
human organization; a different kind of the double
movement? While Polanyi admired President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal, as a
democratic-socialist model that addressed social
and environmental problems, he also acknowledged
great interest in Welsh social reformer, Robert Owen
(1771–1858), who helped to launch the cooperative
movement where workers and owners become one
(Dale 2010; Polanyi 2001/1944). Many of these
ideals are captured in revived approaches that shifts
away from profit maximization and capital accumu-
lation per se (not necessarily from profits) to encou-
rage social justice and environmental sustainability.
Similar to Polanyi’s notion of ‘provisioning’, what he
considered the historic role of the market in provid-
ing for peoples material needs based on ecological
stewardship, one can find alternative forms of orga-
nizing under the label of ‘the New Sharing
Economy’ (Schor 2011; Schor and Thompson 2014).
Included here are renewed interest in community-
based savings and loans, community-assisted agri-
culture, localism/slow food movement, time-
expertise exchanges, as well as other community-
based and sharing economic alternatives that pro-
vide for human material needs in more moral ways,
emphasizing and strengthening social and commu-
nity ties, and by living more lightly on the land as
part of a guiding ecological consciousness. A
Polanyian frame would also place in light the rise
of new organizational forms, such as Benefit
Corporations (B-Corps) (Honeyman 2014). These are
typically vehicles for social entrepreneurs, indivi-
duals and groups that wish to create market value,
but also promote community interdependence,
social justice and environmental sustainability
(Bornstein and Davis 2010). B-Corps challenge pur-
posefully traditional C corporations that by contract
require the maximization of shareholder value,
often at the expense of the environment, workers
and community. Polanyi was not against markets
per se, only against economic activities that lacked
morality by placing the needs of the market before
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 7
the needs of people and nature. The rise of the New
Economy and allied movements are visions very
much built upon a Polanyian base, but rarely dis-
cussed in those terms. This is a growing double
movement at a much more fundamental level
responding to the more recent version of market
fundamentalism. Polanyi’s fundamental point was
the importance of building a ‘moat’ around land
and people to protect both better. Democratic soci-
alism and new forms of organizing present options
reflective of a Polanyian perspective.
Conclusion: future research directions
We conclude with a few thoughts on how insights
from Polanyi might offer future research directions
for environmental sociologists. These are only a few
examples. First, however, we hope you agree that
Polanyi brings fresh lens to (re)examine the environ-
ment–society relationships central to our discipline.
Polanyi does not fit neatly into perspective offered
by Marx, Weber or Durkheim, but likely overlaps with
parts of each. As our discussion above reveals hope-
fully, Polanyi offers what we call a ‘moral-realism’,
based upon his study of human institutions through-
out history. Perhaps the most obvious of future
research directions would explore in greater depth
how questions of morality should (or should not)
play in environment–society relationships. Of inter-
est, from a Polanyian perspective, morality is not
limited to environmental (in)justice issues, which is
often presented as the most obvious component of
environmental sociology, typically dealing with
issues of disproportion of environmental burden by
race and class (e.g. Mohai, Pellow, and Roberts 2009).
In addition, there are discussions of environmental
values, especially bio-centric, that environmental
sociologists have explored (e.g. Stern and Dietz
1994; Dietz, Fitzgerald, and Shwom 2005). Riley
Dunlap’s work on the New Ecological Paradigm
(Dunlap and Van Liere 1978 and Dunlap et al. 2002)
suggests a shift in values, but never fully theoreti-
cally developed or grounded. Still, many of these
values tend to project more towards to other species
and less to each other, although perhaps inter-
twined. Also, climate justice (e.g. Harlan, Pellow,
and Roberts 2015), or addressing climate change in
a manner that does not speak to the concerns of all
peoples, would be unthinkable to Polanyi. Still, we
argue via Polanyi, morality relates to the core of
environmental sociology itself, not only certain
topics. He thought people’s suffering and ecological
destruction unforgiveable in defence of market
supremacy. To be clear Polanyi did not appear to
appreciate nature simply for its own sake, but rather
how the ecological, the market and social relations
were all tied together; he recognized their
8 S. R. BRECHIN AND W. H. FENNER
interdependence, the core of environmental sociol-
ogy as a discipline. Society’s well-being depends
upon functioning ecosystems to provide the needed
goods and services for people. Environmental
destruction from excessive commodification of nat-
ure (and human suffering from the over commodifi-
cation of labour) from unregulated markets create
problems for society as a whole that requires protec-
tion. How might we more fully integrate morality
into (re)thinking environment–society relationships?
Polanyian research questions could direct environ-
mental sociologists to explore precisely when market
abuses go too far. Can we identify at what point do
counter movements begin? Can we trace precise
moments of excessive commodification with the rise of
social movements? Johnson and Frickel (2011) have
linked ‘ecological threat’ to environmental mobilization.
This would suggest tipping points in environment–
society interaction that lead society to self-protect.
Could one investigate these relationships in greater
detail? Relatedly, why do the countermovements fail to
protect fully environment–society relationships? What
happens exactly? When? How? Similarly, are there
moments, such as economic downturns, of change in
politics or political parties that shift the pendulum in the
other direction? Does the pendulum between propo-
nents and opponents of economic liberalism swing back
and forth for forever? How can one shift the movement to
one of more permanent protection? Can regulation be
sufficient, or should environmental and social protection
only occur through new forms of organizing that take off
the sharp edges of the free market economy to restore
more morally based relationships among each other and
the environment?
Polanyi could offer a valuable window and theoretical
base to examine the burgeoning movement to privatize
or weaken protections on public lands in the United
States. The land transfer movement officially advocates
putting federally protected public lands in the hands of
the states and those immediate stakeholders (see groups
like the conservative American Lands Foundation and the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)). However,
this is widely understood as a method to privatize land
since these states would not have the money to manage
these lands and would have to sell them off to what
would likely be energy companies and developers.
There are similar attempts by these and related groups
to reduce regulations on public lands to more widely
allow for mining and other forms of land exploitation.
This specifically includes growing efforts to diminish the
borders or entirely eliminate national moments, as well as
measures that would make it more difficult to create and
sustain these protected spaces (Wiles 2017). All of which
are movements that have gained tremendous momen-
tum with the rise of the Trump administration. Polanyi is
invaluable piece to analysing what will be a stubbornly
growing trend in land commodification in the following
years and the environmental damage and countermove-
ments it will create.
Finally, future research could be directed to exploring
the differences and similarities between Polanyi’s envir-
onmental sociology and that of Allan Schnaiberg and
colleagues’ Treadmill of Production (TOP) (Schnaiberg
1980; Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg 2008). TOP is
another non-Marxian analysis of environment–society
relationships. The well-established TOP has never been
fully grounded in any classical literature, such as Marx
(e.g. Wright 2004). One might argue that the TOP actu-
ally rests upon a Polanyian base, although Schnaiberg
and colleagues never formally drew upon this work
either (Gould, Pellow, and Schnaibert 2004).
Schnaiberg and collaborators identified a similar list of
problems to Polanyi with modern industrialized capital-
ist market systems. Polanyi recognized that free market
forces and the state at times would push together
towards greater efforts to commodify land, labour and
money, as well as other times fighting for greater pro-
tections. Schnaiberg’s logic is based upon the political-
economic forces that would push to continually expand
industrial production creating ever greater environmen-
tal externalities whether from environmental withdraws
or disposal into environmental sinks. Polanyi shared a
similar vision of unregulated industrialization as a
‘Satanic Mill’ leading to destruction of both people and
nature when pushed too far. Also, fitting in with Polanyi,
treadmill theorists have argued the necessity of counter-
movements, especially blue–green coalitions, to fight
environmental and human harm and the role of the
state to strike some balance between the two opposing
interests. Bringing the argument into a contemporary
light, they argue that countermovements in global
capitalism have to be transnational in order to affect
corporate production methods. This is due to that only
transnational interventions can impede the harm of
production in global capitalism since corporations can
avoid regional interventions by moving to a new terri-
tory (Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg 2004, 2008; Buttel
and Gould 2004). There is fun work ahead in detailing
the similarities and differences among these two impor-
tant works.
Polanyi provides insights and perspectives on environ-
ment–society relationships that are rich and nuanced.
There was insufficient space to capture it all or to elabo-
rate fully on them here. Still, we hope this article stimu-
lates greater interest in Karl Polanyi’s environmental
sociology. We believe there is much to explore and
build upon.
Notes
1. Obviously, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels focused on
free-market capitalism and its environmental conse-
quences. However, Polanyi’s analysis is unique enough
and does not fall neatly into Marxian frameworks. We

acknowledge here that environmental geographers
and cultural-ecological anthropologists, particularly
political ecologists, have delved deeply into Polanyi’s
work. Environmental sociologists have largely ignored
his insights.
2. The New Deal is known as a concerted federal-level effort
to rehabilitate the US economy as well as its soil, agricul-
tural lands and forests by putting people back to work
through such programmes as the Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCC) along with the creation of the Soil Erosion
Service, among others (Maher 2007).
3. Polanyi notes that the rise of market economies differ from
other economic forms such as those based upon
reciprocity, redistribution, house-holding and autarchy.
Nevertheless, he argues that markets too were still tied to
and constrained by social norms (see Block and Somers
2014; Zukin and Di Maggio 1990).
4. In the US and internationally today, money is much
more tightly managed. In the US, this is through the
Federal Reserve System, created in 1913 to manage
money supply. At the international level, the
International Monetary Fund and to a lesser extent,
the World Bank accomplishes this same function. This
illustrates Polanyi’s belief that money, as a fictitious
commodity, would require state management to pro-
tect public welfare. Over the years, severe economic
downturns, such as the Great Depression, have
enhanced the Fed’s power. Still, these institutions can
be influenced by political ideology.
5. Polanyi does not spend much time on class issues and
how they would affect efforts of social protection.
However, it is clear he does not view them in rigid
terms like Marx (see too Block and Somers (2014, espe-
cially chapter 2). Polanyi seems to suggest a more
pluralistic view of social groups that would form at
times cross-cutting coalitions based upon particular
context. A key statement here is: ‘…at one time or
another, each social class stood, even if unconsciously,
for interests wider than its own’ (2001/1944, 139). Still,
he talks about the trading class being centred the
interest of the market, for having no ‘organ to sense’
the dangers it creates for society and the environment.
The middle classes were beholden to profits, which
kept them from seeing other interests of humanity
beyond profits. The classes not involved with this pro-
duction (landed aristocracy and peasantry) are left with
the task of safeguarding ‘men and soil’ and the
labourers represent ‘common human interests’.
6. Block’s notes: ‘The second level of Polanyi’s arguments
centers on the state’s role in the economy. Even though
the economy is supposed to be self-regulating, the state
must play the ongoing role of adjusting the supply of
money and credit to avoid the twin dangers of inflation
and deflation. Similarly, the state has to manage shifting
demand for employees by providing relief in periods of
unemployment, by education and training future work-
ers, and by seeking to influence migration flows. In the
case of land, governments have sought to maintain con-
tinuity in food production by a variety of devices that
insulate farmers from the pressures of fluctuating harvests
and volatile prices. In urban areas, governments manage
the use of the existing land through both environmental
and land-use regulation. In short, the role of managing
fictitious commodities places the state inside three of the
most important markets; it becomes utterly impossible to
sustain market liberalism’s view that the state is “outside”
of the economy’.
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 9
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Steven R. Brechin is Professor of Sociology and Graduate
Program Director, Department of Sociology, Rutgers, The
State University of New Jersey. Brechin has interest in poli-
tical, organizational and environmental sociology.
Weston Henry Fenner, IV is a Ph.D. student, Department of
Sociology, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, Syracuse,
NY. Fenner has interest in social theory and the
environment.
ORCID
Steven R. Brechin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3426-4624
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