****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This is one of the latest in an avalanche of excellent works exploring the continuing relevance and vitality of the ideas of Karl Polanyi. Written by Karl Polanyi's daughter, Kari, an extraordinary theorist and scholar in her own right, the essays in this book expertly explore the condition of the world we are living in today and the humanist, liberal-socialism proposed by Polanyi as its antidote. The value of this book to scholars of Polanyi as well as anyone interested in what has gone so wrong with the world today and how it might be made better, is hard to overestimate. It is a well-written, brilliantly-conceived, concise meditation on some of the most crucial issues of our era framed within the substantivist approach pioneered by the late Karl Polanyi and skilfully continued by his remarkable daughter, Kari. I highly recommend this book and strongly suggest it be added to university curricula on courses dealing with globalisation, political economy, development studies and critical theory. The richness of the content combined with the accessibility of the language makes this an extremely invaluable source text both for scholars and non-scholars interested in political economy and exploring the reasons why the crisis that begun in 2008 has evolved into such a deep crisis of civilisation. This could be an excellent companion to Karl Polanyi's classic "The Great Transformation" and may be read as a restatement and revision of this work for the 21st Century, or, for those who have not yet read this extraordinary work, an excellent introduction to its fundamental concepts.
