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Polanyian Perspectives on Instituted Economic Processes, Development and Transformation

23-25 October, 2002

Venue: The Conference Suite, CRIC,
The University of Manchester & UMIST,
Harold Hankins Building, Booth Street West,
Manchester M13 9QH

Note: The proceedings of the workshop will be soon published in a CRIC - MUP volume entitled:

Karl Polanyi: New Perspectives on the Place of the Economy in Society,
Mark Harvey, Sally Randles and Ronnie Ramlogan (Editors)

Several papers from this workshop were published in a Monographic Section of the International Review of Sociology, 2003, 13(2).

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The ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) was created by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council in 1997 as a Centre of Excellence at the interface of management and social sciences. One of the aims of the Centre is to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the complex issues that underline and link together innovation and competitiveness.

Arising from the comparative contexts of innovation, CRIC is pursuing a new theoretical approach to varieties of capitalism. This approach, embryonically and suggestively sketched by Karl Polanyi, is that of the 'instituted economic process' where the focus of analysis is both 'economic' and 'processual'. As such its empirical domain includes: the interaction between supply and demand, processes of price formation, competition, market formation, economic motives, strategies and rationalities, and innovation. The perspective that all such processes are fundamentally 'instituted' and therefore the result of processes of institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation, underpins a central theoretical perspective of comparative and historical variability. Indeed, the focus of theoretical interest becomes one of dynamics of variation - how processes are formed differently, rather than a taxonomic interest in resultant 'types' of capitalism.

The general aim of this workshop will be to develop a dynamic perspective on the Polanyian notion of an instituted economic process. To do this we want to focus on the twin concepts of the development and transformation of economies and activities within them. The question is not to ask what are the institutions of a market economy but to enquire into the reasons for their birth, growth, stabilisation, decline and disappearance.

The development of a Polanyian perspective offers a rich agenda for enquiring into the interaction between market and non-market instituted economic forms and the dynamic relationship between them. That will enable scholars to tackle the challenge of diversity and changes in capitalism with improved analytical tools. There are three directions that we would like the workshop to take. Firstly, analysis in terms of the 'organisation of exchange' that provides a broad framework for researching the formation of markets and situating them alongside non-market exchanges. Secondly, following on from the first, is the rich research agenda that is opened up for considering the processes differentiating markets and for exploring the variety of markets. And finally, bringing to the fore the analysis of the dynamics of the appearance and disappearance of markets, in addition to that of intra-market processes where the existence of a market is taken for granted.

Contact: Ronnie Ramlogan
Telephone: +44(0)161 275 7800

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CRIC is now proud to be part of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR)
Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC), The University of Manchester,
Harold Hankins Building, Booth Street West, Manchester M13 9QH, England
Phone +44 (0)161 275 7365 Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 7361
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