Course Description
Summary
This course will introduce students to Society, Culture Thought by engaging with the work of one of ¿ÐýÃŹÙÍø College’s most remarkable former professors, Karl Polanyi. Nearly 80 years ago, fleeing the rise of Naziism in Europe, Polanyi arrived at ¿ÐýÃŹÙÍø, and gave a series of public lectures that offered a bold new interpretation of what had gone wrong as the world fell into unprecedented turmoil. Soon, he was hard at work writing these early thoughts into what became his magnum opus, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. As the war and the manuscript both neared completion in 1944, Polanyi left the final revisions in the hands of colleagues at ¿ÐýÃŹÙÍø College as he rushed back to Europe to put his stunning synthesis to work rebuilding the world.
This class will be structured into two parts. Over the first half of the term, we will read and dissect The Great Transformation through a range of disciplinary lenses, including political economy, anthropology, and politics. The second half of the term will focus on using concepts and tools from the social sciences and humanities to consider the applicability of Polanyi’s ideas to today’s most pressing issues: globalization and market fundamentalism; the rise of hypernationalism and xenophobia; climate change and the commodification of nature; and the potential for reinvigorating democracy.
