Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy

James Putzel
“The New US Imperialism and Possibilities for Coexistence”
This paper will critically examine the emergence of the US as a single superpower and the consolidation of the ‘Bush doctrine’ of unilateral and preemptive military action. The realities of global power today put into question both theories of benign globalisation and those that point to the rise of supranational capitalism and call for renewed attention to national politics, national economic development, and coalitions between states. The paper will evaluate the Bush National Security Strategy, the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions and the political and economic motivations of the US-Anglo invasion and occupation of Iraq. Engaging with Karl Polanyi’s thinking leading up to the foundation of the journal Coexistence, it will explore the hypothesis that achieving a modicum of ‘coexistence’ within the world system today depends on three factors - the debate between multilateralists and unilateralists within the US, the consolidation of the European Union, and the rise of an alternative pole of power in Asia. Finally, the paper challenges the emergent ‘anti-capitalist movement’ to re-engage with national politics and pragmatic coalition building.

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Sally Randles
“Public-Private (Substantive) Analysis as a Counterpoint to Public-Private (Dualistic) Conceptualisations”
At a general level of abstraction a number of institutionalist scholars have helpfully theorised the ‘hollowing out’ of the nation state in the UK. Coupled with this, indeed perhaps its mirror-image has been analysis of the ‘marketisation’ of the State. These twinned notions of hollowing out and marketisation perhaps represent a hybrid of two of Polanyi’s forms of economic integration; being redistribution and exchange. This immediately suggests as problematic a dualist notion of public-private, or indeed the notion of different instituted forms of economic integration as mutually exclusive. We can question the easy demarcation of redistribution (as the role of the State) versus market exchange (as the role of the corporate sector) alongside a number of other common dualisms, such as ‘States against markets’.
This paper takes a current piece of substantive research to explore both the fallacy and inappropriateness of such dualisms. An on-going project is tracing the historical development of market research in the U.K., as a coming together and mutual influencing of a profession (the emergence of a group of practitioners in an occupation with claims to expertness in their field), a corpus of knowledge (the emergence of epistemology/ies and associated techniques), and an industry (the emergence and development of markets for market research). For this particular conference this history will be interrogated with a view to revealing the interaction and mutual shaping of the ‘private’ by the ‘public’; and the ‘public’ by the ‘private’ at particular junctures, and in a multitude of different ways, during the course of this history. It points to public-private ‘hand in hand’ development, which resonates with the Polanyi metaphor of markets and regulation growing up together. It finds less resonance, however, with Polanyi’s other well-known metaphor of a market/regulation double-movement, indeed, it finds a much more endogenous, complicit and simultaneous relation than the double-movement metaphor suggests.

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Rekha, Rashmi
“Film and Transformation”
Films are one of the most popular and hence one of the strongest media today to reach people of all age gender and socio-economic levels all over the world. Its narrative, documentary, and propagandistic powers have strong influence within society. Film can be productive as well as products of culture; in other words, they can respond to as well as reflect culture. Film takes ideas and images from the world in which we live and then turns these into (non)fictional narratives. These evolved narratives have the potential to present scenes of social, political and/or economic transformation. The challenge of the creative filmmaker is to pre-visualize the transformation and ensure that the goal of the film is met.
I will discuss my most recent film, Passage to Ottawa. It is a film
about a young Indian boy in search of a hero in Canada to save his dying mother back home. The film garnered 5 international awards including 4 best film awards and a special mention at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival.
When one sees on the screen a character from another culture facing common human challenges, the viewer is asked to associate with the character instead of thinking it to be alien. Such films work as bridges between varying perspectives and cultures and appeals to a desire for social justice in which all human beings are seen as equal.

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Maxime Rondeau
“Multilateralism and Regionalism: Mutually Exclusive When it Comes to the Environment?”
When reflecting upon the environmental crises facing our societies, one inevitably realizes the following: Firstly, environmental problems do not recognize state sovereignty. Hence, cooperation among countries is needed to deal with some of the most complex issues of our time, such as global warming, loss of biodiversity, and so forth. Secondly, the very nature of this cooperation is still to be determined. The purpose of this paper is to address the questions surrounding the nature of the cooperation needed to deal with international environmental problems. The concepts of regionalism and multilateralism are rather complex and demand a comprehensive definition. In this sense, the first part of this paper will develop on the two concepts and their evolution. For a long time, both concepts were thought to be incompatible, especially from the neo-realist perspective of international relations. It is only recently that the idea of a form of regionalism (termed open regionalism), that would allow multilateral institutions to function adequately within its frame, has begun to attract attention in the academic and policy circles. Then, the second part of this paper will focus on the implications for international environmental policy and cooperation. Using the example of NAFTA, among other cases of regional integration, we will discuss the different mechanisms in place and how they react to each other.
Among other things, we will discuss the role of regional institutions and cooperation in the protection of the environment. We shall then discuss if such institutions are beneficial to the environment, in a globalized world, or if they simply are obstacles to a more efficient multilateral framework. The thrust of our research endeavor will be influenced by the following question: Can regionalism, in opposition to multilateralism, protect the environmental specificity of regions and assure a better policy response to global environmental problems?

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Abraham Rotstein and Patrick Lennox
“The Unwritten Sequel to the Great Transformation”
During the years 1956 to 1959, Karl Polanyi met frequently with his then-assistant Abraham Rotstein to plan a joint book that would become a sequel to "The Great Transformation". Rotstein took verbatim notes of these conversations - about 1000 pages of double-spaced typescript - which will be published separately in an edited version as "Weekend Notes".
The present paper reviews in succinct form the plans, outlines and themes that were discussed at that time for a follow-up volume. One such major theme was the broadening of the focus of the G.T. from the constricting features of the self-regulating market economy to the juggernaut of the new technology heralded first by the atomic bomb and the subsequent communications revolution. Throughout as well was the heightened concern, always in the forefront of Polanyi's thought, for his special perception of "The Reality of Society" the political and metaphysical norms that would pervade such a new technological environment.
This book was never written but the skeleton of such a volume retains its interest for our present age.

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