Marketization, social protection, emancipation: toward a neo-Polanyian conception of capitalist crisis

This paper suggests us a new analysis of the crisis of capitalism. Fraser’s analysis builds upon the theory of the economist and social theorist Karl Polanyi, argomenting Polanyi’s thesis of a double movement of marketization and social protections, reason of struggles and conflicts, with a third axis: emancipation and its struggles. By emancipation Fraser understands the struggle for self-determination and independence, which she theorizes as "the missing third". Thus, instead of Polanyi’s double movement, she speaks of a "triple movement". This threefold movement forms the core of her theoretical reflections which cast the current crisis of capitalist societies in a new light. In fact, each term of the triple movement as ambivalent and none of the three can be adequately grasped in isolation from the others.

Nancy Fraser, Mercatizzazione, protezione sociale, emancipazione. Verso una concezione neo-polanyiana di crisi capitalista in "SOCIETÀ DEGLI INDIVIDUI (LA)" 40/2011, pp , DOI: 10.3280/LAS2011-001012