Beyond the “Always-Embedded Economyâ€: Rethinking the Foundations of Socioeconomics

Francesco Laruffa

Politics & Society, 2025, vol. 53, issue 3, 508-538

Abstract: Socioeconomics designates the interdisciplinary attempt to provide an alternative to mainstream economics, involving economic sociology, political economy, and heterodox economics. While Polanyi’s work largely informs this endeavor, his theory is also ambiguous, and scholars have interpreted it in opposing ways. The notion of the always-embedded economy is by now widely accepted, but this perspective potentially undermines the critique of (neoliberal) capitalism. In this article, I develop a coherent framework for socioeconomics built on three pillars. The first pillar affirms that the economy is always embedded in cultural, sociopolitical, and ecological frameworks. The second pillar asserts that the power over socioeconomic issues can be more or less privatized. The third pillar involves a commitment to a “real†democracy, whereby the economy is subordinated to social-ecological needs. This political ideal was not only Polanyi’s own vision: it is also central for contemporary societies—and socioeconomics itself can contribute to its realization.

Keywords: economic sociology; political economy; embeddedness; capitalism; democracy; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323292251331347 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:53:y:2025:i:3:p:508-538

DOI: 10.1177/00323292251331347

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().