Chris Blattman

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The Forty Year Old Book Review

Economic historian Greg Clark skewers a 40 year old book, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, in the New York Sun.

In turn, a sociologist from the Longview Institute skewers Greg Clark.

Both essays are good reads, but intellectual arrogance gets the best of them. I am willing to bet both men are more reasonable in person, and that both see the sense and the nonsense that time has revealed in Polanyi’s masterpiece.

I’d write more, but I’ve yet to pack for an imminent trip to Australia.

(via Will Wilkinson)

2 Responses

  1. Speaking of North, his “Structure and Change in Economic History” – another “minor” classic – disputes Polanyi’s work. It does not, however “deride” it as Clark claims – in fact North takes Polanyi very seriously.

    In any case, the reason why Polanyi is taken more seriously in political science/anthropology/sociology is precisely because he ties together economic structures with social structures. If you ignore social and political structures, as Clark largely does in “A Farewell to Alms,” then of course Polanyi will come across as silly.

    The Stiglitz forward to The Great Transformation mentioned by Block is, by the way, really good and worthy of everyone’s time.

  2. I find Greg Clark’s reviews annoying in general. Best example: in his review of A. Greif’s book in the J. of Econ Lit, he calls North and Thomas’ `Rise of the Western World` “that minor classic in the field of institutional economic history”??? No one, even if they disagree with the theory, can call a book that won one of its authors the Nobel prize “a minor classic”. It is hilarious and sad.

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