Polanyi, China and the environmental impasse: unconscious retrogression and conscious advance

This thesis re-examines core concepts of Polanyian thought in order to evaluate the contemporary value of Polanyian theory. Since the 2008 financial crisis there has been an increased focus on Polanyi’s double movement and countermovement concepts to help explain the fallout of 2008. However this thesis argues a significant proportion of the contemporary Polanyian literature has mis-interpreted these core concepts leading to interpretations that undercut the explanatory potential of Polanyi’s main arguments. Through an interrogation of the countermovement and double movement concepts this thesis puts forward a new vocabulary of consciousness, which I argue can help better understand general Polanyian thought. To demonstrate the potential importance of the new vocabulary, as well as Polanyi’s contemporary value, I use this re-examination to interrogate two Chinese case-studies. The first examines what I argue is an unconscious countermovement occurring in wet markets in China as people look to the rural as a sphere of food safety from the negative effects of China’s rapid market transformation and agroindustrialization. The second case study examines what I term conscious Polanyian movements; urban residents ‘returning’ to the rural to gain refuge from the market. These movements are ‘conscious’ as they explicitly attack market ideals and call for a new political synthesis in similar ways to Polanyi. The environmental crisis is at the core of these communities’ ideology and they connect that crisis to market norms. Both these case studies illuminate the importance of the consciousness vocabulary within Polanyi’s work as well as bring out specific issues within Chinese political economy. The final chapter puts forward a contemporary interpretation of the unconsciousness/consciousness dichotomy by examining the current environmental crisis impasse. It argues that only conscious Polanyian movements, which bear responsibility for our part in mutual human relationships, are able to solve our collective climate emergency. Consciousness of this responsibility would necessitate dramatic changes in the social and economic structures of the global north. The interpretation of Polanyi’s theory in this thesis is important for scholars to use to demonstrate the explanatory potential of Polanyi’s thought in future analysis.