386.1
The Double Movement and the Perspectives of Contemporary Capitalism
University of Milano Bicocca
The double movement and the perspectives of contemporary Capitalism
Abstract
The interpretation of contemporary social change by mainstream paradigms of the social sciences is not convincing mainly for two reasons. First, these interpretations are centred on a different hypothesis of equilibrium and stability while our societies can only be understood in terms of dynamism and tensions. Second, they underestimate the importance of interdependence between different phenomena and processes in different parts of the world and, nearly always, end up in ethnocentric explanations referring only to the reality of the global north and use biased methodologies privileging the economic to the social. In order to take into proper account the dynamism and the complex interdependence of our societies, this contribution is divided in three parts. In the first part, I shall put the contemporary tensions of social change into an interpretative frame freely inspired by the Polanyian concept of double movement (Polanyi 1944). In the second part, I shall locate the interpretative frame in a more precise historical and socio-cultural context where the double movement happens within the present globalised and individualised processes of change in the industrially advanced countries. In particular, I will consider the European context, while not ignoring the impact of global interdependence. Finally, in the third part, I shall elaborate the analysis in order to take into account the effects of the long lasting economic and financial crisis.