The Great Transformation
by Karl Polanyi · Karl Polanyi
Polanyi's 1944 account of how self-regulating markets were created by state action in nineteenth-century Britain, and how society moved to protect itself. Introduces embeddedness, fictitious commodities, and the double movement as tools for reading market history.
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More resources on Economic Anthropology
econanthro.org
econanthro.org is a scholarly resource hub for Economic Anthropology, featuring research articles, teaching materials, and case studies. It also provides bibliographies, course syllabi, and links to journals, organizations, and field networks.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Anthropological history arguing credit preceded coinage by millennia, tracing debt through Mesopotamian temple accounts, axial-age empires, and modern finance. Readers gain a case against the barter origin myth and a vocabulary for debt as a moral relation.
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means
Island Press reader collecting anthropological and economic writing on hunter-gatherer societies, including Sahlins on the original affluent society. Readers come away with evidence that scarcity is socially constructed rather than a universal economic condition.