Polanyi's Non-ideological Countermovement and China Today

Speaker: Rowan Alcock

Venue: Tencent Meeting (Online)-ID 827 581 925, Password 170134

Abstract: This presentation is underpinned by a body of six articles dissecting Polanyi's countermovement and its contemporary relevance (Alcock 2020, 2023, 2024, 2026a, 2026b, 2026c). These articles argue that Polanyi understood the countermovement as atomised self-protective reactions against the negative effects of market encroachment rather than ideologically informed social movements against the market system as a whole – contradicting the majority of the contemporary literature on the countermovement.

The presentation will concentrate on two articles published in 2026. The first, titled ‘Polanyi’s Non-Ideological Countermovement: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’, locates eight arguments within Polanyi's The Great Transformation, and other work, that demonstrate the countermovement is a non-ideologically informed movement.

The second article, titled ‘The Double Movement in Action: Karl Polanyi, Food Safety and China's Rural Transformation’, is the first publication to use the non-ideological countermovement concept in a case study. This article argues China's rural–urban divide provides a cleavage that helps illuminate Polanyi's non-ideological countermovement concept. Informed by Xu et al's (2013) “One family, two systems” study on a peasant countermovement in which peasant farmers grow two forms of crop: one for the market which uses more chemical inputs and a second for self-consumption which uses fewer or no chemical inputs as protection from potential negative effects of chemical residues. I take this logic to a vegetable market to ascertain if there is a similar consumer countermovement. These countermovements, which are protections against the perceived negative effects of marketized produce, which demands unblemished ‘good looking’ vegetables, do not articulate an open ideological critique of the market system. Therefore, I suggest they conform well to Polanyi's description of a countermovement.  

The presentation will finish by putting forward arguments on the potential and complications of using Polanyi's countermovement concept in contemporary China referencing a third article titled ‘Polanyi in Rural China: Beyond the Double Movement’.