By: Mark Petersen on February 1, 2018
In reading The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi, I paused frequently, reflecting that this man seems to be a prophet ahead of his time. His seminal work outlines the history of the liberal self-regulating market, now a globalized phenomenon and is an inescapable structure within societies. Written in the latter years of World War II,…
By: Jean Ollis on February 1, 2018
In 47 years of life, I’ve never experienced the United States as politically polarized as it is today. To be honest, I was not alive – or too young to remember and not personally affected by – The Great Depression, Richard Nixon scandal or Vietnam War polarization. However, economics and globalization have always fascinated and…
By: Lynda Gittens on February 1, 2018
In the late 70’s earlier 80’s, my church planted and sustained an orphanage in Haiti until the government coup took the orphanage from us. Around 2007, our church began to plant mission trips and partnership with other nonprofits located in South Africa but halted the impact of the mission visits because of the need to…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on February 1, 2018
“There is no doubt that the primary source material is at least partially responsible for the adoption of this more limited lens. Much of the material upon which we depend as historians is written from the male perspective and more often than not from the vantage point of the pulpit rather than the pew”[1] This…
By: Dave Watermulder on February 1, 2018
On April 15, 2000, I was standing on the corner of 20th and I Streets in Washington DC. Like many other college students that weekend, I had come out to see what the fuss was all about. All around me, there were thousands of protesters on the street, demonstrating against the International Monetary Fund and…
By: Jay Forseth on February 1, 2018
Is it against Portland Seminary academic standards to mainly use Scripture to discuss the economic ideas by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time? Please forgive me if it is! My worldview is unabashedly Christian, so the framework I attempt to begin every thought with is the Bible. I will…
By: Chris Pritchett on February 1, 2018
The main thesis of Polanyi’s seminal work on the transformation of societies from traditional to market economies is that the “Industrial Revolution was merely the beginning of a revolution” that marked the end of an era that seemed to protect human dignity and relationships in a way that Polanyi assumed would be lost in the…
By: Shawn Hart on February 1, 2018
“Polanyi created a way of thinking about economies and societies that has had substantial impact on economic history, anthropology, and the study of the ancient Mediterranean. The Great Transformation remains important as a highly original contribution to the understanding of the Western past; it has been and is important in methodological debates in the social sciences.”[1] This…
By: Katy Drage Lines on February 1, 2018
As I read through these essays curated by Donald Lewis and Richard Pierard, I grappled with mixed feelings. Each of the ten essays approached the topic of evangelicalism in their context differently. In following the work of a dozen authors, I offer some reflections, though primarily focusing on the late Ogbu Kalu’s essay on Africa,…
By: Jennifer Williamson on February 1, 2018
As a missionary, I manufacture nothing, sell nothing, purchase next to nothing, and employ no one. My biggest contribution to the global economy is the spending of my monthly income (which fluctuates based on the exchange rate) on commodities such as rent, groceries, and my son’s college tuitions. I’m not an economist, and I don’t…
By: Greg on February 1, 2018
“In China, doing business is hard; living a Christian life is harder; doing business while maintaining Christian faith is the hardest of all.”[1] For several thousands of years, the Chinese feudal system has taught its citizens to despise business people; seeing them as distrustful. In recent decades, there have been campaigns for greater financial and…
By: Mike on February 1, 2018
Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, first published in 1944, was an evolutionary roadmap for economic sociology. Polanyi’s predictive inquiry asks how society responds to phenomenon’s such as globalization and market failure.[1] Known today as the originator of substantivism, a cultural approach to economics, Polanyi’s visionary narrative leaves behind a legacy that continues to influence economists…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on January 31, 2018
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi was an educational and interesting read. Polanyi’s dissection of market economy and the connection he made to social relationships and the role human beings play in society was especially of interest to me. Polanyi states, “Our thesis is that the idea…
By: Dan Kreiss on January 31, 2018
A complicated, yet powerful text that provides historical antecedents for the free market driven economy that has captivated the developed world, Karl Polanyi’s ‘The Great Transformation’ is an important read for anyone desiring to understand the causes and effects of this economic ideology. From the perspective of the 21st Century it is almost impossible to…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 31, 2018
Evangelicalism is difficult to define since it has no permanent roots or central gathering place like the Catholic church with the pope in Rome. Additionally, there are many kinds of evangelicalism: Pentecostal, fundamental, charismatic… as well as the numerous denominations represented. Interestingly, “The word denomination was first used in English to describe those Christians who…
By: Mary Walker on January 31, 2018
Many evangelicals themselves have little understanding of their own historical roots and little appreciation of the movement’s diversity across many cultures and nations.[1] Global Evangelicalism is a fairly recent book that provides a general introduction to evangelicalism and a global survey of the topic. Dedicated to Dr. Ogbu U. Kalu (1942-2009) the book is…
By: Jim Sabella on January 30, 2018
Don’t we just love to define things—music, food, people, ideas? One of the more popular ways people begin a public speech is with the words, “Webster defines X as A, B, C and even sometimes Q, but never W or R. Let us begin with A.” And off they go. With a definition in hand,…
By: Kyle Chalko on January 26, 2018
Dominic Erdozain’s, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx was one of the books I was most excited to read when I first saw the reading list for this semester. Anything that helps engage Christians to be more critically minded and to embrace difficulties in faith, is right up…
By: Chip Stapleton on January 26, 2018
In his insightful and engaging book, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx Dominic Erdozain takes a look at some of the great ‘doubters’ of history, the situations they arose from and the religious, philosophical and spiritual thoughts and movements they were responding to. As I was reading this week,…
By: Kristin Hamilton on January 26, 2018
Last week we were assigned Charles Taylor’s 700+ opus text, A Secular Age, which I quickly realized would take me the better part of a decade to digest. When I saw this week’s text, The Soul of Doubt, by Dominic Erdozain, I looked forward to quickly reading the 266 pages and getting my post written…
