HUMAN NATURE IN KARL POLANYI AND E. P. THOMPSON
KARL POLANYİ VE E. P. THOMPSON’DA ‘İNSAN DOĞASI’

Author : Can ŞEKER
Number of pages : 591-612

Abstract

This paper will discuss the concept of human nature which is ambigious and can not be clearly defined in terms of its boundary and meaning, through the ideas of Karl Polanyi and and E. P. Thompson, two thinkers in the area of historical sociology, through their works ‘Great Transformation’ and ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ respectively. Therefore, the study does not discuss opinions and thinkers on the topic in detail, it is restricted to the discussion of ideas displayed in Polanyi’s and Thompson’s aforementioned works. In this regard, the study considers human nature as both a producer and product of social relations rather than phychical feature of individuals. From this point of view, the paper does not see the positioning of the market and society as opposing dualities meaningful and assumes that they have historically formed each other. For that purpose, examples driven from the stated works of Polanyi and Thompson are analyzed through Polanyi’s ‘double movement theory’.

Keywords

Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, human nature, capitalism, double movement, market economy, moral economy, owenizm, chartism.

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