Professor Emerita of Sociology and History
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Education/Degree:
Ph.D. Harvard University, 1986Highlighted Work and Publications
The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique
Margaret R. Somers, Fred Block
Description From Publisher: "What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our time. Polanyi contends that the free market...
See MoreGenealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights
Margaret Somers
Description from Publisher: Genealogies of Citizenship, first published in 2008, is a remarkable rethinking of human rights and social justice. As global governance is increasingly driven by market fundamentalism, growing numbers of citizens have become socially excluded and internally stateless. Against this movement to organize society exclusively by market principles, Margaret Somers argues that socially inclusive democratic rights must be counter-balanced by the powers of a social state, a robust public sphere and a relationally-sturdy civil society. Through epistemologies of history and naturalism... See More