Polanyi All Over the World: Interview with Attila Melegh

Our founding director, Attila Melegh gave an interview to the International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS) about the heritage of Karl Polanyi and the context of founding our Research Center. The interview is the third part of the IKPS's series 'Polanyi All Over the World'.

"Since the 1960s, Karl Polányi has been an influential thinker in Hungarian social sciences, and the last decade has seen a particularly apparent revival of his thoughts. The Karl Polányi Center for Global Social Studies has an active network of more than 220 critical scholars of all ages and academic ranks from all over the world, interpreting the work of Karl Polányi or using a Polányian-critical framework in their work.

One day in January 2014, fifteen of us were sitting together to establish a center of critical global social studies, when our later president József Böröcz suggested to name our center after Karl Polányi. The group warmly welcomed that. With this symbolic step, we wanted to send a signal for our continuing commitment to Polányi and also renew his important line of critical thought in Hungary with a global historical perspective. Why this was so natural needs some personal-intellectual reflection without claiming that this picture of activities is complete."

Read the full interview.