Abstract

Polanyi's denial of the universal applicability of economic theory must be seen in the context of early socialist economics and the development of the sociology of knowledge by his contemporaries and compatriots Luka6s and Mannheim. Polanyi's classification of economic types to serve as a basis for a comparative, substantive economic theory-reciprocity, householding, redistribution, market exchange -distinguished modes of allocation rather than production. Regulation governing trade, markets, and money in economies of reciprocity and redistribution received particular attention. The classification is useful not so much for identifying economies corresponding to the ideal types as for analyzing the interrelations between subsets of institutions in a single economy. Polanyi's own work on the "port of trade" is an example. His ideas are also used by ancient historians