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Karl Polanyi

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Karl Polanyi was a thinker who studied how money and society work together.

He was an economic historian and a sociologist. This means he studied how people make a living and how they live in groups. He is most famous for his book, The Great Transformation. In this book, he asked big questions about how markets work. He did not think markets could run all by themselves without affecting people. His ideas help us see how the economy is part of our wider culture.

Polanyi had a very special way of looking at the world. He came up with an idea called the Double Movement. This idea describes a tug-of-war that happens in history. On one side, there is a push to make more things through markets. On the other side, people push back to protect their society.

He also taught a concept called substantivism. This means that the economy is "embedded" in society. It is not a separate thing that works alone. Instead, it is tied to our rules, our culture, and our lives.

Karl was born in Vienna in 1886. He grew up in Budapest with his family. His father, Mihály, was a man who ran a railway business.

Karl was very well educated and studied law at Budapest University. He graduated with his doctorate in 1912. During his youth, he was very active in groups of thinkers. He even helped start a group called the Galileo Circle. He also served as a cavalry officer in the army during World War I.

Life was often hard for Polanyi because of changes in government. He had to move to many different countries to stay safe.

He lived in Vienna until 1933. Then he moved to London to work as a journalist. In 1940, he moved to the United States to teach at Bennington College. He later taught at Columbia University in New York. Because of his wife's past, they eventually moved to Canada. He lived in Pickering, Ontario, until he died in 1964.

Many people still study Polanyi's work in schools today. His ideas are very popular in science fields like anthropology and sociology.

He showed that the way we use money today was not always the only way. He believed that modern markets were not something that had to happen. Instead, they were shaped by the choices people made in history. His work helps us understand how to build a better democracy. He wanted people to find a way to balance markets with social protection.

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