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Reading Circle Kick-off: Wendy Brown and Friedrich Hayek

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We, the International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS), the Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations (ISSET) and the Institute for Law and Governance cordially invite you to join our reading circle on “Socioeconomics and Law.” 

This reading circle will serve as a preparatory event for an upcoming international conference, titled “Socioeconomics and Law – From Hayek and Schmitt to Polanyi and Kelsen,” that is set to take place in Vienna in the spring of 2027. At this conference and in the lead-up to this conference, we aim to engage in discussions about alternatives to the current radicalization of neoliberal thought, particularly its alignment with non-democratic and non-liberal political and legal ideologies.

To kick off our reading circle, rather than starting with Hayek´s seminal text, “The Constitution of Liberty,” we will first contextualize Hayek’s significance in shaping the contemporary alliance between anarcho-capitalists and moral traditionalists. Our initial sessions will focus on Wendy Brown’s (2019) “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism,” where she elucidates Hayek’s influence and the implications of the ongoing reinterpretation of law.

Here is an introductory text by IKPS president, Andreas Novy highlighting the role of markets and morals in Hayek’s work and the relevance of Brown’s analysis of this interconnection for current events: Novy (2025) Markets and Morals: The Reactionary Right’s Ideological Core.

The sessions on Wendy Brown’s book will take place at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) on the following dates from 5pm – 7pm CEST:

  • Thu, April 3rd, 2025, 5pm-7pm (chapter 1)

  • Thu, May 8th, 2025, 5pm-7pm (chapter 2) CHANGE OF DATE!

  • Thu, July 3rd, 2025, 5pm-7pm (chapter 3)

  • Tue, September 16th, 2025, 5pm-7pm (chapter 4)

  • Thu, October 2nd, 2025, 5pm-7pm (chapter 5)

Venue: WU, Building D4, room D4.3.106.

To enable international participation there is also the possibility to participate in a hybrid mode. Please register by e-mail for a link to participate online.

We are looking forward to your participation and to an exciting exchange!

Andreas Novy and Verena Madner

WORKSHOP! Planning for Climate Change

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planning for climate change - WORKSHOP

We are excited to announce our expert workshop on “Planning for Climate Change” funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation! Join us on May 22nd @WU to explore the role of planning for socio-ecological transformation. Register now at ikps@wu.ac.at to hear experts on the topic and be a part of the dialogue! Please indicate whether you want to participate online or on location.

The current ecological, digital, and geopolitical transformations have challenged European market-based governance. Deep, complex, and entangled multiple crises require effective public policymaking to transform existing socio-technical as well as provisioning systems. This will not be possible without planning, i.e., coordinated and goal-oriented agency by multiple public and private actors. Learning from past successes and failures, innovative forms of planning will have to substitute current European incremental and fragmented policy making.

This dialogue-oriented expert workshop, organized by the International Karl Polanyi Society and funded by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation, will explore the potential of multi-level democratic planning to steer the transformation of socio-technical and politico-economic systems. It is structured in two sessions.

The first session will use learnings from historical planning experiences to explore current renaissance of planning. The session will evaluate proposals for contemporary democratic planning  be it eco social policies to transform provisioning systems or green industrial policies to transition towards a circular economy .

The second session focuses on the political economy of climate change and the possibility, need
and potential of better planning climate neutral and climate resilient transformations.

our speakers

Basak Kus

Colleen Schneider

Board Member

Jana Brandl

Lucia Behring

Manuel Scholz-Wäckerle

Lauren McKown

Matthias Schmelzer

PhotoCredit: Lauren McKown

Solveig Degen

Tatjana Boczy

PhotoCredit: Kristina Eisfeld

Werner Raza

Program

Organised by:

International Karl Polanyi Society, 
WU Vienna

Made possible with funds from:

The Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation Brussels.

Beyond Growth Conference

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BEyond growth conference vienna

The Beyond Growth Conference Austria 2024 is a congress modeled after the event of the same name in the EU Parliament in Brussels in 2023. 

The event brings together politicians and decision-makers, media representatives and multipliers.

Together with social partnership, business, science, civil society and citizens, we will develop paths to sustainable prosperity. Sales and profits must currently continue to rise. This growth pressure causes many problems – such as inflation or the climate crisis. The idea that the economy can, and even must, grow indefinitely on a planet with limited resources is increasingly being critically questioned. Growth does not automatically bring prosperity for everyone. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that many people are at risk of poverty despite working, the majority of the population has problems paying their bills and environmental problems are increasingly occurring. Our economy is reaching its limits.

The official opening of the conference takes place at the Austrian Parliament on May 13th at 9:30 after a breakfast welcome at 8:30.

Andreas Novy will give an input following the official opening with statements from Alexander Van der Bellen, the President of Austria as well as the President of the National Council of Austria.

For all of you in Vienna, save the date and join this important open forum for the cause!

WHEN?                      May 13th-15th 2024

Where?                       Austrian Parliament

Register here!

You can look at the detailed program and find out more about this important initiative here:

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More about the conference:

Conference Page
Program
Registration
Online Stream

Ayşe Buğra

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Ayşe Buğra

We are overjoyed to welcome Ayşe Buğra as our third Polanyi Visiting Professor.  She is professor ermerita at Bogazici University & Atatürk-Institut for modern Turkish history in Istanbul. In the course of her visit to Vienna, she will hold a PhD-seminar on “social policy”, an Internal Workshop at Central European University and two open lectures, dealing with “The Dialectics of Western Universalism”. 

Ayşe Buğra 3rd VKPVP
Information for students

About

Ayşe Buğra is professor emerita of Political Economy at Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History in Istanbul. She holds a doctoral degree in economics from McGill University, Canada and co-founded the research centre Social Policy Forum at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Her research work and publications deal with comparative social policy, gender relations, international development and business history. 

She has published extensively on methodology of economics, general social policy and female employment patterns in Turkish, English and French has received various Awards for her academic achievement. Moreover she has translated Karl Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation” into Turkish and put the economist’s work in the center of her co-edited publication Reading Karl Polanyi for the 21st Century: Market Economy as Political Project in 2007. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the International Karl Polanyi Institute at Concordia University in Montreal, Candada.

 

PUBLIC LECTURE

May 17th, 7.00 PM (UCT+2)

“The Dialectics of Western Universalism”

Public Lecture  of the 3rd Viennese Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship,
Open Lecture by Ayşe Buğra 
at WU Wien, TC 2.03 (map)

Registration
Join us here on ZOOM

“Paths Out of the Crisis: Envisioning a Post-COVID World”

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Visiting Professorship - Fred Block

Paths Out of the Crisis:  Envisioning a Post-COVID World

November 15th, 2021, 6.30 PM CET
Online Lecture by Fred Block, hosted by JKU Linz

It follows from the first talk that significant structural reforms are needed to protect democratic governance and to cope effectively with climate change.  However, even in proposals for a Green New Deal that would be global in its reach, we tend to have something more like a laundry list of needed changes rather than a coherent vision of an alternative to the world we had before the global pandemic.

The lecture will argue that the project of democratizing habitation could provide an agenda and a vision that could assemble and mobilize political majorities in many nations.  Why habitation?  Why democratizing habitation?   The lecture will seek to answer these questions.

Join Zoom Event
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Why are Liberal Democracies in Crisis?

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Visiting Professorship - Fred Block

Why are Liberal Democracies in Crisis?

November 11th, 2021, 8 PM CET (Online)

This lecture will explore the similarities and differences between the crisis of democracy in Europe in the interwar years and the contemporary global crisis of democracy. It will focus on the process of political polarization that diminishes the strength of established centrist political leaders and opens the way for more heterodox leaders of the right or of the left. 

The lecture will draw on Karl Polanyi’s work to understand the underpinnings of political polarization.  Why do many people abandon previously held political commitments and embrace views that would previously have been dismissed as “fringe” or extreme?  How do we understand the mix of material and ideal interests in explaining these shifts in belief?

Livestream via YouTube
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Fred Block

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FRED BLOCK

As our second Polanyi Visiting Professorship, we are more than happy to welcome professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, Fred Block to Vienna. In the course of his visit to Vienna, he will hold a  PhD- seminar, an Internal Workshop at Central European University and two open lectures.

About

Fred L. Block is a critical intellectual who has written widely on issues of politics and political economy.  He is a research professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. He also serves as President of the Center for Engaged Scholarship. Fred’s wide ranging writings cover topics such as state theory, the organization of the international monetary system, changes in the U.S. innovation system, and the prospects for radical reform of U.S. society. 

Fred’s work has drawn heavily on the writings of the Hungarian refugee intellectual, Karl Polanyi. Fred has served on the Board of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy since 1989. He has also been a member of the editorial board of Politics & Society for many years. His latest book, Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion (2018) explains how U.S. politics got caught in a loop that alternates between center-left Democrats and increasingly extreme-right Republicans, arguing that, to exit this cycle of raised hopes followed by dashed dreams, we must challenge the idea that we live in a society that operates according to its own inner laws.

OPEN LECTURES

November 11th, 2021, 8 PM

“Why are Liberal Democracies in Crisis?”

Opening Lecture by Fred Block, VHS Wiener Urania

More Information

You Tube Stream

November 15th, 2021, 6.30 PM

“Paths Out of the Crisis:  Envisioning a Post-COVID World”

Online Lecture by Fred Block, hosted by JKU Linz

More Information

November 16th, 2021, 5.30 PM

American Capitalism: Choosing among Trump, Biden and Bernie Sanders

Online Interview: Raimund Löw (Journalist & Historian, ORF & Falter) & Fred Block, hosted by CEU 

More Information

Research Seminar

18.10. - 10.12.2021

Research Seminar Fraser

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Nancy Fraser -
Research Seminar (PASSED)

As our first  Vienna Karl Polanyi Visiting Professor, Nancy Fraser will hold a PhD-seminar, give a public lecture and participate in an internal workshop at CEU accompanied with a public debate in Spring 2021. The Seminar will be open for students from University of Vienna, Central European University and Vienna University of Economics and Business. The Public lectures in Vienna and Linz will be open for everybody interested. Due to the measures set to combat the Corona-Virus, all events are planned as online events.

PhD-Seminar

The Research Seminar “Two Karls Plus” on Contemporary Capitalism will be open for PhD-Students at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), University of Vienna and Central European University (CEU). Also, Master-Students at University of Vienna and CEU will be able to participate. Due to the Pandemic, the seminar will take place online. Participation is limited to eight students from WU, University of Vienna and CEU each. 

APPLICATION

Interested Students have to submit an application with a letter of  motivation (1 page max) and a CV. Applications should be sent until February 26th 2021 by mail. Please send your application to the following mail-address:

WU: Andreas Novy (andreas.novy@wu.ac.at)
University of Vienna: Bernhard Kittel (wisoz@univie.ac.at)
CEU: Carsten Schneider (schneiderc@ceu.edu)

Seminar Content

After a period of relative neglect, theorists are again taking up the critique of capitalism. Responding to the metastasizing crises of neoliberalism (financial, economic, ecological, political and social) and to the crumbling of the center-left-cum-center-right political hegemony that underpinned it, many are now returning to the concerns of Marx and Polanyi. But today’s theories of capitalism do not only reactivate the insights of the “two Karls.” At their best, they also incorporate the hard-won fruits of subsequent intellectual and political developments, including feminism, anti-racism, postcolonialism, and ecology. In this seminar, we interrogate some of the most important critiques of capitalism, both old and new. The aim is to assess their respective capacities to clarify the capitalism of 21st century, while disclosing what is living and what is dead in each of the Karls. The larger aim is to develop a critical theory of capitalist society that is sufficiently expansive to encompass the gamut of contemporary modes of domination and social struggles, while disclosing their shared bases in a single overarching social order with a determinate institutional structure. The result should also clarify the prospects for an emancipatory resolution of the current crisis.

Dates

Mo,22.03.202119:00-22:00 Uhr Online
Mo,10.05.202119:00-22:00 Uhr Online
Mi,12.05.202119:00-22:00 Uhr Online
Mo,17.05.202119:00-22:00 Uhr Online
Mi,19.05.202119:00-22:00 Uhr Online
More Information on Nancy Fraser

For further information / additional questions: polanyi_visitingprofessor@wu.ac.at

Incinerating Nature

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Visiting Professorship - Nancy Fraser

Incinerating nature. Why global warming is baked into capitalist society

May 4th, 2021 

On May 4th, 2021 the Viennese Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship has been officially awarded for the first time. In the Wappensaal of the Vienna City Hall, City Councillor for Science and Culture, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, ceremoniously handed over the Visiting Professorship to our first Visiting Professor, Nancy Fraser. Due to ongoing pandemic measures and restrictions, the event was held on-site with only participating speakers, and the event including Fraser’s keynote was streamed live via social media, where approx. 500 people watched the inauguration.

“The system gives capitalists motive, means and opportunity to savage the planet. It is they, and not humans in general, who have brought us global warming–but not by chance or simple greed. Rather, the dynamic that has governed their actions and led to that outcome is baked into very structure of capitalist society.”

IKPS President and Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Andreas Novy, opened the evening and also guided us through the rest of the evening. The three universities involved in the visiting professorship – Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), University of Vienna and Central European University (CEU) – were represented by Sigrid Stagl (WU Vienna), Bernhard Kittel (University of Vienna) and Liviu Matei (CEU), and board member Maria Markantonatou from Greece (Uni Lesbos) joined for the IKPS. The laudation for Prof. Nancy Fraser was held by Prof. Brigitte Aulenbacher (JKU Linz) and can be read here. After Fraser’s keynote there was a commentary by Attila Melegh (Corvinus University of Budapest). 

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Kenyote: Incinerating Nature

Many societies have experienced ecological crises; some have even perished due to environmental impasses of their own making. But only capitalist societies produce such crises non-accidentally, as a result of their intrinsic structure. Combining insights from Polanyi and Marx, Nancy Fraser excavates a deep-seated ecological contradiction lodged at the very core of capitalist society, which she claims is the central driver of global warming. Far from standing alone, however, this contradiction is entwined with several others (economic, social, and political), which are equally endemic to capitalism–and equally implicated in the present crisis. After situating climate change within the system’s “general crisis“, Fraser maintains that the first cannot be successfully resolved apart from the second. She concludes, finally, that an ecopolitics serious about saving the planet must be anti-capitalist and trans-environmental.

“All told, capitalism’s ecological contradiction cannot be neatly separated from the system’s other constitutive irrationalities and injustices. To ignore the latter by adopting the reductive ecologistic perspective of single-issue environmentalism is to miss the distinctive institutional structure of capitalist society.”

The Lecture continued with a second part on the next day. Watch the second part here! 

Environmentalism of the Rich

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Visiting Professorship - Nancy Fraser

Against the environmentalism of the rich. What capitalism’s history can teach us about ecopolitics.

May 5th, 2021

In the Online-Lecture of May 5th, Nancy Fraser deepened the argument of her Keynote of May 4th at the Inauguration of the Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship. The second lecture historicized capitalism’s ecological contradiction.

“Ecological questions cannot be separated from questions of political power, on the one hand, nor from those of racial oppression, imperial domination and indigenous dispossession and genocide, on the other hand.”

Charting its passage through four socioecological regimes of accumulation, Fraser discloses a series of regime-specific impasses, never definitively resolved, but provisionally defused by temporary “fixes” that offload the damages onto subaltern communities. The effect is to uncover the pervasive entanglement of environmental despoliation with class, gender and racial-imperial domination in capitalist society. Canvassing the history of eco-resistance, she observes that efforts to protect “nature,” far from being free-standing, have almost always been integrated into broader struggles that focus as well on labor, social reproduction and political power. Unmasking single-issue ecologism as “the environmentalism of the rich,” she weighs the prospects for uniting proponents of environmental justice, degrowth, and a Green New Deal in a trans-environmental, anti-capitalist movement, whose goal could be called ecosocialism.