Hosted at ECCI
Presented by Dr Will Eadson, Reader, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University.
Dr Eadson talks about political construction of markets through empirical analysis of community energy in the UK:
"I will emphasise the diverse actors, understandings, processes and technologies enrolled in market creation, stabilisation and correction. The starting point is consideration of how Western governments manage tensions between ideological commitments to deregulation and the social necessity of intervention.
One way of managing this tension is to enrol others to act on the state’s behalf: in this example through the conveniently malleable notion of ‘community’. I will then look at the different manifestations of these processes, emphasising the plurality of actors and logics operating within government, as well as within and between markets and civil society.
The seminar will introduce and explore Polanyi’s idea of the ‘double-movement’ and show how this can be viewed as a fractal pattern throughout contemporary socioeconomic arrangements. Empirical material is drawn from across four research projects, each focusing on different aspects of the UK government's Community Energy Strategy, exploring the varying ways marketisation plays out through different governmental programmes."