Power and Productivity from the Black Death to the Rise of Neoliberalism: Extending the Polanyian Framework

Since the 1990s, Professor Benkler’s research and publications have focused on commons-based approaches to managing resources in networked environments. Yochai Benkler’s “commons-based peer production” describes the role of information commons and decentralized collaboration in innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy and society. His publications include, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (Oxford University Press 2018), The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest (Currency, 2011), and The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom (Yale University Press 2006), among others. He will share recent work influenced by the work of Karl Polanyi and extending Polanyi’s framework to cover the arc of the history of what Polanyi called “market society.”