Noah Zerbe Global Politics of Local Food: Durban. South Africa Association of Concerned Africa Scholars

The dramatic expansion of neoliberalism since the late 1970s has generated considerable resistance. In Polanyi’s (1944 [2001], 130) description, “The dynamics of modern society [were] governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a countermovement checking to expansion in definite directions. Vital though such a countermovement was for the production of society, in the last analysis it was incompatible with the self-regulation of the market, and this with the market system itself.” For Polanyi, the double movement was the necessary result of the contradictory forces of economic liberalism, which places the selfregulating market at the center of social reproduction, and demands for social protections against the worst excesses of the market system itself. The interplay between these two demands, expressed by competing class interests in society, results in a continuous give-and-take between regulation and deregulation.