Polanyi in the Pilbara

This paper outlines a ‘substantivist’ approach to the regional economy of the Pilbara in Western Australia, inspired by a constructive reinterpretation of Karl Polanyi's methodological legacy. Beyond the metaphor of embeddedness, it makes the case for a more wide-ranging methodological engagement with Polanyi's brand of substantivist socioeconomics, in dialogue with the empirical investigation of actually existing and variegated socioeconomic formations. A Polanyian optic, amongst other things, calls attention to enduring sources of heterogeneity in this distinctive regional-economic formation, even under the hegemonies extractive capitalism and neoliberal developmentalism.