For an increasing number of international scholars and researchers, the work of Karl Polanyi -- for example, The Great Transformation (1944) -- has been a source of inspiration in assessing current conditions and building renewed perspectives and methodologies. In detailed analyses of current socio-economic trends from all over the globe, the writers of this collection of essays -- on a variety of themes, given at the Third International Karl Polanyi conference, in Milan -- propose new concepts for economic analysis in the wake of the collapse of "communism".