Mark Harvey

Mark Harvey is now Emeritus Professor at the Sociology Department University of Essex. He joined the department as a Research Professor in September 2007, and established the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation. For the previous decade he had been at the ESRC Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition (CRIC) at the University of Manchester, as a Senior Research Fellow and Professorial Research Fellow. With a first degree in history from Oxford, followed by a PhD in Sociology (on historico-critical epistemology) from LSE, he held the Susan Isaacs post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute of Genetic Epistemology, working with Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva (1968-70). He was a Lecturer in Sociology and Psychology at Brunel University (1971-4) before leaving academia to become a building labourer, returning to academia 17 years later in 1993. He was made an honorary life member of the building trades union, UCATT, in 2002 for services to the labour movement, combatting bogus self-employment.

His research interests aim to develop a contemporary historical materialism using a neo-Polanyian framework of ‘instituted economic processes’ (IEP). Most recently he was awarded and ESRC Professorial Fellowship for research on the Food-Energy-Climate Change Trilemma in Brazil, China, India and Germany. His main fields of empirical research are
• The emergent bio-economy
• Food provisioning, supermarkets, and the sociology of food consumption;
• Biotechnology and genomics;
• Economies of knowledge;
• Regimes of exploitation and slavery.
• The sociogenesis of climate change

Selected publications:
Exploring the tomato: transformations in nature, economy and society. 2002. With Quilley, S and Beynon, H. Edward Elgar. Cheltenham
Public or Private Economies of Knowledge? Turbulence in the biological sciences. 2007 Paperback edition, 2009
Karl Polanyi: new perspectives on the place of the economy in society. 2007 Harvey, M., Ramlogan, R., Randles, S. Eds. Manchester University Press.
Trust in Food. A comparative and institutional analysis. 2007 U. Kjaernes, Harvey, M., and Warde, A. Palgrave.
Drinking Water: A socio-economic analysis of historical and societal change. 2015. Routledge. London. Paperback and e-book edition, 2017.
Inequality and democratic egalitarianism. Marx’s Economy and Beyond and other essays. 2017. Manchester University Press.