According to Polanyi, reciprocity and redistribution were the dominant transactional modes in the past and increasingly characterized economies in the 20th century as well. Polanyi offers a conceptual framework of reciprocity, redistribution, administered trade, gift trade, special purpose money, and ports of trade that is grounded in social as well as economic necessity. Reciprocity Socially obligatory gift-giving is the material expression of cohesive relationships. Material motives are not natural. Humans will work for a wide variety of incentives, provided the proper arrangements are made.
Monks work for religious reasons.
In the Trobiand Island Kula trade, people work for aesthetic reasons. In European feudal times, they worked for custom and honor. Markets have only dominated resource allocation for a brief span in history centering on the 19th century Western World, mostly in the U.K. and U.S.A. Polanyi contends that At no time prior to the second quarter of the 19th century were markets more than a subordinate feature in society. Individual markets existed but they did not link up into an economy. Man s economy is, as a rule, submerged in his social relations.