The works of Polanyi and Gramsci, taken together, help us to disentangle the multiple understands of and politics around social protection. Despite Gramsci’s convincing analysis of hegemony as the organization of class struggle within limits of capitalism, he does not have a theory of counterhegemony. Polanyi, meanwhile, does not focus attention on the power of capitalist hegemony, yet his displacement of experience from production to exchange creates the grounds for a potential counterhegemony. The article analyzes how, despite apparent efforts to de-commodify labor and social protections, precarity has become more deeply engrained among the laboring poor. While precarity is not necessarily new to populations across the South, the way in which commodification has become hegemonic is, and the objective of the article is to better understand the role of social protection in shaping workers’ experiences, and consider potential strategic directions to advance universal social protection.

波兰尼和葛兰西的著作合在一起，帮助我们理清对社会保护的多重理解和政治。尽管葛兰西对霸权作为资本主义范围内阶级斗争的组织进行了令人信服的分析，但他并没有反霸权理论。与此同时，波兰尼并没有把注意力集中在资本主义霸权的力量上，但他将经验从生产转移到交换，为潜在的反霸权创造了基础。文章分析了尽管在劳动力和社会保障去商品化方面做出了明显的努力，但不稳定的状况却在劳动穷人中变得更加根深蒂固。虽然不稳定对南方国家的人们来说并不一定是新鲜事，但商品化已经成为霸权的方式却是新鲜事，本文的目的是更好地理解社会保护在塑造工人经历中的作用，并考虑推进的潜在战略方向普遍的社会保护。