Karl Polanyi’s idea of "the Great Transformation" mainly based its theory on the comment that labor，land，and money were treated as fictitious commodities in the19 th century;however，Polanyi made a mistake in this cornerstone of his theory:He considered what exchanged in the market as a physical entity instead of a right to perform certain(physical) actions.Thus his analysis of "embeddedness"， " market society"，and "social protection" are vague and imprecise.Comparing Polanyi’s idea with that of Douglas North would be helpful for us to understand the importance of the establishment of a proper，basic unit of analysis in the study of economic of sociology，and the necessarity of setting up a suitable analysis theory.