Despite the widespread use of the concept of embeddedness in the literature on agri-food networks, not much has been written on the process through which a food economy becomes embedded. To explore this dynamic and contribute to a more critical perspective on the meanings and implications of embeddedness in the context of food, this paper analyzes the emergence of saffron as a local food network in southern Tuscany. By adopting a constructivist approach, the analysis shows that embeddedness assumes simultaneously a (...) social, spatial, and temporal dimension that are dynamically created by participants in the saffron economy as a response to specific market requirements. The paper concludes that a focus on how embeddedness is achieved in the context of food has both theoretical and empirical implications. Theoretically, it supports the need for a more holistic and actor-oriented approach that takes into consideration the tensions inherent in the process of embedding and also its ramifications outside of the social realm. Practically, a focus on how a food network comes to be embedded complicates the notion of food relocalization – an issue that raises empirical questions about the sustainability of local food networks and their contribution to rural development. (shrink)

The paper aims at analyzing the production of creditworthiness within the context of commercial banking in international banks. Taking the interim financing in the Polish automobile sector as an example, the paper reconstructs the process between legal framing of the financial instrument, marketing, and risk management. Firstly, it shows that changes in the state vehicle registry function as a prerequisite upon which the bank uses the newly introduced vehicle registration document as a security. Secondly, it analyzes the change of perspectives (...) which takes place between the marketing of the product and the analysis of documents . Thirdly, it argues that creditworthiness cannot be deduced from the economic representation of the enterprise but is the very result of negotiations between the actors involved. (shrink)

Democracy is in serious difficulties. Three features of the crisis stand out. First is the dominant culture of disillusionment in democracy, which transpires as the mistrust in constitutionalist institutions and values. Second, political authority, both at domestic and international levels, is largely substituted by the rule of non-transparent and unpredictable social powers. Third, democratic states are deprived of much of their capacity to govern, but they retain a non-negligible capacity to coerce.The article is structured as follows. Section I introduces Karl (...) Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and juxtaposes it to the theoretical defense of market disembeddedness advanced by the classical political economy. It then points to the challenge that the complexity of the contemporary society poses to the idea of embeddedness and identifies the need for further analytical clarification of the idea. Section II tries to explain why the idea of embeddedness is intuitively suspect. One reason is found in the domi... (shrink)

This article examines Karl Polanyi’s “double-movement thesis” and, in particular, his claim that modern economies are characterized by a dis-embedding of the economy from society. I examine two significant lines of criticism of this thesis: first, that the concept of “embeddedness” is incoherent in that it implies that economies both can and cannot become “dis-embedded” from society; second, that, though conceptually coherent, the concept does not supply adequate normative guidance for those seeking to address the economic and social problems that (...) emerge from a “dis-embedded” economy. I argue that re-articulating the double-movement thesis in the terms of Reformational social philosophy can show how these problems can be resolved. (shrink)

Polanyi’s concept of “embeddedness” has been the subject of debate. Various authors have argued that it reveals a contradiction. They contend that Polanyi states that all economies are always embedded, while simultaneously maintaining that the modern market economy is exceptional because it is disembedded. Others claim that there is no contradiction in Polanyi’s thought but that he is merely describing a contradiction of the market economy. In this text, I argue that both sides fail to discern two different concepts: “institutedness” (...) and “embeddedness.” “Institutedness” denotes the idea that economic behavior is always dependent on and the result of certain forms of social organization. In turn, the distinction between embeddedness and disembeddedness is inspired by the Aristotelian distinction between natural and unnatural economic behavior. This distinction refers to the finality of economic behavior: is it directed at the thriving of an ethical community or is it instead directed at wealth acquisition as an end in itself? I argue that both institutedness and (dis)embeddedness fulfill a crucial, though different, role in Polanyi’s critique of market capitalism. I conclude by giving a preliminary outline of what could be the implications for a (neo-)Polanyian political economy of my analysis. (shrink)