The question of embeddedness has been recently raised to become one of the widely discussed issues of various contemporary social sciences. Embeddedness can be broadly understood as the degree to which individuals or organizations (firms, groups) are enmeshed and entangled in a given social construction or network.
The workshop addresses the embeddedness of specific subjects (types of market, of production, finance, trade, organizations etc.) in the domains of social structure and networks of agents. This particular end-state and the related one of disembeddedness are principally addressed in the fields of new economic sociology, new institutionalism, business system approach, organization studies, as well as economic, social, urban and cultural geographies. These disciplines have developed or are developing convergent yet distinct treatments of embeddedness while focusing either on the subject, the object/domains, the levels or the directions of the process.
In line with the autonomization and proliferation of embeddedness research, we also witness a consolidation of critical approaches vis-à-vis the general application of the term. It all evolved as if the emergence of embeddedness as an umbrella concept was concomitant to its success story in the field of economic sociology. However, not all scholars of the above named disciplines felt the need of coming to terms with the generality of embeddedness to the extent the economic sociologists did. Among the strategies of reevaluating and restating the explanatory potential of the concept two approaches stand out. The first pertains to discussing Karl Polanyi’s definition of embeddedness as an alternative, and sometimes at the expense of Mark Granovetter’s 1985 framing. The second consists of a shift in focus from embeddedness to embedding. This latter led to the differentiation of new dimensions: the spatiality of embeddedness and embedding is here a case in point. Yet, these two approaches do not necessarily rule each other out.
The workshop aims to summarize and revitalize this debate as well as highlight new theoretical combinations and empirical sites for embeddedness and embedding research. The meeting will take place at Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Journalism, University of Gdańsk (ul. Bażyńskiego 4, 80-952 Gdańsk, Poland). Selected papers will be invited for publication in a themed volume.
Proposed Themes:
1: Diffusion of Theoretical Models
We wish to address conceptualizations of embeddedness in interrelated fields of research. The overall inquiry is to what extent distinct disciplines are linked to the study of particular research sites, subjects, object/domains and differentiated levels or directions of embeddedness. We also attempt to establish the geographical diffusion of various conceptual models and schools of thought.
New economic sociology
New institutionalism
Business system approach
Organization and business studies
Economic geography
Commentary to Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter
Social network analysis
2: Embeddedness and/or Embedding
The distinction between embeddedness and embedding is grounded in the differentiation between the end-state of the dynamics of embedding and disembedding, and the process as such. It might be also stated that the former is rather general, network- and structure-oriented, whereas the latter is more concrete, dynamic and power-oriented. This section is concerned with the heuristic potential of this distinction. We explore whether the terminological formulations should further ramify to cover concrete manifestations of the end-state on the one hand, and those of the process of embedding, on the other hand. This of course, if there are such distinguishable manifestations of embeddedness and embedding to be established in the first place.
Embeddedness, embedding
Disembeddedness, disembedding
Reembeddedness, reembedding
Subject/object/levels/direction of embeddedness and/or embedding
Social capital
Power
Social change
Unexpected consequences
3: Mechanisms and Integrative Models of Embeddedness and/or Embedding
We invite papers which discuss integrative models of embeddedness and embedding in relation to the amplitude and direction of the phenomena. Among other things, we wish to analyze the effects of power relations and inequalities on the dynamics of embedding of specific domains by the ones of social structure and networks of agents, or by other objects.
Mechanisms of relational embeddedness
Mechanisms of structural embeddedness
Mechanisms of cognitive embeddedness
Mechanisms of cultural embeddedness
Mechanisms of political embeddedness
Mechanisms of territorial/spatial/geographical embeddedness
Mechanisms of temporal embeddedness
Mechanisms of institutional embeddedness
Mechanisms of moral, normative embeddedness
Mechanisms of emotional embeddedness
Ethnic lines
Social class
Gender
4: Research Sites
This section takes a closer look at the outcomes of embedding/disembedding of various subjects. It also discusses broader social processes that affect the structure of priority of overlapping embeddedness and/or embedding in simultaneous sets of social relations and institutional frameworks.
Types of markets
Organizations
Institutions
Types of production
Entrepreneurship
Innovation
Social field
5: Geographical Embeddedness: Place, Space and Region
This section addresses treatments of embeddedness and embedding usually associated with the field of economic, regional, social and cultural geography and is mostly related with the social networks of locality, territory, place and region. Place or territorial embeddedness is a type of embeddedness that captures all the factors tangling populace in their place of residence. In this context, the local emerges primarily as a „relational space”. Becoming embedded in this kind of space involves the development of new cultural, ecological and political relations and conventions – in a word, of new networks but also of a new regional discourse. Embeddedness in geography is primarily about creating and re-creating a discourse that ‘empowers’ a place or a region.
The power of place / region
Trapping urban structures
Deterritorialization and embeddedness in the experience of place
Embeddedness and path dependencies
Embeddedness of innovation in a regional economy
Local production systems
