Embeddedness in action: Saffron and the making of the local in southern Tuscany

Roberta Sonnino ()

Agriculture and Human Values, 2007, vol. 24, issue 1, 74 pages

Abstract: 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. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Keywords: Embeddedness; Food relocalization; Local food; Relational space; Rural development; Tuscany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-006-9036-y

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