|
|
|
| REVIEW ON “EMBEDDEDNESS” IN WESTERN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY |
| XU Hai-ying, ZHU Guo-chuan |
| School of Urban and Environmental Science, Huaiyin Normal University, Huai'an 223300, China |
|
|
|
|
Abstract ‘Embeddedness’ is a key concept in new economic geography, not only as an approach but also as important content. However, the concept is vague in economic geography, which is not helpful to theoretical and empirical research. This concept of ‘embeddedness’ sources from economic sociology, and emphasizes that to what degree social relations influence on economic activities. Business management scholars develop the concept and regard it as an important approach to explain business network. In their eyes, external relation network of enterprises, as important social asset, is significant sources of competitiveness. In the early 1990s, ‘embeddedness’ was brought into economic geography to explain the relationship between globalization and localization, especially used it to pursue some issues about regional development in the context of globalization. For economic geographers, ‘embeddedness’ is spatial, economic, social and historical. Four important concepts were used in empirical research as follows: (1) ‘social embeddedness’, sourcing from economic sociology, implies that the nature of MNCs from home country makes significant influences on economic activities. Economic geographers propose ‘local’ networks and ‘localized’ social relationships. Thus, this concept emphasizes regional or local scale, which can be identified from three aspects: first, it emphasizes the significance of external economics. Secondly, ‘institutional thickness’ is an important focus. Thirdly, it argues that spatial proximity is helpful to create ‘trust’. (2) ‘Embeddedness’ is also important approach and core content in global production network (GPN) analysis framework. ‘Territorial embeddedness’ emphasizes that GPN is embedded in special local milieu and also influenced by local economic activities and ongoing social structure. (3)‘Network embeddedness’ is regarded as processes of trust relation establishment which is important social assets for stable development of enterprises. (4) Recent years, some economic geographers concern more about the importance of local knowledge. So, these concepts show different ideas to deal with the relationship between globalization and localization. ‘Embeddedness’ is popular in literatures about industrial cluster study in China. However, the current fruits are mainly about industrial connection with inadequate studies on social relation connection. Thus, this paper argues that it is significant for Chinese scholars to consider the concept of ‘embeddedness’ and make further efforts in both theoretical and empirical study.
|
|
Received: 30 April 2011
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012, Vol. 27 
