Clare's research blog
This mini animation, with sound, asks what the reintegration of the economic, legal and social might look like and sound like.
This is relevant for each and every interaction that occurs – there are always legal and economic aspects to every interaction, but we tend to forget that talking about the legal and economic in isolation from the social is a metaphor, or fiction.
How could frames or lenses like ESL help us to remember the social basis for any legal or economic aspects of interactions?
Is the economy embedded in society? Is society embedded in the economy? Is the law embedded in society? Or is society embedded in a set of rules and regulations?
Have the law and economy become “disembedded” from society, and is this why the financial crisis in 2008 came as such a surprise? Would it help to “re-embed” the economy?
This post explores the use, misuse and abuse of the concept of embeddedness in the context of econo-socio-legal interactions.
Coinage of the term in the context of economic sociology and ESL is attributed to Karl Polanyi in his 1948 book The Great Transformation. Polanyi had reportedly been reading about the coal mining industry in the UK, and had taken the term “embeddedness” from descriptions of coal embedded in the walls of a mine. Thus, to Polanyi, the term was likely a relational descriptor and metaphor. Interestingly, despite earlier documented usage, Richard Thurnwald’s use of “embeddedness” has gone largely unremarked, enabling him to dodge the bullet of origination foisted on Polanyi. The term only appears twice on page 60 of Great Transformation, and then on pages 68, 73 and 135. There is no great overarching theme of embeddedness. Nor is there a definition offered. It is probably safe to assume that the word was a throw-away term of description that came to hand, and was then never given much more thought.
Little did Polanyi realise that 70+ years later, scholars would be puzzling over his meaning and even writing doctoral theses on the matter! One catalyst for the development of embeddedness into the core concept of sociological lenses was Mark Granovetter’s accidental revival of the term. Granovetter’s theory of networks, published in 1985, described the actor as embedded in networks. He has since admitted that at the time of writing, he had forgotten Polanyi’s usage of the term. Nevertheless, the success of Granovetter’s paper revived the career of embeddedness, but at the same time created confusion. Polanyi had been referring to the macro-level embeddedness of economy in society, although his “always-embedded economy” is more a theoretical proposition than empirically-proven reality. Conversely, Granovetter had used the term at the micro-level to describe the embeddedness of the individual in networks of interaction. Thus, development of the concept of embeddedness already straddled the micro and macro, giving rise of the question; “what are we talking about”?
Here’s the rub. When discussing the extraction of coal from a mine, for want of a better example, “embeddedness” is a perfectly adequate relational descriptor. It implies the co-existence of two conceptually separate phenomena in time and space; the coal, and the rock from which it is hewn. There is no problem with saying that one is embedded in the other.
Where difficulty arises though is where we also want to investigate the possibility that the two phenomena described not only share characteristics but might even be two aspects of the same phenomena. For example, we can say that the economy must be re-embedded in society if we accept that the economy and society are two distinct entities. This is clearly nonsense. An economy cannot exist outside of a society. An economy necessarily implies human interaction of a specific nature (economic). The same is true of law. We cannot imagine a legal system without a society behind, underpinning, and performing it. A legal system implies human interaction of a specific nature (legal). Therefore, stating that one is embedded within the other – whichever way round you phrase it – clearly does not make sense.
My research puts this in the context of ESL, which aim to reintegrate social science dialogue and which ultimately takes a constructivist approach. In other words, economic and legal phenomena (the econolegal) are performed through social interactions. All social interactions have econolegal aspects or flavours. There’s no escaping this, just as there is no way to have an economic exchange without it being between people (I’m excluding high frequency trading between computers here for argument’s sake, but will return to this in a future post).
Why is this important? Well, the response to the 2008 financial crisis is something we, in the UK, are still living with. Austerity, as the main policy response, was based on a particular understanding and framing of the economics that led to the crash. This is an economics that sees the discipline as somewhat ‘apart’ from society. Neoclassical economics sets out a version of ‘economic man’ on which complex economic theories are modelled. There has been recognition of the limitations of this approach. But in turn, those who criticise mainstream neoclassical economics frames tend to (with or without the help of Polanyi) argue that we need to “re-embed” the economy in society.
If we take this approach, we deny the possibility of ever seeing the economy as an aspect of society, the same as the law. We cannot hope to reorient the economy and its regulation (the law) towards real people if we talk about society, economy and law as separate entities. Speaking of one being embedded in the other simply reinforces their difference, their separation, and their disunity. It reinforces existing ways of doing, talking and thinking, which are predominantly shaped by neoclassical economics. It prevents us moving forwards.
So, what to do? We need to move beyond embeddedness, and how to go about that is the subject of a future post.
Copyright note: animation by me using ProCreate 5 on iPad Air 3. Please ask before you take!
One of the biggest challenges for anyone working on conceptual issues is making their research relevant to everyone else. After all, the first question any researcher should be asking themselves is “who cares”? This is not the passive-aggressive, somewhat depressing question that it could be, but rather a positive nudge to any researcher to bear in mind why you’re doing the research, and who is going to benefit from it.
My research is primarily conceptual, but has three main audiences: academics engaged in sociolegal research, policy makers working in international development, and a lay audience seeking more innovative responses to the financial crisis. Using designerly approaches to make the research tangible and visible, this post puts a face to each of these groups. Let’s meet each in turn.
Ann works at a university as a law lecturer. She is researching the importance of the legal system for any country wanting to attract foreign investment. She is planning a trip to Sri Lanka – her target country for research – and is going to talk to government ministers, business people and investors, and local communities around investment zones. But how should she frame her research? How can she hold the interests and views of such a wide range of people in one frame at the same time?
Polly has been working at an international development institution for several years now. Her job requires her to use existing research to make policy recommendations for foreign governments, international agencies and charities. She wanted to work in development to reduce poverty, but has become disappointed by the lack of tangible impact her work has, and has been wondering whether there is an alternative approach to understand the causes and ways of addressing poverty.
Lillian is not an academic. Nor does she work in development or policy. In fact, she is a retired dinner lady and pillar of her local community. She doesn’t know much about “the law” or “the economy”, but she cares about her community, and knows that something isn’t working properly. The economy crashed in 2008, and a decade of austerity was rolled out. She was told that there was “no more money” and that budgets across the country needed to be cut. But while her community saw centres close and support disappear, she noticed that the rich continued to get richer. So, she began reading about the crisis, and noticed that there were a lot of people arguing that we need to “do” economics and law differently. Lillian is an interested bystander, and wants to know more.
Why the characters? Personae can be a useful tool for exploring research concepts. We can see the relevance of concepts and frames for our own lives. They can make the conceptual visible and tangible.
Each of these will be developed in future posts, and will each bump up against the limitations of the ways we currently do, talk, and think about legal and economic phenomena. Each of them will then try an ESL lens using embeddedness and then moving beyond embeddedness. Through their eyes, we can explore the benefits and drawbacks of reframing in different contexts and for different audiences.
In the meantime, these characters are by me, using ProCreate on an iPad. They are rough first drafts, and the characters will be developed along with their stories. Copyright 2020.
Sean C Jackson is an artist who draws maps and mazes. The Guardian featured his work recently, and you can see it here. His maps are mostly imaginary, but ask the viewer to dive into the world he has created and puzzle through it. Most of the works sit somewhere between 2 and 3 dimensions, which can make for some disorientation at times, and asks you to engage with the work by turning either your head or the page.
Topography and mapping can be useful ways of visualising ESL, interactions, and social phenomena. Like a map, an ESL can highlight the relevant and hide the irrelevant. Like a map-maker, the researcher using an ESL must choose what is relevant and important and why. Like a map, an ESL lens can also zoom in on areas that are more important, while identifying but minimising others. As a result, we can appreciate the whole landscape in all its complexity and understand the context of the research.
If we were to map out current mainstream approaches in law, economics and sociology, how might it look? The picture below is a (stylised) suggestion that the academic silos of law, economics and sociology would look be islands of research endeavour. They are separated by sea, and generally have their own languages, cultures, and traditions. Some brave interdisciplinary scholars traverse the seas and work on two or more islands, but many do not.
How might it look if we were to draw an ESL as a response to these islands? Would they converge? Would we need bridges, ships, or loudspeakers? Would this enable inter-island dialogue, or just increase competition? And what could a map of the topography of ESL tell us about the lens?
The first GIF here imagines what interaction patterns might look like if we use yellow for economic phenomena, red for legal phenomena, and green for social, political and/or power-oriented phenomena. They are presented separately, performed between actors represented by the red dots.
The following GIF asks what this might look like when these phenomena occur simultaneously.
The colours show the various phenomena as they are simultaneously performed through interactions.
It is worth noting though that by using colour to separate out the economic, legal, and social phenomena, we are using “embeddedness-based” ESL lenses. In other words, we are accepting that legal, economic and social phenomena are separate.
As I argue elsewhere on this blog, if we really want to talk about, think about, and do the econolegal better, we need to move beyond embeddedness.
Future posts will explore what this might look like.
There’s currently a very interesting exhibition on at the Science Museum in London called “The Art of Innovation”. It’s about the links and dialogue between the (natural) sciences and the arts.
Given my interest in the dialogue between the social sciences and the arts (have a scroll through some of the other posts in this blog if you’re new), the first part of the exhibition was a little wide of the mark. The artistic side of the first few exhibits included architecture, dress-making and textiles.
However the real showstopper for me was a piece designed by Theodore Olivier in 1830 (see below) in the section on “Meaningful Matter”. These were built to convey complex 3-dimensional ideas to a wide audience. The coloured strings could be adjusted using weighted beads in the frame, meaning that different surface shapes could be modelled according to the mathematical equation at question, revealing a number of surfaces and shapes simultaneously. These frames and models were eventually produced in significant numbers and sold across the world. The one in the picture below was made by French company Fabre de Lagrange.
However, as ideas progressed, these models fell out of favour with the mathematical and scientific communities. After the First World War, the models were displayed in museums as curios where they found a new audience; avant grade artists. The string models represented not the abstract thinking of the original mathematical equations, but the ability to explore shape and form in a new way.
Among those who drew inspiration from these models were Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Hepworth modelled her sculpture on the mathematical models that she had seen at Oxford (see below).
As a member of the St Ives set, it was therefore no surprise to see Hepworth joined on the opposite wall by a set of sketches by Henry Moore.
Moore’s sketches drew inspiration from the string recreations of maths equations that he encountered on display at the Science Museum when he was a student in the 1920s. Moore immediately recognised the structural and artistic possibilities the models presented, noting that “it wasn’t the scientific study of these models but the ability to look through the strings as with a bird cage and to see one form within another which excited me”. The sketches on display in the exhibition eventually inspired several wooden string figures of his own.
There are similarities with some of the work I’ve been doing with zentangling interaction patterns, as you can see in my previous posts. I’ve also built 3 dimensional string models using the colours of strings to represent economic, legal and “other” aspects of each interaction, overlapping these to build complex patterns. Some of the questions I’ve been pondering are how models like these could help us explore complex patterns of interaction in the context of the social sciences? How could we visualise economic and legal aspects of interactions using colour to build up overarching patterns of interaction?
Stay tuned for more from the exhibition in Part 2….
I’ve recently started using ProCreate on the iPad to explore visual representations of econo-socio-legal interactions. My portfolio has always relied on the good, old-fashioned pen and paper approach, so it’s been really exciting trying out different technologies. I’ve been updating my portfolio and recreating the pieces digitally, which I’ll discuss in this post – with pictures!
I’ve found the app to be really responsive and a fun and easy way to get creative. The Apple Pencil can be a bit frustrating to use as it has that “drawing on glass” feel, and runs out of battery at crucial moments. But the feedback and pressure sensitivity works really well and makes drawing on the iPad a really enjoyable experience.
But on to the content! Here is a first attempt using Procreate at recreating the social fabric of interactions, weaving together three layers. Here, they are legal, economic, and “other” aspects of social interactions. This recalls the goals of Economic Sociology of Law-based approaches that want to recombine legal, economic and social phenomena, as well as recognising the importance of others aspects of interactions. In this, we can refer back to Max Weber’s four interaction ideal-types (instrumental, affective, belief-based, and a traditional); all of which fit into the “other” layer here.
In case there’s any doubt about the three layers, we can add some colour. For me, law is best represented in red, economics in yellow, and social otherness in green.
Then, adding in economic aspects of interactions…
And then, the social “other”, completing the woven fabric of interactions as seen through an econo-socio-legal lens…
The really cool thing about Procreate is that is can record everything you do on a particular canvas, and can reply the progress of the piece as a time lapse video. If you want to see the steps involved in creating this piece, it’s on my YouTube channel here.
I’ve also started redrawing representations of orthodox economics, economic sociology, and economic sociology of law. The idea is that the main stream, orthodox economic theory relies on assumptions and models that provide a straight jacket and that sociological and econo-socio-legal framers can moderate this and make the approach more flexible and more reflective of real life.
So, in the first image, neoclassical economics is drawn as straight lines, with little flexibility outside of the predetermined categories built into the models. In this sense, it fails to capture the complexity and unpredictability of real world interactions.
By incorporating more insights from sociology and from focusing on interactions rather than actors, we can capture the full extent of how complex, dynamic, and unpredictable real world interactions can be, and what this might look like…
All that’s needed now is a roadmap from the orthodox to the heterodox… a visualisation of which I’ll post as an update!
Clare's research blog 