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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Burlington, Vermont » Food Systems Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #395747

Research Project: Improving Vitality, Sustainability, and Value-Added Processing by Animal Food Systems in the New England States in a manner that Enhances Nutrition and Public Health

Location: Food Systems Research Unit

Title: From Polanyi to policy: A tool for measuring embeddedness and designing sustainable agricultural policies

Author
item AMENT, JOSEPH - University Of Leeds
item Morgan, Caitlin
item TRUBEK, AMY - University Of Vermont
item TOBIN, DANIEL - University Of Vermont
item MORSE, CHERYL - University Of Vermont
item MERRILL, SCOTT - University Of Vermont
item LIU, TUNG-LING - University Of Vermont

Submitted to: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/25/2022
Publication Date: 10/3/2022
Citation: Ament, J., Tobin, D., Merrill, S., Morgan, C.B., Morse, C., Liu, T., Trubek, A. 2022. From Polanyi to policy: A tool for measuring embeddedness and designing sustainable agricultural policies. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2022.983016.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2022.983016

Interpretive Summary: Agriculture is embedded in social systems as well as natural ones, but the ways we measure agricultural activities largely disregards social values beyond simple economic motivations. Most policy and action therefore target economic measures, such as price and production, without accounting for or supporting other influences on producers' and consumers' decision-making. This paper develops a tool for measuring "social embeddedness," or the degree to which actors are motivated by self-interest, market forces, or shared benefits. The tool will allow researchers and policymakers to better design interventions targeted at specific non-economic values and outcomes.

Technical Abstract: Agricultural systems are deeply enmeshed in complex social processes and institutions, something Polanyi called embeddedness. Designing policy for sustainable agricultural activity requires understanding and measuring such embeddedness. Due to the difficulty of measuring complex social dynamics, however, most policy is aimed at measurable metrics such as price and production. The focus on these metrics imports the rational actor conceptualization of economic activity and fails to incorporate the values, motivations, and socio-cultural components of agricultural decision-making. This paper develops a tool for measuring embeddedness called the Embeddedness Type Matrix (ETM). The tool utilizes survey responses to elucidate economic actors’ instrumentalism (decisions motivated by self-interest) and marketness (decisions motivated by market factors). Instrumentalism and marketness are considered together along perpendicular axes to determine the embeddedness quadrant of economic actors. The ETM allows researchers and policy-makers to better understand producers and consumers and design sustainability policies that are aligned with their values and motivations.