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

Roberta Sonnino

School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3WA, Wales, UK

Accepted in revised form May 22, 2006

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.

Key words: Embeddedness, Food relocalization, Local food, Relational space, Rural development, Tuscany

Dr. Roberta Sonnino holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Kansas. She is currently a Lecturer in
Environmental Policy and Planning in the School of City and Regional Planning of Cardiff University (UK), where
she is involved in research on sustainable agri-food systems and public food procurement. Related publications
include ‘‘Beyond the Divide: Rethinking Relations between Alternative and Conventional Food Networks in Europe’’
(2006) and ‘‘For a ‘Piece of Bread’? Interpreting Sustainable Development through Agritourism in Southern
Tuscany.’’ (2004)

Introduction: Embeddedness as a research problem

The concept of ‘‘embeddedness’’ has assumed something
of a ‘‘totemic status’’ in the agri-food literature (Morgan
et al.,

2006). Long and widely used in economic soci-

ology to emphasize the social dimension of economic
activities, ‘‘embeddedness’’ has recently been adopted as
a conceptual tool to theorize ‘‘alternative food networks’’
– specifically, to distinguish them from the conventional,
globalized food system on the basis of their ‘‘territori-
ality’’ (i.e., their potential to ‘‘relocalize’’ food).

Through its emphasis on the territorial dimension of

embeddedness, the agri-food literature has, more or less
explicitly, addressed one of the main problems inherent
in the conventional sociological theory on embedded-
ness: that is, its one-dimensional focus on the social
sphere, which has left culture and power largely unthe-
orized. However, agri-food studies have not succeeded in
overcoming another major limitation of the embedded-

ness approach: its lack of focus on

how an economic

system becomes embedded. For the most part, in fact, the
literature on agri-food has assumed the existence of a
polarization between dis-embedded (i.e., conventional
and globalized) and embedded (i.e., alternative and
localized) food systems. As Winter points out, ‘‘the
tendency in rural studies is to adopt the continuum
approach,’’ with at one end the dis-embedding forces of
the conventional agri-food system and, at the other,
embeddedness ‘‘as a euphemism for market relations
based on close social and inter-personal interactions and
relations of loyalty’’ (2003a: 25). Under this approach,
embeddedness

becomes

a

‘‘unique,

distinguishing,

almost magical’’ attribute of alternative food strategies
(Hinrichs, 2000: 297).

As the literature is increasingly making clear, this kind

of binary thinking does not reflect the current reality of
the agri-food sector, where boundaries between ‘‘alter-
native’’ and ‘‘conventional’’ food systems are becoming

Agriculture and Human Values (2007) 24:61–74

Ó Springer 2006

DOI 10.1007/s10460-006-9036-y

increasingly blurred (Morgan et al.,

2006; Sonnino and

Marsden, 2006a). Furthermore, if pushed to the extreme,
the opposition between ‘‘embedded’’ and ‘‘dis-embed-
ded’’ food systems produces a static categorization of
different food cultures. In this perspective, the more
‘‘embedded’’ food systems of countries such as Italy and
France are misrepresented as forever rooted in a partic-
ular time and space. Conversely, countries like the US
and the UK are condemned to be forever the homes
of

‘‘placeless

foodscapes’’ (Morgan

et al.,

2006),

fundamentally incapable of producing truly ‘‘embedded’’
agri-food cultures. By leaving no room for agency and
innovation, this type of categorization precludes an
understanding of the processes through which all food
cultures persist through time while also undergoing
continuous change.

To help develop a more critical perspective on the real

meanings and implications of embeddedness in the
context of food, this paper is based on an empirical
analysis of the

process through which an emerging food

economy becomes embedded. Specifically, the paper
asks: What does territorial embeddedness actually mean
in the context of food? In what exactly are economic
decisions and transactions embedded? How does this
process unfold, and why?

To address these issues, the paper first critically ana-

lyzes the concept of embeddedness as this has been
conceptualized in economic sociology and, more recently,
applied to the analysis of agri-food systems. After high-
lighting the need for research that takes into consideration
the dynamics of embedding forces and strategies and their
effects on the territoriality of food chains, the paper
focuses on an emerging food network (saffron) in
southern Tuscany. Based on research data collected dur-
ing 2004 and 2005,

1

the analysis shows that territorial

embeddedness is created and re-created by participants
in the saffron economy as a response to specific market
requirements. The adoption of a constructivist approach
reveals that, in this context, embeddedness assumes
simultaneously a social, temporal, and spatial dimension.
In fact, to provide their product with a differentiated
‘‘local’’ identity that positions it in a very competitive
food market, members of the saffron network have to
establish social relationships that are linked to new cul-
tural values, re-invented traditions, and re-defined spaces.

As it will be argued in the conclusion, understanding

how a food system becomes embedded has two major
theoretical and empirical implications. On the one
hand, it suggests a more holistic approach that takes into
consideration the tensions inherent in the process of
embedding and also its ramifications outside of the
social realm. On the other hand, a focus on such tensions
uncovers a complex interplay between embedding and
dis-embedding forces that significantly complicates
the notion of food ‘‘re-localization.’’ In addition to

questioning the efficacy and validity of prevailing
theorizations of different food systems, this also raises
empirical questions about the sustainability of local food
networks and their real and potential contributions to
rural development.

2

The concept of ‘‘embeddedness’’ in economic
sociology: A critical review

The concept of ‘‘embeddedness’’ is a defining feature of
economic sociology. In fact, its fundamental assumption –
that social relations shape economic behavior and activ-
ities – has provided social scientists with a very useful
platform for questioning the individualistic analyses of
neoclassical economics (Portes and Sensenbrenner,

1993;

Swedberg, 1991) and for elaborating an alternative
approach to the study of the economy. In this respect, as
Barber argues, the history of the concept of embedded-
ness can be seen as one long struggle to overcome and
correct the common tendency among economists to the
‘‘absolutization of the market’’ (1995: 2).

Despite widespread agreement on the merit of

‘‘embeddedness’’ in terms of opening a significant space
for social structures in the analysis of economic life, this
concept has been the focus of scholarly critiques at least
since the mid-1980s, when, in a well-known article,
Granovetter (

1985) began to refine Polanyi’s idea that

economic action is embedded in social relations. In open
opposition to the utilitarian view of rational and self-
interested economic behavior affected minimally by so-
cial relations, Granovetter stated that ‘‘most behavior is
closely embedded in networks of interpersonal relations’’
(1985: 504). Throughout the 1990s, social scientists
highlighted two major merits of Granovetter’s interpre-
tation of the notion of embeddedness: its sharp critique of
‘‘institutional economics’’ (Barber, 1995; Portes and
Sensenbrenner, 1993; Sayer, 2001; Swedberg, 1991;
Uzzi, 1997) and its argument for the use of networks in
the analysis of the economy (Barber, 1995; Portes and
Sensenbrenner, 1993) – an approach that, as Swedberg
(1991) states, can enhance our understanding of the role
of trust in the economy and of the ‘‘real’’ functioning of
economic institutions.

However, for the most part the literature tends to

emphasize the limitations of Granovetter’s argument and,
more generally, of the embeddedness approach. It is
widely believed that the embeddedness theory is funda-
mentally vague and indefinite (Montgomery,

1998: 93),

as it lacks its own concrete account of how social rela-
tions affect economic exchange (Uzzi, 1997: 35).

3

As

Krippner states, ‘‘efforts to ‘embed’ the market by net-
work theorists have involved such high levels of
abstraction that, paradoxically, social content is distilled
away from the market construct’’ (2001: 792). This,

62

Roberta Sonnino

Krippner concludes, is producing an unwarranted tension
between ‘‘marketless conceptions of the social’’ and
‘‘conceptions of the economy in which every social trace
is suppressed’’ (2001: 801–802). Barber (1995), for his
part, argues that Granovetter’s lack of specification of the
several different social and cultural structures that make
up the larger social system makes it impossible for
embeddedness theory to account for the alternative
models of economic behaviors (such as the redistributive
and reciprocity) that exist alongside market behaviors in
modern society.

Social scientists have provided a number of theoretical

and methodological suggestions to overcome the limita-
tions of the embeddedness approach. Lie (

1997), for

example, has proposed to integrate embeddedness with a
‘‘politics and market’’ approach to advance theory on
power and macro-sociological foundations. Others have
more directly raised the question of how social values
shape economic action (Koponen, 2002). Uzzi (1996 and
1997), in particular, has concentrated on the specific
dimensions of embedded relationships and on the
mechanisms by which they influence economic action
(e.g., a firm’s ability to obtain loans and to lower the
costs of borrowing) (Uzzi, 1999). Similarly, in attempting
to meet ‘‘the positivistic goals of predictive improvement
and theoretical accumulation,’’ Portes and Sensenbrenner
have identified an analytical need to specify how social
structure ‘‘constrains, supports, or derails’’ individual
goal-seeking behavior (1993: 1321). Using examples
from the immigration literature, they utilize the concept
of ‘‘social capital’’ to identify the mechanisms through
which social structures affect economic action and to
discuss their consequences.

In general, however, these studies continue to rely

upon an approach in which ‘‘everything is social struc-
ture, groups, and institutions rather than systems of
symbols, meaning or customs’’ (Wilk,

1996: 8). In other

words, as several authors have pointed out, embedded-
ness theory has left power and culture largely untheor-
ized (Barber, 1995; Lie, 1997; Wilk, 1996). Sayer has
convincingly explained the risks implicit in perpetuating
an approach that neglects cultural variations in markets
and that elides power. The social relations in which
economic processes are embedded, Sayer (1997) points
out, have a cultural content in terms of meanings and
representations. The tendency to neglect the analysis of
this cultural context can ‘‘inadvertently produce an
overly benign view of economic relations and processes’’
(Sayer, 2001: 698), as embeddedness can easily be taken
to mean that practices hitherto seen as governed purely
by narrow self-interest are actually embedded in relations
of trust. In reality, Sayer states, ‘‘the social and cultural
embedding of relations between firms usually depends
not so much on trust per se, but on overlaps in their self-
interest’’ (2001: 698–699). Furthermore, Sayer explains,

a too positive view of economic relations tends to
downplay ‘‘the system imperatives that abstract political
economy has always emphasized’’ (2001: 700). In other
words, it leads to neglect the fact that, in advanced
economies, ‘‘division of labour, markets, money and
capital are also disembedding forces’’ (1997: 19) and
that, in this context, ‘‘even the most embedded economic
relations may not manage to survive’’ (2001: 700).

In sum, the conventional sociological theory on

embeddedness has two main limitations. On the one
hand, it does not take into adequate consideration the
process through which an economic system becomes
embedded. By leaving little or no room for the analysis
of embedding strategies, this approach fails to identify
the tensions and tradeoffs inherent in the dynamics of
embeddedness. On the other hand, embeddedness theory
limits itself to explain the social dimension of an eco-
nomic system, neglecting other factors (such as culture,
power, and geography) that may also affect and shape
economic transactions.

The agri-food literature provides an ideal context to

attempt to overcome these limitations. In fact, its
increasingly critical focus on the meaning of food relo-
calization has added a new and multifaceted dimension
to the analysis of embeddedness: territoriality – or, in
simple terms, the ecological and cultural relationships
that a food system has with its territorial context.

Territoriality and embeddedness in agri-food studies

In an effort to conceptualize recent changes in the food
sector, some authors have shifted from a framework of
‘‘post-productivism,’’ which emerged from agrarian
political economy, to the notion of embeddedness
(Winter,

2003b: 507). Used by both producers and con-

sumers mostly to describe the quality ‘‘turn’’ away from
the global agri-food complex, embeddedness in the
context of food has often been interpreted in terms of
territoriality

(Goodman,

2004).

Using

Protective

Denomination of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geo-
graphical Indication (PGI) designations

4

as illustrations

of an ‘‘alternative geography of food’’ in Europe, for
example, Parrott et al. (2002) distinguish between the
food cultures of the ‘‘north,’’ which are mostly oriented
to economic efficiency, and those of the ‘‘south,’’ in
which food qualities are associated with territorial, social,
and cultural embeddedness. Similarly, for Barham (2003)
embeddedness is inherent in label of origins systems. As
she explains, ‘‘by insisting upon a strong link in pro-
duction to the ecology and culture of specific places,’’
such systems ‘‘re-embed a product in the natural pro-
cesses and social context of its territory’’ (2003: 130).

The emphasis on the territorial embeddedness (or lack

of) of different food systems has led several researchers

Embeddedness in action

63

to adopt a more holistic approach to embeddedness,
which embraces not just the social dimension of food
production and consumption activities, but also their
wider ecological and cultural context. Sage’s (

2003)

study of an alternative food network in South West Ire-
land, for example, shows how the notion of ‘‘good food’’
developed by members of this network embraces
simultaneously the embodied properties of the food (i.e.,
its sensual attributes), its socially embedded features
(defined by its scale of production and its localized dis-
tribution through short supply chains), and its ecologi-
cally embedded character (established by its locality of
origin, the naturalness of its raw materials, and its
methods of production). In their analysis of quality
cheese production in Wales, Murdoch et al. argue that
‘‘the notion of embeddedness can ... be extended to
include natural, as well as social, relations’’ and show
that, in the context of Welsh quality cheese, embedding
involves ‘‘a careful assembling of domestic, public, civic,
and ecological qualities’’ (2000: 116). Finally, Winter
(2003a) calls for attention to the cultural dimension of
embeddedness by stating that, in the context of food
systems, embeddedness is not just a question of ‘‘trust’’;
it is also a question of meaning – the meaning held by
trust relations between producers and consumers.

Despite these theoretical efforts to expand the concept

of embeddedness, the territorial embeddedness of alter-
native food systems has mostly been assumed, rather
than critically and empirically analyzed. This tendency
has often produced a too simplistic classification based
on an opposition between localized (i.e., alternative and
embedded) and globalized (i.e., conventional and dis-
embedded) food systems. Holloway and Kneafsey, for
example, have conceptualized the quality ‘‘turn’’ in the
food sector as ‘‘a form of resistance to the dis-embedding
forces of globalization’’ (

2004: 267) based on the

development of niche food products that appeal to con-
sumers not in terms of price competitiveness, but on the
basis of their ecological, moral, and aesthetic qualities.
Such qualities, they continue, ‘‘are in turn embedded
within producer-consumer relationships in which notions
of trust, regard, authenticity and ‘connectedness’ are
given prominence’’ (2004: 267).

In reality, recent literature shows that embeddedness is

not an inherent and fixed characteristic of some (i.e.,
local) food systems. As Murdoch et al. (

2000) explain,

the continued efforts made by producers and manufac-
turers to outflank nature in the food production process
are part of a general attempt to incorporate the food
system in the globalization of commodity production.
However, as they point out, these global processes are
mediated, when not refracted, by regional and local
specificities, ‘‘in part because the various mixtures be-
tween the organic and inorganic are harder to detach

from space and place’’ (Murdoch et al., 2000: 110). It
follows, then, that ‘‘contemporary food chains are not as
dis-embedded as a superficial reading of the globalization
literature might indicate’’ (Murdoch et al., 2000: 110).
On the other hand, the re-establishment of biological (as
opposed to industrial) processes within food chains,
associated with efforts to resist the outflanking of nature,
should not be taken to imply total embeddedness. Indeed,
the analysis of Welsh quality cheese shows that, on the
one hand, since ‘‘trust in food...is clearly linked to some
degree of natural and local embeddedness’’ (Murdoch
et al., 2000: 119), the ecological and spatial provenance
of the food must be easily discernible. On the other hand,
however, successful quality production requires that food
becomes accessible to more than just a narrow range of
localized consumers. As Murdoch et al. conclude, ‘‘this
forces quality food chains to combine embeddedness and
dis-embeddedness

in

rather

complicated

ways’’

(2000: 119).

Moreover, some authors show that there is now a

tendency in both the conventional and the alternative
sector to create products that, at one level, are rooted in a
specific territorial context and, at another level, hold the
potential to travel to distant markets (see, for example,
Murdoch and Miele,

1999). This is creating quite a

peculiar form of competition between conventional and
alternative food systems that Kirwan (2004) has
explained in terms of ‘‘appropriation.’’ According to
Kirwan, embeddedness can be utilized to create alterna-
tive systems that incorporate social, environmental, and
health issues into the production and consumption of
food or to valorize local assets and provide marginal
areas with a comparative advantage. However, embedd-
edness can also be ‘‘appropriated’’ by actors operating at
the global level to maximize their commercial profit by
accessing niche markets.

These reflections are raising the need for research

that investigates different qualities and degrees of
embeddedness (Winter,

2003a). In other words, to

better understand differences amongst food systems,
there is a perceived need to more critically and
empirically

assess

the

nature

of

their

territorial

embeddedness. As Sonnino and Marsden (2006a) have
recently argued, this requires integrating the analysis of
the wider institutional and governance system in which
food networks carve and maintain their space (i.e., the
‘‘vertical’’ dimension of embeddedness) with a con-
sideration of local conditions and agency (i.e., the
‘‘horizontal’’ dimension of embeddedness). In fact, the
various actors in the food chain are not passive
recipients of policies and market signals (Winter,
2003b). They are social actors who actively create new
platforms of action and actor-space through new dis-
courses of competition and trust, negotiation and

64

Roberta Sonnino

quality (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006a). Such discourses
are an important aspect of the territorial embeddedness
of food. In the South West of England, for example,
alternative food networks emerge through a dynamic
process of incorporation and manipulation of space that
is strictly tied to the development of a bioregionalist
discourse. The analysis shows that bioregionalist norms
and conventions ground alternative food networks
within a revised symbiosis of nature, animals, and ac-
tors that implies sets of re-constituted (‘‘re-localized’’)
spatial relations (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006b). In
other words, plants (e.g., grass) and animals (especially
beef and dairy cow breeds) are characterized by spa-
tially unique qualities only attainable from the spaces
governed by the networks themselves. In this context,
then, the bioregionalist discourse becomes a key
dynamic of ‘‘boundary maintenance’’ for these net-
works – or, in other terms, a key aspect of their ter-
ritorial embeddedness, which then becomes formalized
through the gaining of PDO status or the creation of
producers’ own local brands.

In short, there is an analytical need to adopt an actor-

oriented approach that focuses on the role played by
socially-constructed notions of quality and locality in the
emergence and development of food networks and in the
distribution of power within and between them (see
Murdoch et al.,

2000). Failure to use this kind of

approach may underestimate the politics of the local
(DuPuis and Goodman, 2005; Hinrichs, 2003), with both
theoretical and practical consequences. In theory, a lack
of focus on local agency and strategies would preclude
an understanding of how relations of culture and power
shape territorial embeddedness (and dis-embeddedness).
In practice, it would lead to proposed solutions, ‘‘based
on alternative standards of purity and perfection,’’ which
are ‘‘vulnerable to corporate cooptation’’ (DuPuis and
Goodman, 2005: 360) – rather than to the design and
implementation of the kind of forms of political and
institutional intervention needed to sustain a fragile
‘‘local.’’

Embeddedness in action: The localization of saffron
in southern Tuscany

The history of saffron in southern Tuscany began in
Campagnatico, a small medieval town located in the
hilly interior of the so-called

Maremma region – an

area of roughly 5,000 square kilometers that politically
identifies with the province of Grosseto. From an
agricultural standpoint, Campagnatico shares with the
rest of the area a history of land reform and rural
exodus (Sonnino, 2004). Briefly, from the Middle Ages

to the early 1950s the Maremma countryside was
shaped by the mezzadria, a sharecropping system based
on a contractual relationship between a cultivator and
an urban landowner on the principle of dividing both
expenses and products half-and-half. In providing
subsistence by a share of crop, instead of through a
wage, the mezzadria favored the development of mul-
tiple-crop farming. In the early 1950s, faced with
widespread rural upheaval for the reform of agrarian
contracts, the Italian government announced a large-
scale land reform, through which almost 87,000 ha of
Maremma farmland were expropriated with indemnity
and redistributed among sharecroppers and wage-
laborers. According to Pratt (1994), the reform quickly
succeeded

in

enhancing

agricultural

productivity.

However, the size of farms remained too small for
modern forms of mechanization and for employing the
labor available, and this led to the search for off-farm
employment and a significant population decline (Pratt,
1994). Between 1951 and 1998, Campagnatico lost
almost 25% of its population, which today comprises
less than 2,500 people.

In the Maremma, as elsewhere in Tuscany, this out-

migration left behind a large number of rural buildings,
which during the 1970s and 1980s were purchased by
urban people attracted by the region’s ‘‘post-produc-
tivist’’ countryside.

5

Anna, a former accountant from

Grosseto, belongs to this new generation of urban
settlers. After retiring from her job at the age of 55,
she purchased a very small farm (5.5 ha) in Campa-
gnatico to fulfill her dream of ‘‘a house in the coun-
tryside, with olive trees and a vineyard.’’ In 2002 Anna
heard that the owner of Campagnatico’s oldest estate
had discovered some ancient Roman ruins in his
property and that these included some tubs once used
to dye wool. These tubs contained traces of yellow, a
color, Anna was told, which could only be obtained
from saffron. Intrigued by this discovery, she decided
to experiment with the cultivation of saffron on
100 square meters of land and purchased some bulbs in
Abruzzo, the region most widely known in Italy for its
production of saffron. The experiment was hard but
successful:

The wonderful flowers ... bloom for two weeks and
they must be picked up early in the morning, before
they open up. You put them in a basket ... and then on a
table indoor, covered with a cloth, and then using your
hands, and your hands only, you pick the three red
pistils up and dry them. The first time ... I used charcoal
at a certain temperature, all things that I have learned by
reading books. I obtained a few packages of saffron and
I said ‘I must let people know that saffron can grow in
the Maremma.

Embeddedness in action

65

Anna and the Campagnatico conference: Inventing
a tradition

From that time on, Anna worked to establish and
strengthen what she saw as ‘‘a link amongst the avail-
ability of land, history, legends, and a few witnesses.’’
The latter were two Campagnatico men in their early 80s
who recalled that in the 1920s saffron was cultivated in
the area as a spice. Perceived in terms of a ‘‘re-intro-
duction of a lost product,’’ this effort had for her ‘‘more
than just an economic value.’’ On this ground, she
decided to involve the local institutions and convinced
the Mayor of Campagnatico to organize a conference in
town. Held in February 2003, the conference reunited
five speakers who covered various topics related to the
cultivation of saffron: from its organic method of pro-
duction to the experience of San Gimignano, the first site
in Tuscany to obtain a Protected Designation of Origin
(PDO) designation for its saffron; from the uses of saf-
fron in alternative medicine and cuisine to the market
available for the spice.

It is in the context of this conference that a discourse

and a network centered upon saffron began to take shape.
Through the leaflet distributed to the participants, Anna
and the Mayor of Campagnatico began the process of
localizing saffron. As a spice ‘‘deeply rooted in our
gastronomic tradition since the Middle Ages,’’ the leaflet
states, saffron has both ‘‘economic and cultural mean-
ings’’ and it holds a significant development potential. To
display this potential, the leaflet encourages individual
producers ‘‘to promote ... a specialized and territorially
‘concentrated’ production and a strong cooperation with
Maremma’s local institutions – especially the township
of Campagnatico.’’ The message was well received by
the producers who attended the conference, so much so
that two months after the event twenty farmers formed
the

Associazione Crocus Maremma.

6

For the Mayor, the conference created ‘‘a connection

between the town and saffron in people’s mind’’ that car-
ries a multiplicity of meanings for Campagnatico. As a
product linked to the local territory and its history, the
Mayor explained, saffron can reinforce the image of other
typical products, especially wine, while also strengthening
the identity of a town that wants to attract rural tourists and
their money. For the producers, on the other hand,
becoming involved in the cultivation of saffron is a way of
economically distancing themselves from the conven-
tional agricultural system. As one farmer explained:

We can no longer support our families through con-
ventional cultivations, as it used to be for my father and
grandfather. The price of wheat is the same now as it
was twenty years ago. ... We are all farmers in search of
something new to have a new economic outlet but also
to get together again, as it used to be.

Creating markets: The development of the saffron
network

From an economic standpoint, the cultivation of saffron
is an ideal diversification strategy for small and medium-
sized farms. To cultivate 100 square meters of farmland,
farmers need to invest just

e300 to buy the bulbs. This

small land area produces 100 grams of saffron, which is
sold at a price of

e25 or e30 per gram, depending on

whether or not the farm is fully organic. Drying the
pistils comes at no cost for the producers, since the
township of Campagnatico has made a fully equipped
kitchen available to them to perform this operation. The
only production cost relates to the packaging, which
absorbs just

e5 for every 100 grams of saffron produced.

In practice, this means that saffron for the Maremma
producers has a net profit of

e20–e25 per gram.

However, the marketing of saffron is a complicated

issue. In fact, saffron involves an entirely artisanal and
very labor-intensive production process, and this poses
significant limits to the total amount of spice an indi-
vidual farm can produce. To enter the market, producers
must join forces and develop relationships of coopera-
tion. One farmer explained:

We want to work together to become stronger, we have
realized that we cannot make it individually on our
own. Anna with that conference started something so
big ... people who have some love for our land and a
desire to get together and to do something important
have not missed the opportunity she has created.

Another one stated: ‘‘Regardless of politics and ideology,
we share something in common, the love for our land, so
we have always remained united, we share information
with each other.’’

Despite the development of strong collaborative rela-

tionships, when in 2004 a restaurant from Rome
expressed its interest in purchasing 1 kg of saffron a year,
the Association was not yet in the position to meet this
request. For the first two years, the limited amount of
saffron produced, combined with a desire to ‘‘localize’’
the product, induced the Association to aim at ‘‘quality’’
market outlets throughout the Maremma. In December
2003, after their first harvest, saffron producers organized
a Market Show in Campagnatico. On that occasion, Anna
convinced the two restaurants and the bar that were open
in town to prepare all saffron-based recipes, including
chocolate, ice cream, and yoghurt, and made a deal to
begin selling saffron in the town’s wine store. After this
event, a number of other promotional/marketing activi-
ties were organized. In addition to advertising their
product on local TV channels, the Association supplied
saffron for a Slow Food dinner organized by a restaurant
in a nearby town and took a stand at the Fiera del
Madonnino, an old agricultural fair that takes place every

66

Roberta Sonnino

year in Grosseto. While creating a market for the
Maremma producers, these initiatives also began to
connect the saffron network to the regional institutional
apparatus. As the Mayor stated, to raise the attention and
interest of regional authorities, who represent ‘‘the
institutional level that truly has the potential to develop
the product,’’ he has established ‘‘very informal’’ con-
tacts with the province and the Chamber of Commerce.
His strategy has produced interesting results, as in 2004
the Provincial Agricultural Councilor decided to include
saffron in the official list of Maremma’s typical products.

Saffron producers also have worked individually to

find market outlets for their new product. One farmer, for
example, is selling some of her saffron to an ice cream
shop in Grosseto and is using the rest to make flavored
olive oil for agritourists. The most interesting marketing
initiative in this context comes from Tiziana and Grazi-
ano, two young sheep farmers. The strategy they have
utilized to sell their product is a successful story of net-
working, entrepreneurship, cooperativism, and propensity
to innovate that speaks about not just saffron per se, but
also about its potential role in the rural development of the
area as a whole. After introducing saffron on their farm
driven by a desire ‘‘to start something new and emphasize
quality,’’ Tiziana and Graziano heard that the spice was
used in the Siena area to make cheese and thought that the
idea could be transferred to the Maremma. Thus, they
decided to approach the director and the production
manager of a nearby cooperative creamery of which they
had long been members. Over the last ten years, this
cooperative, specializing in the production of PDO Tus-
can pecorino cheese, has chosen to diversify its supply
through new cheeses flavored with items such as truffle,
chili peppers, and nut leaves pecorino. Thanks to the
‘‘great relationship’’ developed with the two farmers over
the years, the Cooperative decided to experiment with a
saffron-flavored cheese. On the basis of the experience
gained from dealing with other alternative cheeses, they
came up with a recipe of 100 saffron pistils per 10 liters of
milk (that implies the use of 1 gram of saffron to make
5–6 kilos of cheese) and invented a production process
for what they decided to call

giallerino cheese. As the

production manager of the cooperative explained:

Basically Tiziana brings here the pistils, I break them, I
grind them as much as I can and I use pasteurized
‘‘mixed’’ milk cheese, which has a gentler flavor
compared to pure ewes’ milk and can therefore better
emphasize the smell and taste of saffron. After the
pistils release their yellow color, I put the milk in a
warm container and process it.

The first 15 small wheels of giallerino cheese produced
by the Cooperative were sold in their store and at various
food festivals. Following further requests from their
customers, they decided to repeat the experiment three or

four times, selling a total of 100 small wheels of cheese.
The Cooperative is under no illusion that their effort has
been sufficient to create a market for the new cheese. As
the production manager stated, ‘‘it takes time, because
you need a peculiar clientele that appreciate that kind of
product and is willing to spend money for it.’’ However,
their initiative has already created a demand for 10–12
wheels of giallerino cheese per week in their store alone.

Growing markets and the politics of contested
cooperation

For the Association, this expanding market is rapidly
raising the need to increase production to reach an ideal
target of a few kilos of saffron. This increase would come
at no extra start-up costs for producers, as the saffron
bulbs reproduce themselves. If removed from the soil in
July and cleaned, a bulb in fact produces another two or
three. However, if not carefully planned and managed, an
expansion in the amount of farmland cultivated with
saffron may significantly raise the labor costs, thereby
undermining the profitability of this business for farmers.
For this reason, the Association has decided to increase
the number of producer-members, rather than just aiming
to increase the total amount of saffron produced, and in
April 2004 fifteen new members joined the Association.
Although convenient in marketing terms, the arrival of
new producer-members is posing new challenges to the
core members of the saffron network, who now fear that
they may lose control over the supply chain – hence, the
sense of power and autonomy that their involvement with
saffron has so far provided. According to one farmer, an
excessive increase in the number of producers and in the
total amount of saffron produced could favor the
involvement of large retailers in the marketing of their
saffron. As she explained, ‘‘if I wanted to let others
establish the price for my product, I would have stayed in
the wheat business!’’ Similarly, another producer identi-
fied the possibility ‘‘that the Association becomes too
big’’ as the biggest potential threat to the sustainability of
the saffron network.

During the second half of 2004 the Association had to

confront some structural problems. The harvest was not
satisfactory for several producers, who then decided to
start purchasing their bulbs individually, rather than
through the Association. In addition to forcing all other
producers to purchase the bulbs on their own and at
prices significantly higher than those collectively nego-
tiated the previous year, this has also eliminated one of
the main functions of the Association itself – ‘‘one in
which I really believed,’’ Anna remarked. Others have
chosen to withdraw from the saffron business altogether.
Although they were immediately replaced by new pro-
ducers, this change in membership is making it difficult
for the Association to do the planning necessary to

Embeddedness in action

67

increase its overall production. In fact, new members are
often cautious and tend to experiment with the cultiva-
tion of saffron for one or two years before making a long-
term commitment.

The re-structuring of the Association has affected also

the spatial distribution of the network. Most producers are
now concentrated around the town of Manciano, where a
strong support from the local institutions is making the
saffron business an especially rewarding one. At the same
time, the Campagnatico administration has begun to
withdraw some of its support. When, in November 2004,
the Association planned its annual show, it received from
the township as little as

e250 as a contribution to its

overall expenses and no logistic support. Predictably,
Anna now has to deal with emerging pressures from the
Manciano producers to remove the name of Campagna-
tico from the logo of the Association. In responding to
such pressures, Anna continues to protect the temporal
and spatial boundaries of the network:

When they ask: ‘How are we going to explain that we
cultivate saffron in Manciano?,’ I say: ‘Come on guys,
the name of Campagnatico is a crucial aspect that is
important to you as well, because we must have a place
of birth.’ ... Even though saffron is now produced
throughout the Maremma, the idea came from here. ...
We can’t move away from Campagnatico because this
is where the history of saffron is. ... There is the history,
the ruins and the memories of those two witnesses, all
precious things that we cannot abandon.

In other respects, the year 2004 was a positive one for the
saffron network. Despite the scarce involvement of the
township of Campagnatico, the annual show was spon-
sored for the first time by the Grosseto Chamber of Com-
merce, Provincial Administration and City and by the
Bank of the Maremma (with roughly

e3,000). Further-

more, even though the Association managed to produce
just 500 grams of saffron, it significantly expanded its local
market by involving a number of established restaurants
and local food stores in the marketing of the product.

On the other hand, however, the Association’s attempt

to establish a commercial relationship with two spice
wholesalers failed, since the amount produced was not
sufficient to access that kind of market. For this reason,
the network has new development plans. First and fore-
most, they are planning to turn the Association into a
consortium, as this will provide an opportunity to col-
lectively organize the marketing of saffron and to more
formally involve the local institutions. To this end, the
Association is setting up new informal rules about its
membership, trying to select only ‘‘real,’’ as opposed to
‘‘hobby,’’ farmers (i.e., to review the number of members
every year on the basis of the total amount of saffron they
manage to produce). In the long-term, the network aims
to better establish itself economically, by also marketing

the saffron bulbs once they ‘‘have become truly
Maremman,’’ as Anna contends, and historically, through
initiatives such as the production of a recipe book and a
DVD that tell the story of where, how, and when a
product becomes local.

In short, the story of the saffron network in southern

Tuscany is essentially about reaching and maintaining a
balance between quantity and quality and between col-
lective needs and individual wants. As the director of a
local supermarket who purchases saffron from the
Association simply stated: ‘‘Saffron is a good quality
ingredient ... it can be linked to the territory; it has a
value added ... [If] you work hard you can create a small
market that works.’’

Embedding saffron in the local: An analysis

During its early stages, the development of saffron in the
Maremma was based on tight interpersonal relations
among producers. Through formal and informal gather-
ings, these constantly met to collectively discuss and
share ideas and problems, to plan promotional activities,
and to make decisions about prices. In this respect, one
can easily argue that the emerging saffron economy was
socially embedded.

Significantly, a focus on local agency shows that the

social dimension of the saffron network was created (or,
one may even say, instrumentalized) as a

response to a

basic market requirement. In fact, given the labor-inten-
siveness of the saffron production process, no farmer in
the Maremma could produce enough to access the market
individually. Forced to pool their production, farmers
immediately set their economic activities within a dis-
course that emphasized the value of ‘‘cooperation.’’ This
emerged clearly in the narrative of Rossella, one of the
core members of the saffron network. In telling the story
of her involvement with the new product, she recalled:

I have a friend from Sardinia, and she used to tell me
stories about a small town in the island where they all
cultivate saffron together, the whole town! It seemed
such a wonderful thing to me. ... The image of that
small town where people pick the saffron flowers up all
together... Through the Associazione, we have created
something that connects us, even though we are not a
town.

For the saffron producers, this commitment to coopera-
tion is also a way of detaching themselves from con-
ventional agriculture. As Pratt (

1994: 72) explains, even

though the Maremma’s land reform consolidated the
farm as a production unit, for decades rural households
remained linked, both economically and socially. In
addition to exchanging labor and instruments and
engaging in joint commercial transactions, the family

68

Roberta Sonnino

farms maintained strong social relationships through
mutual visiting, inter-marriages, and collective partici-
pation in cycles of gift-giving and festivity. Today, by
re-discovering the traditional value of cooperation,
saffron producers set themselves in opposition to the
modern,

individualistic

dynamics

of

conventional

agriculture – an opposition that they often frame in terms
of returning to ‘‘how things used to be.’’

In this way, producers construct a differentiated iden-

tity for their network, which is grounded also in another
important value – the special connection with the land
that members of the network share. The analysis shows
that saffron is constructed as a product perfectly suited to
Maremma’s territory, as the Mayor of Campagnatico
pointed out, but also to its soil. One producer stated:
‘‘Both the climate and the soil are perfect here. For every
bulb I planted last year, I have obtained three or four new
ones this year. ... Saffron is clearly something related to
my territory.’’ In this context, saffron comes to symbolize
the network’s innovative approach to farming, the ‘‘love
for the land’’ shared by its members, and their desire to
support and engage in productive activities that valorize
and respect the ‘‘natural’’ conditions of the territory.

In short, the saffron case study shows that, far from

being a ‘‘given’’ condition, social embeddedness is cre-
ated through a complex process of mobilization of values
and meanings that cement the converging interests of
different stakeholders around a renewed identity and
sense of community. In the case of saffron, this identity is
crucial not just to establish the boundaries of the net-
work, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to protect
them. As described above, the commercial need to
increase production is threatening the sustainability of
the saffron network. Given the labor-intensiveness of the
production process, the core producer-members of
the network have decided to respond to the needs of the
market by enlarging the Association, rather than their
saffron fields. This initiative has created serious territorial
tensions within the network. Saffron producers are now
mostly concentrated around the town of Manciano. As
the spatial boundaries of the network shift away from
Campagnatico, the Mayor is withdrawing his institu-
tional support. Some producers, as previously described,
want to remove the name of Campagnatico from the logo
of the Associazione, a move that, as Anna repeatedly
emphasizes, would de-value the product by disconnect-
ing it from its history – or, we might say, from its
invented typicality and traditionality.

In this kind of scenario, Anna, supported by her

closest producer-allies, is attempting to regain control
through initiatives that aim to re-configure the network,
both internally and externally. Internally, she is working
to strengthen the identity of the network by re-empha-
sizing the core values on which this is grounded. Mem-
bership in the Association will now be restricted to what

she calls ‘‘real’’ (as opposed to ‘‘hobby’’) farmers – in
other words, to those who demonstrate a strong
commitment to the land and to the value of cooperation.
Ideally, this strategy will give Anna the power to
re-balance the territorial distribution of the network and
to strengthen its social cohesion. In fact, if successful in
reasserting the values of the network, Anna could, on the
one hand, start selecting only ‘‘real’’ farmers from
specific areas and, on the other hand, gain the authority to
exclude those producers who pursue only their personal
interests and create internal tensions, as it was the case,
for example, with the farmers who took the initiative to
purchase bulbs individually.

Externally, Anna is also taking initiatives to fortify

the boundaries of the network. As described earlier, she
is now planning to transform the Association into a
consortium. For her, this is not just a means to improve
the marketing of the product. As she explains, the
establishment of a consortium would involve a number
of local and regional institutions (e.g., the municipality
of Campagnatico, the City of Grosseto, the Province of
Grosseto and the Grosseto Chamber of Commerce)
that, all together, can provide the saffron economy with
the more formal organizational structure needed to
survive.

The analysis of the dynamics and tensions that

characterize the development of the saffron economy
and of the responses provided by the core members of
the network shows that, in the context of food, the
process of embedding affects more than just the social
sphere. In fact, for the saffron producers, entering the
market is not just a matter of achieving a balance in
terms of quantity produced. It is also, and most
importantly, a matter of differentiating their product in
terms of quality. In general, as Ilbery et al. (

2005) ar-

gue, creating a difference in ‘‘quality’’ between specific
products and mass-produced products and between
geographical anonymity and territorial specificity is
crucial to the process of reconnection that is shaping a
new geography of food and a broader European rural
policy agenda.

The configuration of the saffron market in Italy is a

case in point. Every year, Italy imports roughly 10 tons
of saffron from countries such as Morocco, Iran, India,
and Spain. Most of this product, which satisfies about
80% of the Italian demand, is not pure saffron. It is a
surrogate obtained by adding safflower powder (Fra-
scarelli,

2004) or by processing a type of thistle

(Agricolturaoggi, 2004; Agrifoodweb, 2005). This kind
of product is sold at a price that is ten times lower than
that of the Italian saffron – a disparity that makes it
impossible for national producers to compete with for-
eign imports. The scattered groups of saffron producers
existing in Italy (particularly in the regions of Sardinia,
Abruzzi, and Umbria) must compete mostly with one

Embeddedness in action

69

another to meet the remaining 20% of the national
demand.

In a context where quality tends to be defined on the

basis of the existence of an explicit link between a food
product and a specific territory (Sassatelli and Scott,

2001), embedding saffron necessarily also becomes a
territorial process. Both individually and collectively,
members of the saffron network work to embed them-
selves, their practices, and their product within a space
that is constructed and used as ‘‘local.’’

The analysis shows that this local is not a coherent

territorial entity. In its configuration, the local is a dy-
namic and contested social space that embodies different
and potentially conflicting needs and interests. It is, in a
word, a ‘‘relational space’’ – or, as economic geographers
have recently conceptualized, a space of interrelated
scales and interdependent subjects (Boggs and Rantisi,

2003) where ‘‘the social, economic, political and cultural
inside and outside are constituted through the topologies
of actor networks’’ (Amin, 2004: 33). In the case of
saffron, at one level, the local must extend far enough to
include a sufficient number of producers who can create
a market for the new product. In this sense, the local
identifies with the entire Maremma province, bringing
together a territorially dispersed group of farmers willing
to distance themselves from the requirements of con-
ventional agriculture and to emphasize ‘‘quality’’ and
diversification. At another level, however, the local must
be sufficiently circumscribed to be valorized, governed,
and protected through specific forms of political support.
In this sense, the local coincides with Campagnatico, a
small town interested in developing and using saffron as
an ‘‘image’’ product to attract tourists and investment. In
short, while attempting to achieve a social cohesion that
cuts across the whole area of the Maremma to ensure a
solid production base, the network also needs to embed
itself in a local space that institutional actors, such as the
Mayor of Campagnatico, are willing and capable to
protect.

In the context of a local that has no territorial integrity

and that is characterized by constantly shifting spatial
boundaries, embeddedness becomes essentially a matter
of creating relations that bring together different interests
and ‘‘scales of practice’’ (Amin,

2004: 34). Central to the

establishment and development of these relations is the
role of Anna. During her lifetime, Anna has experienced
the ‘‘local’’ first as an urban resident and a rural tourist
and, subsequently, as a rural resident and a farmer. This
dual identity puts her in an ideal position to act as a
facilitator, as an ‘‘ecological entrepreneur’’ (Marsden and
Smith, 2005) capable of creating a new platform of
action through the integration of different knowledge,
interests, and needs. Under Anna’s leadership and
inspiration, embedding saffron in southern Tuscany
becomes an active and dynamic process of creating

overlapping networks. These networks are not just based
on social relationships that cut across space; they also
involve the development of historic relationships that cut
across time. In fact, to empower the town of Campa-
gnatico and create an exclusive link between its territory
(and jurisdiction) and the emerging product, the process
of embeddedness also acquires a temporal dimension.
By re-assembling distant memories and historic evidence
from the past, the ecological entrepreneur and the Mayor
of the town create a discourse that establishes a unique
connection between the town’s territory and the
‘‘authenticity’’ of the product. Through this process of
historic embeddedness, Campagnatico becomes the cus-
todian of the saffron tradition and the sole legitimate
governor of the ‘‘local’’ space and of its newly created
‘‘cultural capital.’’

Embeddedness, local food, and rural development:
Some final considerations

The adoption of an agency-oriented and dynamic
approach to the analysis of an emerging food system
shows that embeddedness can be in itself a product of
market conditions. In the case of saffron, economic
activities became embedded in a newly formed social
economy, based on relationships and ideals of cooper-
ation and commitment to the land, that allows producers
to meet the needs of the market. Significantly, such
relationships and ideals do not constitute the only
dimension that the process of embeddedness assumes
‘‘on the ground.’’ Indeed, as some scholars have argued,
food initiatives such as the one described in this paper
can only flourish if they build and rely upon social
relations that are themselves embedded in a particular
place (Jarosz,

2000; Selfa and Qazi, 2005). The saffron

case study shows that place is not a fixed and neatly
bounded geographical entity. Quite the contrary, it is a
socio-cultural construction that participants in the saf-
fron social economy have to constantly re-define and re-
negotiate to provide their product with an historic and
territorial identity that can be defended through political
action. Embeddedness, then, becomes simultaneously a
social, temporal, and spatial process. As Schweizer
(1997) argues, it has both a horizontal ‘‘facet’’
that involves the interpenetration of societal/cultural
domains and a ‘‘vertical’’ facet that relates to hierar-
chical linkages of individual and corporate actors at the
local level to the larger society, economy, and polity of
which they are part. In the case of saffron, the process
of embeddedness situates producers’ activities ‘‘hori-
zontally’’ within a re-created social context informed by
the value of cooperation. At the same time, the saffron
network is attempting to carve an institutional space for
itself ‘‘vertically’’ through the development of an

70

Roberta Sonnino

‘‘invented tradition’’ (Ulin, 1996) that links a place with
the authenticity of saffron. In short, through ‘‘horizon-
tal’’ and ‘‘vertical’’ forms of embeddedness, members
of the saffron network attempt to connect producers and
consumers, product and place, tradition and authenticity.
In this process, embeddedness is multi-dimensional.
Economic decisions and transactions become embedded
in a set of social, cultural, and political relations that
create the local in an attempt to link production to the
market. Significantly, this process involves a dialectical
tension between embedding and dis-embedding forces.
In fact, while market requirements are encouraging
producers to territorially embed their product in the
local, the market also is leading the network to dis-
embed itself from the local. Producers are now required
to increase their output, if they want to raise the profile
of their product and its profitability, which implies
enlarging the boundaries of the local to allow new
producers into the network. However, the evidence
shows that there is a trade-off of scales here. The bigger
the scale of output, the lower the level of control that
the ecological entrepreneur and her core allies can
exercise over the network – its territorial distribution
and social cohesion. As the boundaries and power-base
of the saffron network are begin to shift away from
Campagnatico, some of its core values and ideals (e.g.,
cooperativism and territoriality) are threatened and there
is an increasing danger of absorption into the logic of
an economy of scale.

There are theoretical and practical lessons that can

be drawn from this research. Theoretically, the adoption
of a dynamic approach complicates the notion of em-
beddedness by highlighting its multidimensional nature
and its inherent tensions. In the case study analyzed,
embeddedness is in fact a consequence, rather than a
cause, of market requirements that are encouraging
social actors to territorially embed their product in a
newly created local context and, simultaneously, to dis-
embed themselves from it. Practically, this calls for
specific forms of outside support to consolidate the
market for the product through, for example, promotion
and branding. In fact, even though from a purely
economic perspective, saffron is a small product of
modest significance (the total output, reaching only 500
grams, provides revenues of just

e15,000), when

considering its impacts at the level of the farm’s
economy, saffron has a value that goes beyond its
profitability. As a product grown on very small plots of
land (typically the remnants of farmland) during the
non-peak season of the agricultural cycle, saffron rep-
resents an easy diversification option for the Maremma
farmers. At the same time, it provides an opportunity to
create links between agriculture and other economic
activities such as agritourism – as demonstrated by the
emergence of on-farm sales of saffron-flavored olive oil

for tourists. In a word, saffron is an ideal product to
implement the new European ideals of ‘‘multifunctional
agriculture.’’

Furthermore, the adoption of a constructivist approach

to the analysis of this emerging product shows that saf-
fron also has an intrinsic value for its producers. As
evidenced from the interviews, many farmers see the
involvement with the new product as a strategy to leave
behind conventional agriculture and to regain power and
control over their productive relations. In this respect, the
saffron case study also shows that the agri-food literature
should not just confine itself to debates about whether or
not embeddedness creates a ‘‘real’’ local context or a
romanticized image of it and whether or not this local is a
product of parochial ‘‘defensive’’ tendencies, as some
may argue (DuPuis and Goodman,

2005; Winter, 2003a).

Bottom-up initiatives of this kind also have much to say
about producers’ strategies to remain in business and stay
on the land. However imperfect their attempts at
embedding a product in a ‘‘local’’ context may be, in an
era of major restructuring of the European agricultural
sector (linked to the reform of the Common Agricultural
Policy and the end of the subsidy regime), a consider-
ation of farmers’ needs and motivations is crucial for
identifying the kind of support necessary to implement
sustainable models of rural and agri-food development.

Acknowledgments

Funding for this research has been provided by the Eco-
nomic and Social Research Council (UK) as part of a
project entitled ‘‘Going Local? Regional Innovation
Strategies and the New Agri-food Paradigm’’ (ref
Toe50021). I would like to thank Terry Marsden, one of
the partners in this project, for his support and the time
shared with me to discuss the concept of embeddedness.
Special thanks go to the editor of this journal, Laura B.
DeLind, and to three anonymous referees for their ex-
tremely constructive and helpful comments. I owe much to
Anna Brizzi and many other people in the Maremma who
have taken time off their work to talk to me and show me
around. Among these people, I would like to mention
Sandro Moris and Luisella Querci, two friends for life.
Without them, none of this would have happened. I feel
indebted also to a number of friends and colleagues who
have, at different stages, shared their thoughts with me.
Although the responsibility for the views expressed in this
article remains entirely mine, I owe much to Andrew Sayer
(Lancaster University) and Bob Antonio (University of
Kansas) for the intellectual challenges they have provided.
Many thanks also to Tanja Bastia and Jon Anderson
(Cardiff University) for their comments and help. Finally, I
thank Kevin Morgan, an extraordinary mentor and friend,

Embeddedness in action

71

for the invaluable support and inspiration he has provided
and for contributing to make this work a lot of fun.

Notes

1. To investigate embeddedness as a process, research was

spread over the course of 18 months, during which I visited
my research area a total of three times. This allowed me to
document unfolding events and to constantly refine the
analysis by building on previously collected data. Two re-
search methods were adopted: documentary analysis and
formal and informal interviews. Specifically, to identify and
understand the discourse built around saffron, I collected
promotional and marketing materials produced by individual
farmers and by the saffron Association. In addition, I en-
gaged in informal conversations with a variety of actors
involved in the emerging saffron economy: farmers, pro-
ducers, processors, retailers, and politicians. Finally, to
identify different strategies, concerns, and preferences with
regard to the development of saffron, I conducted in-depth
interviews with the core members of the saffron network:
four producers, the Mayor of Campagnatico, the director of
a local cooperative supermarket, the director and the pro-
duction manager of a cheese-making cooperative producing
saffron-flavored cheese. To meet the objectives of the re-
search, these interviews were semi-structured around seven
key themes: (1) initiative (Why have different actors decided
to become involved with saffron?); (2) networking (What
kind of political, institutional, societal, and spatial linkages
do different actors have with one another and with the larger
society, economy, and polity of which they are part?); (3)
autonomy (Is the saffron network effectively empowering
producers vis-a`-vis retailers and the globalized agricultural
market?); (4) local vs. locality food (What is the real and
potential spatial range of the market for saffron, and how
does this affect the sustainability of the network?); (5)
quality (How is this notion interpreted, negotiated, and uti-
lized in the context of the saffron network?); (6) political/
institutional support (Is the political/institutional context
effectively supporting the development of saffron?); and (7)
sustainability (What are the perceived threats to the resil-
ience of the saffron network?). All of the interviews were
taped, translated, transcribed, and later analyzed with refer-
ence to the research questions.

2. In this respect, the main limitation of this study is repre-

sented by its focus on a ‘‘luxury’’ good such as saffron. The
process of embeddedness, as well as its impacts, may ac-
quire different characteristics in the case of ‘‘non-luxury’’
and less labor-intensive goods.

3. One reviewer rightly pointed out that there are exceptions to

this general trend. One example is conventions theory,
which, as Morgan et al. (2006) point out, proceeds from the
assumption that any form of economic, political, and social
coordination requires some kind of agreement, or conven-
tions, among participants. In this context, theories on
‘‘domestic’’ conventions represent a systematic attempt to
operationalize the concept of embeddedness through an

empirical focus on qualities based on trust and involving
goods attached to place and traditional modes of production
(see also Murdoch et al., 2000).

4. On the basis of the European Geographical Indication sys-

tem, introduced in 1993 (Council regulation (EEC) No.
2081/92), a Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO)
product has been produced, processed, and prepared within a
certain geographical area that is exclusively linked to the
quality and characteristics of the product. A product with a
Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) label is one that has
been produced, processed or prepared within a particular
geographical area that attributes to the product its quality
and characteristics (see Ilbery et al., 2005). The attribution
of these two labels is an important aspect of the process of
territorial embeddedness. In fact, the PDO and PGI ‘‘qual-
ity’’ marks attempt to vertically embed a food product by
institutionally linking its inherent qualities to the inherent
characteristics of a particular spatial context of production.

5. As Marsden (2003) conceptualizes it, the post-productivist

countryside has recently emerged throughout Europe as a
result of the growing perception of rural areas as con-
sumption spaces to be exploited not only by industrial
capital but also by the urban populations. In Tuscany, the
post-productivist model has been strongly supported by the
regional authorities in the last two decades, as demonstrated
by the continuous growth of agritourist activities (Sonnino,
2004).

6. In English, the name can be translated as ‘‘Maremman

Crocus Association.’’ In Italy, producer associations of this
kind only engage in activities of promotion and collective
purchasing while activities of collective marketing can only
be performed by the Consortia. In the case of saffron, the
Associazione Crocus Maremma was established primarily to
promote knowledge-exchange among producers, to organize
promotional activities, and to collectively purchase the saf-
fron bulbs.

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Address for correspondence: Roberta Sonnino, School of
City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Glamorgan
Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA,
Wales, UK
Phone: [phone]; Fax: [phone];
E-mail: [e-mail]

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Roberta Sonnino