The state of being located or secured within a larger entity or context. The economic life of a firm or market is territorially embedded in its peculiar social and cultural relations; in place-specific characteristics, infrastructure, operating environments; and conditions of production. Transnational corporations in the USA are ‘highly constrained by dynamic and deep capital…[while] their Japanese counterparts are effectively bound by complex but reliable networks of domestic relationships’ (Yeung (2000) TIBG 23, 3).

Hess (2004, PHG 28, 1) argues that there are interconnected societal, network, and territorial dimensions of embeddedness: territorial embeddedness—the extent to which an ‘actor’ is anchored in particular territories or places; societal embeddedness—the cultural, political, institutional, and regulatory framework the actor is located in; and network embeddedness—the structure of relationships among a set of individuals/organizations. Granovetter in N. Nohria and R. Eccles, eds (1992) defines structural embeddedness as ‘the connectedness of not only two parties, but the extent of interconnection among third parties or mutual contacts of dyadic partners’. Orderud (2007) Geografiska B 89, 4 refers to an embeddedness ‘where trust acts as a reinforcement…as a capacity restraint and a socially constructed need for face-to-face meetings’. See Feagan (2007) PHG 31, 1 on the ‘quality turn’ and embeddedness in food supply; see also Jones (2008) PHG 32, 1. Ecological embeddedness is embedded in ‘natural’ or ecological processes, to which Morris and Kirwan (2011) J. Rural Studs 27, 322 would add that ‘it must reflect a change in the relations between economic actors and the natural environment that produces a benefit to both’.