Die nationale Einbettung globaler Warenketten : zum Einfluss nationaler Wirtschaftsakteure auf die Ausgestaltung des Lebensmittelmarktes

This article analyses the social embeddedness of the German grocery market in the tradition of the New Economic Sociology. It introduces a heuristic framework which distinguishes between three constitutive elements of markets: the goods exchanged; the consumers, producers and retailers of these goods, that is the market participants; and the central mechanism of coordination, that is competition. Hereafter, the institutional and cultural embeddedness of these market elements are analysed in detail. The power relations and struggles between consumer associations and business organisations are then analysed to account for the permanent change of the institutional and cultural structures which embed markets. Such economic sociological arguments are finally discussed regarding global value chains. It is suggested to overcome the methodological nationalism of economic sociology as well as the methodological internationalism of value chain approaches to better account for the national embeddedness of markets as well as the organisation of global value chains.