The strength of interconnectedness between structure and culture: market development in the presence of over-embedded social structure in the lime market of Hui Town

This article brings together two different approaches in the new economic sociology—structural embeddedness and cultural embeddedness—to understand the transformation and development of a market. Markets are considered over-embedded in social structure and assessed to be in decline when their economic transactions are dependent on secondary clientelism, in which the reseller serves as patron and the supplier as client. Based on ethnographic data from the lime market in Hui Town, this study examines how this kind of market develops in the presence of transactions embedded in secondary clientelism. From the perspective of the interconnected mode between structure and culture, these findings demonstrate that the coupling induction from secondary clientelist networks and new business ideology is the underlying mechanism allowing market development. This means that the process of marketization might not necessarily be associated with market transactions’ depersonalization or social disembedding, and instead development may be hindered if the market is devoid of social bonds and social virtue.