Toward a Polanyian network analysis: market and non-market forms of coordination in the rice economy of Vietnam

Abstract

The study proposes a network-based methodology linking Polanyi’s ideal types of coordination and deductive blockmodeling to identify different forms of coordination within an economy. Using the proposed methodology, the economy of rice in post-socialist Vietnam is interpreted as a double movement responding to market liberalization. Qualitative and relational data were collected from 323 households and firms in two communes of the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam. Results show that in one case markets and redistribution co-existed as competing forms of coordination, entailing different relations of production and labor conditions; while in the other they blended and constituted a hybrid house-holding system.