Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Cowan, Robin
Author-Email: cowan@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: UNU-MERIT / MGSOG, Maastricht University, and BETA,
	 Université de Strasbourg
Author-Name: Kamath, Anant
Author-Email: kamath@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: UNU-MERIT / MGSOG, Maastricht University, and University of Georgia,
	 United States
Title: Informal knowledge exchanges under complex social relations: A network study of
	 handloom clusters in Kerala, India 
Abstract: When agents use informal interaction to exchange knowledge, their production relations
 	may develop as emergent properties of their social relations and may exhibit homophily.
	The Saliyar community cluster in India is an archetype of this. This cluster’s experience is 	investigated on how its thickly homophilous networks have steered it from dominance to 	decline, in the market for a product which calls for constant improvement of knowhow, under 	unchanging production technology. A network analysis of the Saliyars community cluster — in 	comparison with the networks of the communities in a cluster of a similar population at 	Payattuvila, which has surged ahead of the Saliyar Cluster in performance in handloom 	weaving — provides evidence that it is not simply social embeddedness alone, but the 	homophily in socially embedded links that are detrimental to clusters
	dependent upon informal knowledge exchanges. Hence, we provide evidence that social 	embeddedness is not as detrimental unless combined with homophily. The conceptual ambit 	of embeddedness has to broaden out to recognise that social relations come in various 	‘homophilies’. This has many policy implications too as it involves studying embeddedness 	and homophily in rural traditional technology clusters intensively involving community social 	capital; such clusters being ubiquitous in India and whose experiences have not been 	scrutinised in this perspective. 
Classification-JEL: D83, D85, O33, Z13
Keywords: Clusters, Handloom, Networks, Social Embeddedness, Homophily, Kerala
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 2012
Number: 031
File-URL: http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2012/wp2012-031.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2012031