Economies, Territories, Institutions. Analytical Fragments of a Complicated Relationship

The three broad spheres of economy, institutions, and territories, have been intensely scrutinized within the academic community. However, the cogs and wheels through which they are interconnected need to be further investigated. Against this background, the first chapter aims to clarify how the book disentangles the behaviours of different kinds of social actors who take (economic) decisions in territorial settings and within institutional environments, thereby dealing with the puzzling nexuses between economies, institutions, and territories. In the first part of the chapter, we present the three basic definitional assumptions for the dimensions in question. Economy will be conceived as an instituted process of interactions and exchanges between actors to allocate resources. Institutions will be conceived in both their formal (i.e., rules, laws, and organizations) and informal or tacit dimension (i.e., individual habits, group routines and social norms and values). Lastly, territories will be interpreted as arenas that are socially built and constantly negotiated, where context-specific processes and tensions unfold. In the second part of the chapter, we illustrate the four dimensions in which we aim to explore the interlinkages between economy, institutions, and territories, which correspond to the sections of the book. Lastly, we will briefly synthesize the contents of the chapters.