Disembedding

  • Disembedding refers to the way in which contemporary social practices can no longer be primarily defined by their grounding, or embeddedness, in the local context of a restricted place and time.
  • When something is disembedded, it is moved from a concrete, tangible, local context to an abstract or virtual state.
  • Examples: Slavery in the new world disembedded the lived experiences of Africans and abstracted their social ties or kinships into commodities;
  • Money is disembedded value because it used to represent something material;
  • software is the act of disembedding a real world problem into a virtual one;
  • a clock time is disembedded time;
  • writing is disembedded language.