Community cohesion and inherited networks - A network study of two handloom clusters in Kerala, India
Anant Kamath & Robin Cowan
#2012-073
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. A preceding study by Cowan and Kamath
(2012) had shown how, by a study of this community, the conceptual
understanding of social embeddedness needed to be expanded to understand
these informal knowledge exchanges in environments of complex social
relations. In this follow up paper, we see how the
homophilous-embeddedness in the Saliyars' networks and an extreme sense
of community cohesion worked its way by influencing a variety of
economic and cultural factors and lessening the willingness to absorb
innovations, driving the Saliyars into decline. We also see the
mechanisms through which the absence of these attributes among the other
socially-heterogeneous communities of weavers, such as in the Payttuvila
cluster, stimulated their rise.
Community and family spirit have, more often than not, assisted and
given its own shape to the technology trajectory of handloom in most of
India. Community social capital has buttressed the risks of adoption of
new technologies and practices in the past, and invigorated information
flows. Hence, the 'standard line' in the literature sides with the idea
that community cohesion has been, historically, congruent to
technological progress and knowledge diffusion among community-based
weaving clusters and groups in India. But in the case of the Saliyars
there has been a disharmony. This does not question whether or not
community social capital and technological progress share a healthy
relation, but shows that there are limits beyond which the detriments of
community social capital and rigidities associated with inherited
networks set in, hindering knowledge diffusion and technological
advancement. The Saliyars as a counter example to the 'standard line'
demonstrate this.
Keywords: Handloom, Networks, Socio-Technology, Cohesion,
Homophilous-Embeddedness, Kerala
JEL classification: O33, Z13