Obligation, Risk, and Opportunity in the Renaissance Economy: Beyond Social Embeddedness toNetwork Co-constitution

We conceive of economic networks on the one hand, and networks of other kinds of social relations like marriage and political groupings on the other, as co-constituting. That is, relations in any one network domain have spillover consequences into other domains, affecting actors’ identities and the choices they make. Neither the economy nor deep social relations necessarily has causal primacy, contrary to simple claims about the social embedding of the economy. We explore the mutual effects of economic and social relations via a study of partnership patterns and credit flows in Renaissance Florence. The social embedding of the Florentine economy, while noteworthy, varied considerably across industries, across time periods, and across types of economic activity. We find that banking partnerships often were formed within family, more so than in other industries. Yet a significant number of them also linked non-kin elites across neighborhoods. Such neighborhood-spanning banks strategically utilized within-neighborhood connections to obtain access to credit with wool and silk companies in multiple neighborhoods, thus using local identities to multiply their economic opportunities. At the same time, successful relations forged in the economic domain became the basis for lower-status businessmen’s ascension into the ranks of politically active and socially recognized Florentines, thus using economic success to achieve honor.