- 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.
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