Social bonds and the relational nature of embeddedness

The author of this chapter seeks to theoretically consolidate the concept of social bonds and determine its heuristic utility. It is a necessary procedure to understand the sources of regularity of human behavior and the duration of social aggregates. The analysis begins with placing the term "social bond" in the discourse of social sciences. It is continued on four plans: (1) social integration and control, (2) interactive order, (3) social embeddedness, and (4) "relationalist embedding" of social bonds. The analysis prompts the author to recognize the need to develop a transactional understanding of social relations and to determine how some social relationships are established and endorsed as social bonds — relatively stable relationships binding the actor with his or her surroundings. Social bonding is a phenomenon that requires strictly relational specification. It is about the characteristics of its emergence, duration and change, and the processing by actors in the acts of defining the situation, identifying and discerning opportunities, "condensation" of some types of connections and their recognition as non-contingent relationships.