Foreword -- Preface Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia -- Part I The 'Social' as Metaphor Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia -- Introduction to Part I: theoretical approach and historical overview Section A The theoretical approach -- The thinking-talking human being and his categories of thought -- The speaking-acting subject and the symbolic field of language -- The speaking-acting individual and the imaginary of the Social Field -- Section B A historical overview -- Interdependence and places of wandering: a history of places and bonds Symbolic delimitation versus imaginary bonds -- Anthropological debt versus imaginary work places -- Readiness to lose versus imaginary places of production -- Conclusion to Part I -- Part II Cooperatives as Examples and their Paradoxes Yair Levi -- Introduction to Part II: cooperatives, categories of thought, embeddedness/disembeddedness -- Images, myths and stereotypes -- Section A The official discourse -- Origins and constituent elements -- Section B A critique of the official discourse -- Tensions and inconsistencies -- Interpreting the socio-economic duality -- Paradoxes of cooperatives The case studies -- What have we learned from cooperatives? -- Summary and conclusions Epilogue: Beyond The 'Social' as Metaphor Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia -- Introduction to epilogue: going beyond the social: 'doing things with words' according to the symbolic register -- Thinking 'nestedness' as a system of constituent rules -- Thinking the political with the categories of the symbolic: the example of South Africa -- The virtual more real than reality: The Città Aperta of Sicily -- Conclusions, Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia withYair Levi -- References -- Index