ABSTRACT
The societal system needs to be analyzed as part of the technological, biological, and physical systems in addition to systems below the societal level. The chapter focuses on the concept of embeddedness and its effects. It outlines the following embedded societal systems: natural reality, technological reality, socio-economic reality, social cognition and individual cognition/perception level. The interactions point to co-evolution of the embedding and embedded structures, which is circular rather than on-directional, and the chapter uses this framework to study the economic cycle of late capitalism.
