Embeddedness and the tourism industry in the Polish southern uplands: social processes as an explanatory framework

Accepting that there is a pressing need to place tourism research within a more holistic framework, it is argued that this may be achieved by invoking the notion of embeddedness, which sees enterprises as being shaped by social processes. Four strands are recognized: structural, cultural, cognitive and political. In order further to clarify the complex processes involved, these strands are examined in combination with a structurationist top-down bottom-up approach, and applied to both the supply and demand sides of the tourism industry in the mountainous regions of southern Poland during and after state socialism.