Social Entrepreneurship: An Affirmative Critique 1783474114, 9781783474110

Citation preview

Social Entrepreneurship

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Social Entrepreneurship An Affirmative Critique

Edited by

Pascal Dey Doctor in Sociology and Associate Professor, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France and University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Chris Steyaert Doctor in Psychology and Professor in Organizational Psychology, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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© Pascal Dey and Chris Steyaert 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955162 This book is available electronically in the Business subject collection DOI 10.4337/9781783474127

ISBN 978 1 78347 411 0 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78347 412 7 (eBook)

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Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents List of figuresvii List of tablesviii List of contributorsix Acknowledgementsxi   1 The books on social entrepreneurship we edit, critique and imagine1 Chris Steyaert and Pascal Dey PART I SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND MYTH-BUSTING   2 A methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon and Robyn Owen (Baldock)

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  3 Nonprofit commercial revenue: a replacement for declining government grants and private contributions? Janelle A. Kerlin and Tom H. Pollak

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  4 Bursting the bubble: the mythologies of many social enterprises and enterpri$ing nonprofits Raymond Dart

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PART II SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, IDEOLOGY AND POWER EFFECTS   5 The tale of the veil: unweaving Big Society and the social enterprise myth Chris Mason and Michael Moran

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  6 Myth in social entrepreneurship research: an inquiry into rationalist, ideological and dialectic practices of demystification 100 Pascal Dey and Chris Steyaert   7 Social entrepreneurship: mythological ‘doublethink’ Lew Perren

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PART III SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ITS ENACTMENTS   8 ‘(It) is exactly what it was in me’: the performativity of social entrepreneurship137 Stefanie Mauksch   9 Of course, trust is not the whole story: narratives of dancing with a critical friend in social enterprise–public sector collaborations159 Pam Seanor 10 Social entrepreneurship: performative enactments of compassion 182 Karin Berglund PART IV SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, PARTICIPATION AND DEMOCRACY 11 Deliberative democracy in social entrepreneurship: a discourse ethics approach to participative processes of social change Trish Ruebottom

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12 Social entrepreneurship and democracy Angela M. Eikenberry

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13 Social entrepreneurship, democracy and political participation Denise M. Horn

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PART V SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, RELATIONALITY AND THE POSSIBLE 14 Expanding the realm of the possible: field theory and a relational framing of social entrepreneurship Victor J. Friedman, Israel Sykes and Markus Strauch

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15 Becoming possible in the Anthropocene? Becomingsocialentrepreneurship as more-than-capitalist practice Marta B. Calás, Seray Ergene and Linda Smircich

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16 New framings and practices of critical research Jenny Cameron

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Index301

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Figures 3.1 Selected sources of revenue for all nonprofits 1982–2002 in 2003 US dollars (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions)48 3.2 Selected sources of revenue for all nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions) 49 3.3 Selected sources of revenue for arts and culture nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue 53 3.4 Selected sources of revenue for human service nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue 56 3.5 Total federal human service outlays to state and local governments 1982–2002 (in billions of 2003 US dollars) 57

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Tables   2.1 Shifting interpretation of key elements of the social enterprise definition   2.2 Legal status by social enterprise   2.3 Analysis of 2008/09 National Survey of Third Sector Organisations: questions related to social enterprise   3.1 Number of organizations in SOI data set by size of total expenses (1982–2002 aggregated)   3.2 Number of organizations in panel and original data sets, 1982, 1985–96 (unweighted, excluding hospitals and higher education institutions)   3.3 Percentage of nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions)   3.4 Results of ordinary least squares regression to predict increases in commercial activity   3.5 Percentage of arts and culture nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions   3.6 Percentage of human service nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions   6.1 Three understandings of myth and demystification, as well as paradigmatic theorists and illustrative studies from the realm of social entrepreneurship studies   6.2 Results from the analysis of interpretive repertoires   7.1 A reframing of the social entrepreneurship myth following Lakoff (2004) 12.1 Social entrepreneurship’s impact on nonprofit contributions to civil society 14.1 Beit Issie programmes and their impact

27 31 33 44 47

50 52 54 58 102 113 130 216 246

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Contributors Karin Berglund, Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University and Linnaeus University, Sweden Marta B. Calás, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Jenny Cameron, Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia Raymond Dart, Trent School of Business, Trent University, Canada Pascal Dey, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France and School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland Angela M. Eikenberry, School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, NE, USA Seray Ergene, Isenberg School of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

Management, University of

Victor J. Friedman, Action Research Center for Social Justice, Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Israel Denise M. Horn, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Simmons College, Boston, MA, USA Janelle A. Kerlin, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA Fergus Lyon, Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research, Middlesex University, London, UK Chris Mason, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia Stefanie Mauksch, Department of Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Germany Michael Moran, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia ix

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Robyn Owen (Baldock), Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research, Middlesex University, London, UK Lew Perren, Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, UK Tom H. Pollak, Civic Leadership Project, Washington, DC, USA Trish Ruebottom, Goodman School of Business, Brock University, Ontario, Canada Pam Seanor,
Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, UK Linda Smircich, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Chris Steyaert, School of Management, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland Markus Strauch, Freiburger Akademie für Universitäre Weiterbildung, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany Israel Sykes, Action Research Center for Social Justice, Max Stern Yezreel Valley College Simon Teasdale, Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK

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Acknowledgements This book – Social Entrepreneurship: An Affirmative Critique – endeavors to give an overview of the various critical approaches that can be applied to social entrepreneurship. Consisting mostly of original work, the book also contains two earlier published journal articles which are reprinted here since each forms a quintessential and didactical illustration of a particular form of critical operation. The chapter by Teasdale, Lyon and Owen is an updated version of their successful publication in the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship (2013).1 The chapter by Kerlin and Pollak stems from a high-impact paper that was earlier published in The American Review of Public Administration (2011).2 We thank the respective ­publishers – Routledge (Taylor and Francis) and Sage Publications – for granting permission for these reprints. Furthermore, we are grateful to the authors of the various chapters for not giving in (only) to journal publication pressures and for granting this book a high quality chapter. In particular we want to thank the authors of the five position papers that conclude each of the five sections of this book and who took up our invitation to develop a reflective comment with enthusiasm and diligence: Raymond Dart, Lew Perren, Karin Berglund, Denise Horn and Jenny Cameron. Also, we thank the publisher Edward Elgar – in particular Francine O’Sullivan, Aisha Bushby, Michaela Doyle and Ellen Pearce – for giving immediate support, time and openness to develop this book concept. As we developed this book over the years, we want to remind ourselves of how its preparation has coincided with important moments – both happy and sad – in our lives and that it has only been possible through the continuous support of our families.

NOTES 1. This chapter was originally published as an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License  http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. The original citation is: Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon and Rob Baldock (2013), ‘Playing with numbers: a methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth’, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 4 (2), 113–31.

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2. This chapter is a reprint of the article, Janelle A. Kerlin and Tom H. Pollak (2011), ‘Nonprofit commercial revenue: A replacement for declining government grants and private contributions?’, The American Review of Public Administration, 41 (6), 686–705. Republished with permission from Sage Publications.

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1. The books on social entrepreneurship we edit, critique and imagine Chris Steyaert and Pascal Dey INTRODUCTION Social entrepreneurship is commonly (re)presented as the portent of a new era in which entrepreneurship is no longer reduced to its ‘economic function’ but is now seen as a ‘pathway for social change’ (Luke and Chu, 2013). This is an incisive assessment, one that we think deserves critical scrutiny. Thus, to all those who have wanted to embark on the path of social entrepreneurship, or who are simply curious to hear more about the buzz surrounding social entrepreneurship (Mauksch, 2014), we say be aware: we need critique, and we need it now! This is not, we argue, to divert attention away from the scientific project of social entrepreneurship research (Nicholls, 2010), and especially not to discredit social entrepreneurship tout court. Rather, the need and, indeed, the urgency of critique are grounded in the realization that a variety of things are wrong with social entrepreneurship: ‘wrong’ in both an epistemological sense (for example detached research practices and methodologies which fail to engage with the vagaries of everyday life and the moral and political predicaments of social entrepreneurship) and an ontological sense (for example misguided assumptions about the ‘essence’ of social entrepreneurship, such as atomism). This book – Social Entrepreneurship: An Affirmative Critique – presents a range of critical approaches that we hope will interrogate, irritate and reimagine social entrepreneurship. While most of us already have our own understanding of ‘critique’ (Butler, 2001), it is important to note that this book does not address critique as something fixed or dogmatic (that is, critique as a narrow doctrine authoritatively defined by a particular group such as orthodox ‘Marxists’ or ‘Trotskyists’). Instead of trying to set the universal standards for critique qua judgment, the chapters assembled in this book suggest various forms of critique to slow down any easy ­presumption about social entrepreneurship’s essentially transformational 1

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benefit to society. But even if we do not define critique in relation to particular authors, styles or disciplinary origins, the individual chapters in this book share affirmation as their common denominator (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; 2015; Hjorth, 2017; Steyaert and Dey, 2010; Steyaert et al., 2017; Weiskopf and Steyaert, 2009). The guiding idea of critique as affirmation, broadly defined, is that social entrepreneurship is ‘inadequate yet necessary’. That is, affirmation deems social entrepreneurship ‘inadequate’ in the sense that orthodox conceptions of the term remain overly wedded to issues pertaining to heroism, the non-political, the post-ideological, the ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’; on the other hand, social entrepreneurship remains ‘necessary’ since it contains the seeds of becoming the harbinger of a paradigm of radical becoming (Calás et al., this volume), emancipation (Rindova et al., 2009) and social creativity (Weiskopf and Steyaert, 2009). Keeping with the ethos of affirmative critique implies working ‘creatively in and from (and hence not against) the structured field of social entrepreneurship studies’ (Steyaert and Dey, 2010, p. 235), thus using critique as a means for unleashing the potentiality contained and ‘silenced’ by grand narratives (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). So conceived, affirmation acknowledges the need for a critical interrogation of the premises and guiding assumptions of social entrepreneurship, while simultaneously forcing us to retain a ‘productive sense’ of critique that remains open to creative and active interpretations which take social entrepreneurship beyond the influence of ‘vigilant and insomniac rationality’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2000, p. 112). Thus with a tiny ding, with a semibreve sniff of air, we make reference to Adorno’s (1974) aphorism from his Minima Moralia,1 ‘No emancipation without that of society’ (p. 173) to disturb the (often) unison gospel that celebrates social entrepreneurship, and to formulate a ‘moral minimum’ from which to launch a critical reception. With a single scratch of the pen we aim to initiate a contrapuntal reading of social entrepreneurship, thus remaining mindful that one can hardly refute social entrepreneurship by simply hauling out trite allegations and accusations. What is needed instead is a critique governed by ‘love’, that is, one full of admiration and respect for the subject being scrutinized (Derrida, 1995), and one construed as a practice rather than as a judgment (Adorno, 1981). To work as a practice, critique needs to apprehend the ways in which social entrepreneurship as a category of thought is instituted, how it is ordered as a field of knowledge, and ‘how what it suppresses returns, as it were, as its own constitutive occlusion’ (Butler, 2001). The subtitle of Adorno’s Minima Moralia is Reflections from Damaged Life or, as it has been rephrased in a more recent edition (Adorno, 2005), Reflections on a Damaged Life. That phrase provides a link to understanding the kind of sensibility underpinning critique as practice.

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The books we edit, critique and imagine ­3

And thus it is pertinent to provide a short excursus on the trajectory of Adorno’s book. Adorno, in exile from Nazi Germany, and under the urging of Max Horkheimer, had relocated via New York to Los Angeles; there, in 1942 he started to write this diary-like book consisting of reflections, adages and aphorisms (Buchanan, 2010; Garber, 2003). Damaged as he felt for being in exile and for the atrocities his home nation was inflicting upon the world, and with that strength of observation typical for those in new, foreign circumstances, Adorno writes about everyday experiences – from relations to cars, refrigerators, toys and doorknobs, and to reflections on gift-giving, occultism, avarice, lying, marriage and tact (Jaeggi, 2005) – and connects the smallest changes in the everyday to the catastrophic events of his time. Therefore, Jaeggi (2005, p. 65) argues that Adorno’s ‘critique of the “organization of the world” here stands for a fundamental questioning of our relations to the world and ourselves as a whole, beginning from the most personal experiences and carried out in detail’. This is how we envisage the critical operations in the various analyses of this book: not a priori judgments of social entrepreneurship performed from afar, but critique as intimately related to specific, phenomenological events and observations (and thus empirical contexts). Moreover, the contexts where social entrepreneurship operates – where there is poverty, inequality, analphabetism, illness, or other disaster – are also ‘damaged’, and thus the analyses ask equally that we question how to relate to them. In this introductory chapter, we situate Social Entrepreneurship: An Affirmative Critique in three steps. First, we position this book against the backdrop of journal publishing which has developed as the dominant code of ‘academic excellence’, and explain the urgency of a critical publication on this topic, that has obtained ‘a high profile’ (O’Connor, 2006) in the world of wealthy business donors and is linked – rare as this may be for a (new) academic field – to the granting of a Nobel Prize (to Muhammad Yunus in 2006). Second, we will recapitulate how this book draws upon the critical reception of social entrepreneurship. Third, we will give an overview of the various chapters and the respective critical perspectives and themes they draw on and address. We are mindful that this book is but a fleeting beginning of a debate that will, hopefully, pick up speed as time elapses, but we hope the various chapters will create an opening for a more diligent critical take on how we study social entrepreneurship in the future.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP THROUGH BOOKS The introduction of social entrepreneurship into the academic canon signified a utopian spot in time, a moment of seemingly unbound possibility.

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Emerging already onto the scene in the 1980s, social entrepreneurship coincided with hot debates about the environment, migration, food safety, global warming, poverty and social exclusion. During that period, when the welfare state model was increasingly falling out of favor, and when the public sphere was no longer seen as a reliable force of either societal production or protection, people turned toward social entrepreneurship as a market-based form of organizing with primarily social/ecological objectives. It appears fair to state that social entrepreneurship, like so many other phenomena we think, talk and write about, is a product of its time, a product whose ‘use value’ has grown steadily since its inception. Mentioning time, we must be aware that the book you hold in your hands (or browse on Kindle or Google Books, for that matter) too has its time, and timing. One way to put it would be to say that this book is an anachronism, something which apparently comes at the wrong time, because it is so firmly at odds with the spectacle of social entrepreneurship enacted and epitomized through award ceremonies, academic conferences and even scholarly writings (see Mauksch, Chapter 8, this volume). And, as we publish a book in an era when academic journals take on fetish-like qualities, and when many have predicted the ‘death of books’, it is worth asking ‘why another book?’, and ‘why now?’. Haven’t universities and libraries become unable to buy them, and aren’t publishers increasingly unable to sell them (Wolfe Thompson, 2002)? And in fact, aren’t there too many books to begin with? As Barnaby Rich lamented a long time ago, ‘[o]ne of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought forth’ (Barnaby Rich, 1611; quoted in De Solla Price, 1963, p. 63). These questions are of course rhetorical, since books certainly remain important. Indeed, we would even state that a book engaging critically with social entrepreneurship is long overdue, now that the subject matter has become so fashionable that it has become very difficult to challenge it. However, books are certainly not as self-evident as they once were, since journal publishing has become the primary currency of academic labor (not least in the business school context) which inter alia determines the ‘value’ of any given piece of research and, importantly, of the author who has produced it. Interestingly enough, while books are increasingly pushed to the margins of academic writing, it is conspicuous that the field of social entrepreneurship operates according to a slightly different dynamic. Sassmannshausen and Volkmann (2016) mention that, based on their recent citation analysis of social entrepreneurship publications, almost half of the most cited papers have not been published in journals but in books, raising doubts about the current (over-)rating of journal publications. A

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relatively new ‘field’ like social entrepreneurship cannot develop without a ‘critical mass’ of books that make it possible to explore and experiment with the contours of a ‘new’ phenomenon. The field of social entrepreneurship research, as these authors’ investigation shows, has witnessed a steady swell of books being produced since the 1990s. While that swell gained momentum particularly after 2004, some of those books were more ‘academic’ (such as Ziegler’s (2009) An Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship: Voices, Preconditions, Contexts) while others were more ‘practical’ (such as Emerson and Twersky’s (1996) The New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Nonprofit Enterprise Creation). We do not want to diminish the importance of journal articles and, with that, the new journals that have been founded in the meantime, such as Social Enterprise Journal (Emerald, since 2005), Journal of Enterprising Communities (Emerald, since 2007), and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship (Routledge, since 2010). Still, we believe a book has an advantage: it can offer an incisive and collective intervention in the ways a field seems to evolve by presenting a collection of contributions that can offer breadth and weight to develop alternative views. Or to be a bit hyperbolic for once, a book offers liberties in terms of both writing style and content, which journal publishing might not. This has been suggested by, amongst others, Alvesson and Gabriel (2013) who objected that journal publishing has become overly ‘formulaic’; that is, articles in journals increasingly assume ‘standardized forms and expressions, predictable structures and signposts, and even routine content [. . .] [which results in] an increasing uniformity of academic publications and a gradual disappearance of style, imagination, and surprise from academic journals’ (p. 246). This statement is of course exaggerated; plenty of journal publications are not formulaic (Gabriel, 2016). Alvesson and Gabriel still have a point, however: journal publishing has cultivated, even if by accident rather than design, a series of stylistic and thematic norms which scholars tend to emulate in the hope that doing so will increase their chances of being published. Unfettered by such isomorphic pressures, books (or book chapters) have the power to ‘recruit the reader’s imagination by enlisting him or her in the ‘performance of meaning under the guidance of the texts’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 25). To show how our own book uses critique to spark the imagination of its readers, we will offer a deeper look at its timeliness, rationale and structural logic.

A BOOK ON CRITIQUE Our book on critique on social entrepreneurship comes roughly ten years after a first wave of edited books was published in the mid-2000s

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(Sassmannshausen and Volkmann, 2016). Indeed, in 2006 alone, we saw no less than four edited books on this topic: Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change edited by Alex Nicholls, Social Entrepreneurship edited by Johanna Mair, Jeffrey Robinson and Kai Hockerts, The New Social Entrepreneurship edited by Francesco Perrini and Entrepreneurship as Social Change edited by Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth. These books have been attentive to multiple facets of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon, but none of them has shared an overarching commitment to critique (although critical impulses are manifest in various parts of these books; for example Cho, 2006; Nicholls and Cho, 2006; Steyaert and Hjorth, 2006). After more than three decades of sometimes highly functionalistic research, anecdotal evidence and ‘best management’ thinking, where social entrepreneurship has been touted as the paradigmatic organizational form for creating social change, it is no big leap to see this as an opportune moment for a critical book. The timing of this book, we think, can be expressed through the Greek term kairos, which indicates a suitable time for something to take place. While alluding to opportunity and the ‘right time’, kairos also implies an obligation, since one must not waste the chance that is placed in front of one. So conceived, our book treats kairos as an obligation to ‘drive critique through’ by actualizing the potential to break the chain of mere repetition, that is, ‘more of the same’ (more functionalism, more best-management recipes, more ‘value-neutral’ science, and so on). Although kairos suggests going against the grain of what already exists, it is worth emphasizing that critique as we envision it is not merely an antagonistic practice of resistance (Parker and Parker, 2017), but an essentially creative act which expands the registers of what is conceivable and doable. Our approach to critique is, as we said above, not programmatic in the sense of suggesting a singular understanding of ‘criticalness’. The danger we identify with a programmatic approach is that social entrepreneurship is subjected to judgments which merely subsume the subject under pre-existing categories. Hence, we abstain from delineating ‘critique’ alongside grand schemes, programs or generalizable formulas; instead we see it as having a vital, prosaic quality (Steyaert, 2004) that resonates from and with the circumstances in which it happens. On this view, we accept that critique is polysemic and ­plurivocal – qualities reflected in the diversity of critical contributions united in this book. Thus our primary purpose with this book is to illustrate, based on imaginative theoretical and empirical contributions, how critical work can unleash novel and affirmative ways of thinking about and relating to social entrepreneurship. Of course this book could have been structured in countless ways, but we chose to use what we call five forms of criticalness.2 These pertain to the testing of popular ideas and assumptions of social entrepreneurship

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(coined ‘political representation and myth-busting’); the denaturalization of ideological representations of social entrepreneurship (‘ideology and power effects’); the performative effect of language and situated action in social entrepreneurship (‘performative enactments’); the identification of social entrepreneurship’s normative (moral) foundation (‘participation and democracy’); and finally the complex relationality of social entrepreneurship and its ability to shift what is thinkable and doable (‘relationality and the possible’). We describe all these below. Assigning each chapter to one of the five perspectives permits us to put into sharper relief the specific focuses, objectives and assumptions of the individual chapters, while elucidating the family resemblance of the chapters grouped in each part by pinpointing the essential common feature through which they are connected (Wittgenstein, 2001). For each of the five parts we asked an expert in that domain to write a reflective commentary. They could go about this freely: they could engage quite closely with the chapters (perform text exegesis), or write in a more essayistic genre. We are more than pleased with the final result as all the commentaries and reflections, in their own unique ways, have come to play a vital role in restating and accentuating the ideas, problems and arguments of the original chapters. Further, the commentaries worked to relate the two chapters of each part in ways that identify particularly intriguing points of debate, and sketch out productive avenues for prospect­ ive research.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK Foucault (1974) famously pointed out that ‘[t]he frontiers of a book are never clear cut: beyond the title, the first lines and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network’ (p. 23). This represents a perfect description of the present book, which we like to think of as an assemblage of chapters which are both interrelated and standalone. Hence, chapters are often connected to other chapters (as well as to texts outside this book; Kristeva, 1980) in multiple and intersecting ways. This means that the book can be read in a variety of ways: from the beginning to the end (linearly), from the end to the beginning (reverse linearly), in random order, or by following the various intertextual hints and cross-references which link individual chapters to other texts in multiple and intersecting ways. We are hardly prescribing how the individual parts of the book are ‘used’, but nevertheless want to sketch out the focuses of the five parts and the individual chapters.

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Part I: Social Entrepreneurship, Political Representation and Myth-busting Part I is dedicated to critical analysis in the form of ‘myth-busting’; it looks into how important ideas in the field of social entrepreneurship are based on unchallenged assumptions which might take on a mythological form as they become naturalized as established truths. Myth-busting is based on the assumption that reliance on such casual assumptions increases the risk that social entrepreneurship will be based on false premises. Critique through ‘myth-busting’ thus encompasses empirical endeavors that ask whether popular ideas (read doxa) about social entrepreneurship are merely tall tales or whether they are actually true. A first example of myth-busting is offered in Chapter 2 by Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon and Robyn Owen, who unmask assumptions about the monumental growth of social enterprises that are widespread in UK government circles where social enterprise has for many years been a preferred object of government programs and policies. Official publications purport that the UK government, based upon one of the most advanced legal and financial social enterprise infrastructures in the world, has been able to spur phenomenal growth among such enterprises. The authors cast this claim into doubt by re-analyzing official growth numbers in the UK, and in particular the underlying definitions of ‘social enterprise’. They suggest that the reported population of social entrepreneurial organizations does not correspond with actual changes in everyday reality; instead, it forms a methodological artifact reflecting particular political decisions and interests. In Chapter 3, Janelle A. Kerlin and Tom H. Pollak tackle one of the most popular and powerful myths of the third sector: resource dependency theory (RDT), which argues that organizations’ behavior is partly a function of the availability of resources. RDT has been (mis)used by some nonprofit scholars to imply a causal relationship between cutbacks in public spending and the emergence of social entrepreneurship in the non-profit sector. However, Kerlin and Pollak, drawing upon detailed quantitative analysis, come to a very different conclusion as they re-open the debate about the assumption that, despite the widely varied definitions of social entrepreneurship, most (academic) renditions gravitate toward the understanding that social enterprises are either exclusively or predominantly financed via commercial income. Drawing on large-scale statistical data, this chapter homes in on and thereby unmasks as unfounded the popular assumption that non-profit organizations mutate into social enterprises as soon as non-commercial sources of income, such as government grants and private donations, become less available. In Chapter 4, Raymond Dart uses the two chapters by Teasdale et al. and Kerlin and Pollak as a springboard to address how myth-busting can

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undermine widely spread ideas. He looks toward the complex political and social contexts behind these widespread and inaccurate claims that encourage us to believe in some kind of Social Enterprise Revolution. Dart thus emphasizes the importance of casting doubt on claims about the exploding number of social enterprises, and about the non-profit sector systematically replacing lost governmental revenue with new commercial sources. Part II: Social Entrepreneurship, Ideology and Power Effects In Part II, we zoom in on demystification as a critical strategy geared toward debunking ideological renditions of social entrepreneurship. In contrast to the first part, which focuses mostly on the factual correctness of what is said about social entrepreneurship, this section is critically concerned with how ideology conditions social entrepreneurship according to the sectional interests of particularly powerful groups, and how these ideological representations in turn shape the actual practices of social entrepreneurs, policy makers, academics, and so on in determinate ways. The focus of Chapter 5 by Chris Mason and Michael Moran is the ideological operation of social entrepreneurship in UK and Australian policy-making by the leaders of the two countries’ Conservative parties. The authors explore the place of social enterprise in the Big Society: the policy philosophy that initially occupied the policy agenda of David Cameron in the UK and briefly of Tony Abbott in Australia. The chapter draws on Wingo’s framework of ‘veil politics’ (Wingo, 2003) to present the social enterprise myth as aesthetic adornment, tempting wider engagement and also as idealization. By unpacking how political leaders in the two countries deployed social enterprise, the authors summon Derrida’s concept of iterability to explain the different trajectories the social enterprise myth has taken in the two countries, as shown through the failed transition of the Big Society project from the UK to Australia. Chapter 6 by Pascal Dey and Chris Steyaert conceptually advances three distinct understandings of myth and demystification, including a discussion of their inherent benefits and limitations. Specifically, the authors first consider the dominant understanding of myth as false explanation (see Part I above). They go on to present an ideological view of myth which construes social entrepreneurship as a contingent social achievement which is passed off as ‘natural’ (see Mason and Moran, in Chapter 5). The chapter’s main contribution is its introducing ‘demystification from below’ as a form of critique which works through the dialectic tensions between ideology and utopia. Based on a study of non-profit practitioners, Dey and Steyaert illustrate how the local use of language simultaneously reproduces and transcends the myth of social entrepreneurship.

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Chapter 7 by Lew Perren builds on the themes of those two chapters while calling upon the semiological insights of Barthes (1972) to show that social entrepreneurship is a political myth that subtly frames capitalist thinking through a mind-controlling form of Orwellian ‘doublethink’ (Orwell, 1949). Perren concludes that evading such an intoxicating myth is problematic, but that Lakoff’s (2004) notion of ‘reframing’ might offer some guidance as a means of ideological escape. Part III: Social Entrepreneurship and its Enactments In Part III, we find two chapters that approach social entrepreneurship not as a stable, pre-existing ‘thing’, but as a phenomenon that is brought into existence as it is enacted through particular ‘doings’ (practices) and ‘sayings’ (talk and text). Allowing for an anti-essentialist understanding of social entrepreneurship, these authors pay close attention to the intricate ways in which social entrepreneurship is enacted; this allows us better to appreciate the contingency of the concept, and to be critically sensitive to the omissions or ‘absences’ (Law, 2004) that prevailing enactments of social entrepreneurship necessarily (and sometimes deliberately) produce. Chapter 8 by Stefanie Mauksch addresses the performative effects of social entrepreneurship. Following Judith Butler, Mauksch suggests that language – speaking about social entrepreneurship – is inextricably linked with existence – being or becoming a social entrepreneur. She suggests, in a truly Butlerian sense, that social entrepreneurship is a regulatory ideal: a ritualistic, reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names. Her chapter draws on an ethnographic study of social business events to shed light on how a particular social entrepreneurial vision gains appeal as a realizable approach. Mauksch calls attention to the performativity involved in establishing social business as a viable alternative for organizing global business. In Chapter 9, Pam Seanor questions the adequacy of academic narratives which frame trust in univocally positive terms by conceiving it as an essential lubricant in cooperative relationships between social enterprises and government. Based on interviews with social entrepreneurial practitioners and government officials in England, she demonstrates that trust, rather than forming a linear and stable ‘thing’, is a fluid, constantly chan­ ging and contested social practice. Shedding light on the co-implication of trust and control, and the ubiquity of distrust, ‘calculative trust’ and practitioner resistance, the chapter works as an injunction to rethink the centrality of trust in the everyday life of social enterprises. In Chapter 10, Karin Berglund homes in on the performative role of compassion in recruiting people to engage in social entrepreneurial

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a­ ctivities. Berglund offers a compelling case of how compassion enables social entrepreneurship discourses to prosper and multiply, while simultaneously precipitating dilemmas and troublesome situations: on the one hand, compassion is a key ingredient in alleviating suffering for the other; on the other hand, compassion is compatible with neoliberal government which aspires to nudge people toward particular actions by mobilizing their desires and passions. Part IV: Social Entrepreneurship, Participation and Democracy In Part IV, we present two chapters that address the relationship between social entrepreneurship and democracy. Reflecting social entrepreneurship in terms of its normative role in society, the emphasis of this part is placed squarely on the moral predicaments and limitations of social entrepreneurship as both a discourse and a practice. Considering participation and democracy as higher moral principles to which social enterprises should adhere at all times, this part takes an interest in both whether social entrepreneurial organizations already embrace normative principles of participation and democracy and why they ought to. Acknowledging the difficulties arising when social enterprises aspire to instigate social change, in Chapter 11, Trish Ruebottom asks how social entrepreneurial organizations can guarantee that what they do is actually just. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, Ruebottom contends that processes of democratic deliberation within organizations work to keep in check the risks associated with the economic, cultural and polit­ ical dimensions of social entrepreneurship. Identifying and elaborating on the main components of democratic deliberation, she suggests three elements – communicative education, reflexivity, and facilitation of the ideal speech situation – that allow social entrepreneurial organizations to establish a modus operandi which takes into account the viewpoints of the organizations’ beneficiaries, thus facilitating their self-determination and participation. Expanding her work on how social entrepreneurship leads to the marketization of the voluntary sector, in Chapter 12, Angela M. Eikenberry addresses whether and how social entrepreneurship can bring about democracy, as it tends less to foster mutual exchange and public deliberation, and more to inadvertently advance a political agenda of austerity cutbacks, deregulation and the contracting out of public services. She contends that even though social enterprises might foster some level of internal democracy (that is, democratic processes within individual organizations), they are ultimately limited in what they can contribute to democratic outcomes in a governance environment.

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In Chapter 13, Denise M. Horn accentuates the insights of the two chapters by contending that social entrepreneurship may lead to increased political empowerment only if human capabilities are fostered and states are willing to support these efforts. To Horn, social entrepreneurship must be viewed as an ethical and normative pursuit, one in which governments have a stake. Too often, however, scholars and practitioners tend to take for granted that social entrepreneurship will naturally lead to empowerment. Thus an intervention is also necessary: we must reinterpret the logic of ‘empowerment’ that underlies most development schemes and its relationship to democratization. Part V: Social Entrepreneurship, Relationality and the Possible The final part offers an affirmative take on critique to inquire into the new possibilities that social entrepreneurship can produce. Conceiving of social entrepreneurship as inherently relational, including both humans and non-human ‘things’, the kind of critique promoted in this part sets out to explore how social entrepreneurship works not as an individual-based endeavor (the ‘hero entrepreneur’) but as a distributed agency which creates systemic changes by reframing and reordering reality in radically new ways. In Chapter 14, Victor J. Friedman, Israel Sykes and Markus Strauch use field theory to suggest that the creation of value through social entrepreneurship forms an ongoing, relational process of co-creation. After laying out the theoretical foundations of field theory, the authors use the case of Beit Issie Shapiro, an Israeli non-profit, to illustrate the complex construction processes which eventually transformed the field of services for ­children with developmental disabilities. Emphasizing how Beit Issie Shapiro expanded the realm of the possible for both disabled children and their families, while simultaneously changing the social imagery of ‘disability’, the authors yield a key insight: theories of social entrepreneurship should move beyond individual perspectives and instead recognize the ontological role of relationships in constructing the social reality in which we live. Chapter 15 by Marta B. Calás, Seray Ergene and Linda Smircich repositions ‘social entrepreneurship’ in the contemporary context of the Anthropocene, when social, environmental and economic transform­ ation will require fundamental changes in (human/anthropocentric) modes of being in the world. The authors engage with three bodies of literature – postcapitalism, new materialisms and p ­ osthumanism  – to articulate a continuum of practices and entities they assemble as becoming-socialentrepreneurship. This assemblage holds the processes

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necessary to address the emergence of a post-anthropocentric world. The chapter’s contribution is both theoretical and empirically grounded, offering specific examples with contrasting interpretations, from a negation of social entrepreneurship to a hopeful reading of its becoming-socialentrepreneurship. Jenny Cameron in Chapter 16 closes the part (as well as the book) by reflecting on how a relational view of social entrepreneurship stimulates thought around forms of social change that radically shift what is thinkable and doable at any given time. Cameron further points out that a relational view of social entrepreneurship demonstrates the fecundity of using social research to grasp how changing frames enables us to realize the seemingly ‘impossible’.

NOTES 1. Minima Moralia is Adorno’s playful variation on Aristotle’s Magna Moralia. It has to be ‘noted’ that a ‘minim’ is in musical terms a note played for half of its duration (Garber, 2003). 2. This section draws partially on the typology of critical approaches developed in Dey and Steyaert (2012).

REFERENCES Adorno, Theodor W. (1974 [1951]), Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, London: New Left Books. Adorno, Theodor W. (1981), ‘Cultural criticism and society’, in Prisms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17–34. Adorno, Theodor W. (2005), Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, London: Verso. Alvesson, Mats and Yiannis Gabriel (2013), ‘Beyond formulaic research: In praise of greater diversity in organizational research and publications’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12 (2), 245–63. Barthes, Roland (1972), Mythologies, London: Vintage Books. Bruner, Jerome (1986), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buchanan, Ian (2010), A Dictionary of Critical Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, Judith (2001), What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue, accessed at http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en. Cho, Albert H. (2006), ‘Politics, values and social entrepreneurship: A critical appraisal’, in Johanna Mair, Jeffrey Robinson and Kai Hockerts (eds), Social Entrepreneurship, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 34–56. De Solla Price, Derek J. (1963), Little Science, Big Science, New York: Columbia University Press.

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Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (2000), Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques (1995), Points – Interviews 1974–1994, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2010), ‘The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship’, Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 1 (4), 85–108. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2012), ‘Social entrepreneurship: Critique and the radical enactment of the social’, Social Enterprise Journal, 8 (2), 90–107. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2015), ‘Tracing imagination in the ethics of entrepreneurship: Toward a critical hermeneutic of imagination’, in Alison Pullen and Carl Rhodes (eds), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organization, London: Routledge, pp. 231–48. Foucault, Michel (1974), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Routledge. Gabriel, Yiannis (2016), ‘The essay as an endangered species: Should we care?’, Journal of Management Studies, 53 (2), 244–9. Garber, Marjorie (2003), Quotation Marks, London: Routledge. Hjorth, Daniel (2017), ‘Critique nouvelle – an essay on affirmative-performative entrepreneurship research’, Revue de l’Entrepreneuriat, 1 (16), 47–54. Jaeggi, Rahel (2005), ‘“No individual can resist”: Minima Moralia as critique of forms of life’, Constellations, 12 (1), 65–83. Kristeva, Julia (1980), Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York: Columbia University Press. Lakoff, George (2004), Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your Values and Frame the Debate, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Law, John (2004), After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, New York: Routledge. Luke, Belinda G. and Vien Chu (2013), ‘Social enterprise versus social entrepreneurship: An examination of the “why” and “how” in pursuing social change’, International Small Business Journal, 31 (7), 764–84. Mauksch, Stefanie (2014), ‘More than “buzz”: About the promise and practice of social entrepreneurship’, Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik, 15 (1), 148–53. Nicholls, Alex (2010), ‘Institutionalizing social entrepreneurship in regulatory space: Reporting and disclosure by community interest companies’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35 (4), 394–415. Nicholls, Alex and Albert H. Cho (2006), ‘Social entrepreneurship: The structur­ ation of a field’, in Alex Nicholls (ed.), Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 99–118. O’Connor, Ellen (2006), ‘Location and relocation, visions and revisions: Opportunities for social entrepreneurship’, in Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth (eds), Entrepreneurship as Social Change, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 79–96. Orwell, George (1949 [2009]), Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin. Parker, Simon and Martin Parker (2017), ‘Antagonism, accommodation and agonism in Critical Management Studies: Alternative organizations as allies’, Human Relations, 70 (11), 1366–87. Rindova, Violina, Daved Barry and David J. Ketchen (2009), ‘Entrepreneuring as emancipation’, Academy of Management Review, 34 (3), 477–91.

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Sassmannshausen, Sean P. and Christine Volkmann (2016), ‘The scientometrics of social entrepreneurship and its establishment as an academic field’, Journal of Small Business Management, forthcoming. Steyaert, Chris (2004), ‘The prosaic of entrepreneurship’, in Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert (eds), Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship: A  Second Movement in Entrepreneurship Book, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 8–21. Steyaert, Chris and Daniel Hjorth (2006), Entrepreneurship As Social Change: A Third New Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Steyaert, Chris and Pascal Dey (2010), ‘Nine verbs to keep the social entrepreneurship research agenda “dangerous”’, The Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1 (2), 231–54. Steyaert, Chris, Olivier Germain and Amélie Jacquemin (2017), ‘Positioning entrepreneurship studies between critique and affirmation: Interview with Chris Steyaert’, Revue de l’Entrepreneuriat, 16 (1), 55–64. Weiskopf, Richard and Chris Steyaert (2009), ‘Metamorphoses in entrepreneurship studies: towards an affirmative politics of entrepreneuring’, in Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert (eds), The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 183–201. Wingo, Ajume H. (2003), Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001), Philosophical Investigations, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Wolfe Thompson, Jennifer (2002), ‘The death of the scholarly monograph in the humanities? Citation patterns in literary scholarship’, Libri, 52, 121–36.

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PART I

Social entrepreneurship, political ­representation and myth-busting

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2. A methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon and Robyn Owen (Baldock) INTRODUCTION It is relatively unproblematic to state that academic use of the labels ‘social entrepreneurship’ and ‘social enterprise’ is increasingly common (Bacq and Janssen, 2011; Defourny and Nyssens, 2010). It is also somewhat unproblematic to state that governments are paying increased attention to social enterprise as a policy solution to various social problems (Kerlin, 2009). But social enterprise is a contested concept whose meaning is politically, culturally, historically and geographically variable (Kerlin, 2009; Teasdale, 2012). While policy actions can be legitimized by the use of indicators or statistics (Kendall, 2000; Kingdon, 1984; Rehn, 2008), these statistics often conceal the social construction of empirical categories behind the veneer of scientific evidence (Smagorinsky, 1995). It would therefore become somewhat problematic if academics were to unquestioningly accept claims of dramatic growth in the number of social enterprises as truth. The United Kingdom (UK) is seen as having the most developed institutional support structure for social entrepreneurship / enterprise in the world (Nicholls, 2010a). In 2002 the Government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) set out a loose definition of social enterprise designed to capture the wide variety of different organizational types then associated with the label: ‘A social enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives, whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.’ (Department for Trade and Industry, 2002, p. 8). This definition allowed considerable scope for subsequent reinterpret­ ation by government as to what is and is not a social enterprise. The UK collects some of the most detailed official statistics pertaining to social enterprise in the world (Teasdale et al., 2011). These statistics appear to 19

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point to phenomenal growth in social enterprises since 2003, suggesting that UK government policy has been highly successful (Nicholls, 2010b). However, the symbolic use of evidence can promulgate myths and create meaning far beyond any intrinsic value of the data (Brown, 1994), and can be used to enrol others in particular courses of action (Latour, 1987). In the UK official statistics pointing to this phenomenal growth have been used to justify government policies including restructuring of the National Health Service, and wider moves to rebalance the welfare mix toward the private sector and social enterprises (Teasdale et al., 2012). Indeed governments from across the world have sought to learn from the ‘successful’ UK social enterprise experience (Young, 2011). Until now academics have had no reason to doubt these official statistics, leading some respected commentators to refer to dramatic growth in the number of social enterprises (see for example Haugh and Kitson, 2007; Chell et al., 2010). But in this chapter we demonstrate (through analysis of the different data sources used to construct the myth of social enterprise growth in the UK) that growth can primarily be explained by political modification of the way in which data is collected and reported. This enables the myth of social enterprise growth to be presented as truth by political actors to further their own ideological agendas. The chapter proceeds as follows. We first draw upon academic literature to understand how policy makers construct and symbolically present evidence to support their chosen policy solutions. Next we introduce the reader to the contested concept of social enterprise, paying particular attention to the fluidity of the concept across context and time. Drawing upon the UK experience, we show that social enterprise has been able to change shape to fit prevailing ideologies. We explore how official statistics pertaining to social enterprise growth have been used to legitimize political strategies, and how claims of growth in the numbers of social enterprises have been perpetuated in academic literature. In the empirical section of the chapter, we methodologically critique government-sponsored surveys of social enterprise. First, we show that growth is primarily a consequence of both changing the ways in which the statistics were constructed, and political decisions to include different organizational types as social enterprises. Second, we show that official statistics, which undermine the social enterprise growth myth, have been concealed. In our conclusion, we return to the more general literature to argue that where concepts are contested there is considerable scope for governments to manipulate evidence to further their own purposes. We then set out the more specific implications for social enterprise researchers and practitioners.

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THE SYMBOLIC ROLE OF EVIDENCE IN THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESS Policy solutions need to be considered legitimate by legislators for them to become accepted (Kingdon, 1984). Evidence has an important role to play in demonstrating the pragmatic legitimacy of policy solutions. For example, Kendall (2000), writing at a time when evidence-based policymaking was a central tenet of New Labour political discourse in the United Kingdom, argued that an important influence in bringing the third sector to the attention of policy makers was the new availability of a critical mass of indicators in the late 1990s. His assumption appears to be that these indicators provided pragmatic legitimacy to policy measures, which closely fitted the changing norms and values of a new government with an expressed ideological belief in the Third way – conceptualized by Giddens (1998) as beyond market liberalism and socialism. Evidence can also be used to confer the moral legitimacy of policy solutions. As Kingdon (1984) recognizes, being able to persuade policy makers that a policy solution is ideologically correct may be crucial in convincing legislators of its legitimacy. Using the example of Lysenkoism, Rehn (2008) illustrates this point to hint at the dangers of academics uncritically accepting the prevailing modes of thought in management studies. Lysenko persuaded Soviet legislators to adopt a particular type of agricultural science by presenting it as based upon practical science, while constantly shaping narratives to fit the prevailing (Soviet) language and ideology. In this way, he was always one step ahead of critical academics, as before they could react to a proposition, Lysenko had developed a new narrative (Rehn, 2008). The implication then for the policy-making process is clear: ideas which are able to fit prevailing ideologies face a greater chance of being accepted by legislators. And ideas which are able to constantly change shape in response to a shifting ideological environment are likely to have longevity as policy solutions. Drawing on the early work of Goffman (1959), institutional theorists focusing on the micro level of the organization have recognized that one way of influencing legitimacy is the use of symbols to convey meanings beyond their intrinsic value (Zott and Huy, 2007). Symbolic action can include narrative accounts (Burke, 1966). It can also involve the use of material symbols such as business plans to make a new venture appear legitimate to funders (Zott and Huy, 2007) by demonstrating that an organization conforms to the wider institutional norms (Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). But symbolic action is culturally contingent, and organizational (and political) actors must use symbols that conform to the expectations of their audiences (Goffman, 1959).

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Just as organizational actors can use evidence symbolically to legitimize their actions, so too can policy actors. Brown (1994) demonstrates how evidence can be suppressed to protect legitimacy, or manipulated to create legitimacy. Effectively the selective presentation of evidence is a form of symbolic action which can be used to portray legitimacy. Evidence is socially constructed (Berger and Luckman, 1966) and researchers are able to manipulate findings by careful construction of empirical categories (Smagorinsky, 1995). Rather than there being a single claim to truth there are often multiple and competing claims. So just as organizations are able to construct and present evidence which fits their pre-determined goals (Brown, 1994), policy makers are also able to choose from a selection of counter claims, each supported by empirical evidence (Campbell, 1985). And just as organizational actors can use evidence as symbolic proof of organizational legitimacy, policy makers can choose, or even construct, evidence which demonstrates the legitimacy of their policy solutions.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE Social enterprise is a concept that is variably interpreted according to historical, geographical, political, social, cultural and economic factors (Bacq and Janssen, 2011; Diochon and Anderson, 2009; Kerlin, 2009; Teasdale, 2012). At its broadest level social enterprise involves the use of market-based strategies to achieve social goals (Kerlin, 2009). What is meant by the term ‘social’ is often concealed, which hides the contestation played out between competing factions (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Lyon and Sepulveda, 2009; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Social enterprise has become particularly popular among academics, practitioners and policy makers across the world as a potential solution to a range of policy problems. These include, but are not limited to, a potential solution to area-based deprivation (Blackburn and Ram, 2006); an alternative vehicle for the delivery of publicly funded services (Simmons, 2008); a more effective means of international development (Peredo and Chrisman, 2006); an additional revenue raising stream for non-profits (Dees, 1998) or a potential alternative to winner-takes-all capitalism (Amin et al., 2002; Westall, 2001). It is of course unlikely that any single organization is able to achieve all this. It would appear that, like Lysenkoism, social enterprise is an idea which is constantly able to change shape in response to a shifting ideological environment. This is particularly apparent in the United Kingdom where social enterprise has been constantly reshaped by practitioners and policy makers to fit shifting social and political environments (Teasdale, 2012).

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Critique of the social enterprise growth myth ­23

Although the term had recently come to prominence in the US to refer to non-profits’ earned income strategies, and in some parts of Europe to refer to cooperatives, it had not entered common usage in the UK before the late 1990s. A loose alliance of influential practitioners from the cooperative and community development movements, sympathetic Labour politicians, and members of left-leaning think tanks adopted the concept of social enterprise as part of an ideological aim to radically change the ways of organizing markets (Grenier, 2009; Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2011; Westall, 2001). To attract further political support they presented social enterprise as an organizational form of the Third way and as a solution to the policy problem of area-based deprivation (Grenier, 2009; Teasdale, 2012). The concept was eagerly taken on board by a Labour government ideologically committed to a third way beyond state socialism and free market capitalism. In 1999, social enterprise was first presented as a response to area-based deprivation (Blackburn and Ram, 2006; HM Treasury, 1999). Between 1999 and 2001, social enterprise (also) became seen as a solution to the failure of markets to distribute goods and services equitably (Teasdale, 2012). By 2002, social enterprise was (additionally) portrayed as a policy solution to the failure of the state to deliver public services that were responsive to consumers (Simmons, 2008). In 2006, social enterprise became presented as a solution to the failure of the third sector to scale-up (Office of the Third Sector, 2006). Since 2008, social enterprise has been particularly emphasized as a vehicle through which public services can be spun off, allowing greater democratic ownership and control (Blond, 2009). Each extension of the concept has involved re-articulation through drawing on different claims and evidence. At different times and across different contexts policy actors have repackaged elements from different narratives to bolster their own legitimacy. For example, when legitimizing the use of social enterprises to deliver public services, they were presented as innovative and entrepreneurial, enabling access to public services and improving outcomes for the hardest to help (Office of the Third Sector, 2009). This was rather different from the emphasis in 1999 on social enterprises’ (supposed) ability to build social capital through democratic engagement and hence contribute to neighbourhood renewal (HM Treasury, 1999). So the fluidity of the concept permits considerable scope to select positive attributes in order to legitimize policy action.

THE MYTH OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISE GROWTH The first government-sponsored estimate of the number of social enterprises in the UK published in 2003 produced a total of 5300 (ECOTEC,

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2003). A mapping study undertaken for the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in 2004 estimated there were 15 000 social enterprises in the UK (IFF Research, 2005), although the methodology was described in The Economist as ‘slightly alarming’ by an ‘expert’ rumoured to be the editor of that journal. By 2005 the Annual Survey of Small Businesses (ASBS) was used to claim there were ‘at least’ 55 000 social enterprises in the UK, leading commentators relying on this data to argue that ‘a new characteristic of the third sector under New Labour has been the increase in the number of social enterprises’ (Haugh and Kitson, 2007, p. 975). In 2008, official government publications based on the 2007 ASBS revised this to an estimated 62 000 social enterprises. The statistics showing growth in social enterprise are regularly used in government publications, often combined with narratives of heroic success and a list of positive attributes (see for example Office of the Third Sector (OTS), 2006). The apparent growth from 55 000 to 62 000 social enterprises led to a Cabinet Office spokesperson stating that ‘We do believe that the number of social enterprises is increasing and therefore this new estimate is consistent with feedback from our partners that the sector is growing, which is great news.’ (cited in Hampson, 2009). The same spokesperson symbolically managed the myth of social enterprise growth by associating the statistics to other public bodies to portray legitimacy: ‘We have strengthened the methodology following advice from the Office of National Statistics.’ (Hampson, 2009). The statistics are regularly used by politicians and practitioners to legitimize their past and future actions, even where the relevance of the figure to the argument being made is not obvious. For example, in 2010, the Secretary of State for Health referred to the 62 000 social enterprises when announcing plans to ‘create the largest and most vibrant biggest social enterprise sector in the world’ through empowering ‘millions of public sector workers to become their own boss and help[ing] them to deliver better services’ (Department of Health, 2010). These estimates have been widely cited, not just in policy and practitioner literature, but also in academic publications (including, but not limited to, Bridgstock et al., 2010; Haugh and Kitson, 2007; Mawson, 2010; Spear et al., 2009) and the myth of social enterprise growth has been presented as absolute fact: ‘In the UK, social enterprises have undergone high growth rates with high levels of success in pursuit of their aims.’ (Chell et al., 2010, p. 486). It is perhaps surprising that the UK government estimates of 62 000 social enterprises have been so widely accepted, given that academics and policy makers have not been able to agree a common definition of social enterprise (Peattie and Morley, 2008). However, in previous articles we have

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Critique of the social enterprise growth myth ­25

also used these government figures. Our own (self) critical reflections suggest that just as practitioners and policy makers have used the statistics to legitimize their actions, so have academics sought to legitimize the field of social enterprise research by symbolically highlighting its importance using evidence.1 Put simply, we all need to demonstrate that our area of research is important when seeking to win research grants or to publish in high quality journals. Perhaps now that the field of social enterprise research has become relatively well established it is time to take a step back and explore the methodological foundations upon which our claims of growth are constructed.

THE POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE GROWTH MYTH As discussed earlier, social enterprise first entered the UK policy landscape in the late 1990s. In 1999, the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit produced Enterprise and Exclusion, which drew upon narrative profiles of successful social enterprises to claim that: ‘Social enterprises can make a positive contribution to the regeneration of deprived areas by helping to provide employment, goods, services and more generally build social capital.’ (HM Treasury, 1999, p. 112). A number of policy measures aimed at developing social enterprise activity were announced, and an indicator of the success of government policy was to be the level of social enterprise activity (HM Treasury, 1999). Following concerted lobbying by the social enterprise movement, a Social Enterprise Unit was established within the then DTI in 2001 (Bland, 2010; Grenier, 2009). The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, hosted a social enterprise seminar at which an ‘immediate need’ was identified for ‘better data’ and ‘more mapping of the sector’ if the ‘potential of social enterprise’ was to be realized (Kenyon and Crellin, 2001). Consequentially a social enterprise mapping working group involving civil servants, high profile practitioners and academics was created to pursue this need. This led to the government definition of social enterprise reproduced again here: ‘A social enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives, whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.’ (Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), 2002, p. 8). Three elements are crucial to this definition: 1. First, ‘a business’ implies that social enterprises are different from traditional charities as they trade in the marketplace.

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2. Second, ‘primarily social objectives’ distinguishes social enterprises from traditional businesses. 3. Third, ‘surpluses are principally reinvested’ (to meet their social object­ives) rather than ‘being driven by the need to maximise profits for shareholders and owners’. Over the next decade, four government-sponsored studies operationalized this definition as an empirical category in order to produce statistics pertaining to social enterprise scale and growth (see Table 2.1). In the following sections we methodologically critique these studies in turn, paying particular attention to political contestation over how to construct the empirical category of social enterprise and how the decisions taken have influenced evidence on the growth of social enterprise in the UK. We show that the social enterprise growth myth can be almost wholly explained by shifting interpretations of the key elements of the social enterprise definition, and related decisions as to which types of organization make up the population from which social enterprises are drawn. 2003: Up to 5300 Social Enterprises? Guidance on Mapping Social Enterprises In 2003 the DTI commissioned ECOTEC, an economic development consultancy, to examine how different mapping exercises had been carried out; to determine whether the DTI definition of social enterprise could be retrospectively applied to these surveys; and to provide guidance as to how to operationalize the DTI definition for future surveys. ECOTEC analysed 33 small-scale regional studies undertaken between 1999 and 2003. The studies used different approaches to collecting data, ranging from ‘top-down’ analysis of publicly available data from the Financial Services Authority to ‘bottom-up’ approaches approximating snowball sampling. Definitions of social enterprise varied, although most studies required core criteria of more than 50 per cent of income from trading; explicit social aims; and social ownership defined by ECOTEC as: ‘Autonomous organisations with a governance and ownership structure based on participation by stakeholder groups (users or clients, local community groups, etc.) or by trustees. Profits are distributed as profit sharing to stakeholders or used for the benefit of the community.’ (ECOTEC, 2003, p. 25). A ‘guesstimate’ of the number of social enterprises in the UK was derived from those existing studies, which adopted ‘defining characteristics’ of a 50 per cent trading level, and enabled a comparison with the wider business population. The proportion of social enterprises in the wider business

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ASBS dataset 2007

NSTSO dataset 2010

2007

2009–10

IFF Research, 2005

2004

ASBS dataset 2005

ECOTEC, 2003

1999–2003

2005

Data source

Survey undertaken

25% of income derived from trading

50% of income derived from trading

A business

Third sector organizations

50% of income derived from trading

All enterprises with less 25% of income than 250 employees derived from trading

All enterprises with less 25% of income than 250 employees derived from trading

Companies Limited by Guarantee and Industrial and Provident Societies

Existing local surveys

Sampling frame Reinvestment of surplus

Governance and ownership Surplus can only structure based on be distributed to democratic participation shareholders as profit sharing or used for the benefit of the community The primary purpose is to Asked whether profit pursue a social goal (or) is mainly distributed to make profit for owners, between owners, partners partners and shareholders and shareholders; (or) mainly reinvested in the organization or community, to further social goals Asks if organization is Organizations which a close fit with the DTI do not pay more than definition 50% of profit to owners/ shareholders Asks if organization is Organizations which a close fit with the DTI do not pay more than definition 50% of profit to owners/ shareholders Asks if organization is Asks whether (all) a close fit with the DTI surpluses are used to definition further social and/or environmental aims

Primarily social objectives

Interpretation of key elements

Table 2.1 Shifting interpretation of key elements of the social enterprise definition

8507

70 000 (62 000 figures based on rolling average)

55 000

‘around 15 000’

‘up to 5300’

Estimated enterprise population

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Social entrepreneurship

population ranged between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent in these studies. Applying this ratio to the population of businesses in the UK provided a total ‘of up to 5,300’ (ECOTEC, 2003). Guidance for future mapping studies included developing ‘tests’ based on the DTI definition. Social enterprises should be formally registered to imply a degree of permanence. They should derive at least 50 per cent of income through trading. A test that identifies whether an organization has primarily social objectives and whether in pursuit of these objectives it principally reinvests surpluses in the business or in the community was also recommended. Ideally, future work would identify this key element through examining legal forms and memorandums of association to ensure that core values are embedded in the legal constitution. However, this was recognized as time consuming. As a consequence, it was recommended that a first national mapping study should focus on Industrial and Provident Societies (IPS) and Companies Limited by Guarantee (CLG). In addition to those constituting the large majority of social enterprises captured in existing studies, these legal forms guaranteed social ownership.2 2004: 15,000 Social Enterprises? A Survey of Social Enterprises across the UK In 2004, the DTI commissioned IFF Research to conduct a mapping exercise of social enterprises in the UK. In this survey, an organization was considered a social enterprise if: ●● ●●

●● ●●

regular activities involve providing products or services in return for payment; that is, the enterprise has some form of trading activity; at least 25 per cent of funding is generated from trading; that is, through direct monetary exchange for the provision of goods and services; the primary purpose is to provide social/environmental goals; that is, rather than purely for profit; and they principally reinvest profit/surplus into the organization or community to further social/environmental goals; that is, at least 51 per cent of profit/surplus. (IFF Research, 2005, pp. 7–8)

Including all those organizations with more than 25 per cent trading income (instead of 50 per cent) was geared towards capturing newer social enterprises moving towards a 50 per cent trading threshold (IFF Research, 2005). That the revised approach might also capture organizations moving in the opposite directions as well as those that would never achieve a 50

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per cent trading threshold was seemingly not considered. Of course, it should not be overlooked that a higher estimate of the social enterprise population would legitimize the government’s large investment in the social enterprise support infrastructure, and more general commitment to develop the social enterprise sector (DTI, 2002). The sampling approach followed the ECOTEC guidance by focusing on Companies Limited by Guarantee (CLG), a large proportion of which were also charities, and Industrial and Provident Societies (IPS), a legal form commonly used by cooperatives. From a sample frame of 62 500 organizations, 8401 were interviewed and 3446 of these were identified as social enterprises. The survey was used to provide an estimate of around 15 000 social enterprises or 1.2 per cent of all enterprises in the UK. It was estimated that they contributed £18 billion to GDP, and employed 475 000 paid staff, of whom two-thirds were full time. Much of the apparent increase in the number of social enterprises from the earlier study is likely to be explained by the loosening of the trading threshold from 50 to 25 per cent. Also, it should be remembered that the earlier study generalized from studies undertaken prior to 2003, some of which had included democratic participation as a defining criterion of social enterprise (ECOTEC, 2003). 2007: 62 000 Social Enterprises? The Annual Small Business Surveys (ASBS) In 2004/5, the DTI added questions to the long-running Annual Small Business Surveys in order to estimate what proportion of mainstream businesses were social enterprises. This approach had been recommended by ECOTEC in order to capture social businesses and charities with a Company Limited by Share (CLS) legal form, and the new legal form of Community Interest Company (CIC) (ECOTEC, 2003). The survey was conducted by IFF Research, with academic input in the analysis and reporting (Atkinson et al., 2006). The survey used a self-classification system for social enterprises. For a business to be classified as a social enterprise they should: ●● ●● ●● ●●

think of themselves as a social enterprise (Q37 in the 2006/07 survey); not pay more than 50 per cent of profits to owners/shareholders (Q36); generate more than 25 per cent of income from traded goods/ services (Q34A); and think that they are a very good fit with the DTI definition (Q38). (IFF Research, 2008).

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Whereas the previous survey had only sampled organizations with explicit social ownership, this survey included all registered businesses, whatever their legal form. Rather than attempt to ensure that private businesses had a constitution which committed them to social aims and the reinvestment of surplus to meet those aims, the ASBS survey relied on respondents to answer test questions designed to ensure this criterion. However, the test questions were also changed from the previous survey. In the earlier IFF survey, respondents were explicitly asked if their organization reinvested the majority of surplus for social or environmental purposes (IFF Research, 2005). In the ASBS survey, the test question was modified such that organizations defined as social enterprises do not pay more than 50 per cent of profits to owners / shareholders. Of course, most businesses rarely pay more than 50 per cent of profits as dividends. According to the ASBS data, only 18 per cent of all SMEs paid more than 50 per cent of profits to owners / shareholders in 2007. To determine whether organizational objectives were primarily social, respondents were asked if they saw a close fit with the DTI definition. This differs from the previous (IFF Research) survey, which explicitly asked whether organizational objectives were to pursue a social (including environmental) goal (OR) to make profit for owners, partners and shareholders. The data presented from the ASBS surveys has previously been superficial, providing a single overall published figure of a minimum of 55 000 social enterprises, rising in 2009 to a minimum of 62 000 based on a threeyear rolling average for 2005/7 (Hampson, 2009). Closer analysis of the 2006/07 survey data (see Table 2.2) yields the key finding that the overwhelming majority (89 per cent) of the 151 organizations identified as social enterprises have a legal form that places no constraints on the distribution of profits to external shareholders (Companies Limited by Share, Partnerships or Sole Traders). Thus, these organizations would not have been considered social enterprises in the earlier surveys. The proportion of private for personal profit enterprises included in the mythical figure of 62 000 social enterprises had not been disclosed prior to the analysis in this chapter. A further political decision was made concerning the exclusion of the large number of enterprises (predominantly sole traders) not employing people but meeting the social enterprise tests. Including all respondents who met the test would increase the number of social enterprises to 234 000. This figure is notable by its absence in publications or policy documents. We suspect this figure was so far removed from earlier estimates that the legitimacy of the data would be questioned if published. The apparent growth from 15 000 social enterprises is more than

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0.9

4 100

0.4

2

467

56.1 19.9 1.9 0.2 17.6 0 3

262 93 9 1 82 0 14

%

Source:  ASBS 2007 (weighted).

Note:  Categories in bold usually associated with the ‘Third Sector’.

Sole Proprietorship Private Limited Company Public Limited Company Limited Partnership Partnership Cooperative Company Limited by   Guarantee (CLG) Friendly Society / Community   Benefit Society Community Interest Company  (CIC) Total

No.

All SEs (0–250 employees)

Table 2.2  Legal status by social enterprise

151

1

2

49 63 2 1 19 0 14

No.

100

0.7

1.3

32.4 41.7 1.3 0.7 12.6 0 9.3

%

SEs with 1 or more paid employees

9362

4

6

4363 3172 40 33 1682 11 41

No.

100

0.04

0.06

46.6 33.9 0.4 0.4 17.9 0.1 0.4

%

All small and medium enterprises

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explained by the political decision to include all businesses in the sampling frame. In the 2006/07 ASBS, only 0.7 per cent of respondents were identified as social enterprises and had a legal structure implying social ownership and constraints on profit distribution. This analysis suggests that if private enterprises with the potential to distribute profit to shareholders were excluded, there would only be 8000 social enterprises. To some extent, this decision reflected wider political contestation around the social enterprise context. The survey was designed at a time when more commercially orientated social enterprises had significant influence within the DTI and prominent practitioners argued that it was acceptable to create private profit through social enterprise (Teasdale, 2012). The dramatic growth from 15 000 to 55 000 can largely be attributed to political decisions to count private for-profit businesses as social enterprises then. However, the growth from 55 000 to 62 000 between 2005 and 2007 requires further consideration. This increase might perceivably have been explained by an increase in newly registered organizations identifying as social enterprises. However, closer analysis of the ASBS data reveals that only 5.3 per cent of the social enterprises in the 2007 survey had been trading for three years or less. The growth therefore is more likely to be a consequence of a higher proportion of existing businesses claiming to be a good fit with the DTI definition of social enterprise. However, the data are unable to tell us to what extent this represents a change in behaviour of these businesses or a generalized perception that being identified as a social enterprise is socially desirable / morally legitimate. 2009: 8507 Social Enterprises? The National Survey of Third Sector Organizations While the figure of 62 000 social enterprises is widely quoted, a later study of organizations with explicit social ownership (The National Survey of Third Sector Organizations) found only 8507. This survey was commissioned by the Cabinet Office and was carried out by Ipsos MORI over 2008/09. To be defined as a social enterprise an organization had to self-identify as: ●● ●● ●●

generating more than 50 per cent of income from trading (i.e. the sale of goods and services); reinvesting surplus to further social and environmental aims; and being a close fit with the DTI definition.

The sample frame of 170 552 third sector organizations (TSOs) was constructed by Guidestar UK, and included registered charities, CLGs,

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Table 2.3 Analysis of 2008/09 National Survey of Third Sector Organisations: questions related to social enterprise Percentage Estimate of population Involved in some trading activity
 Have more than 50% of income from trading Stated that they fit the social enterprise definition Agree with definition and have more than 50% of   income from trading
 More than 50% trading, fit the social enterprise  definition and use more than 50% of surplus for social and environmental goals

27.6 12.5 48.1 9.6

47 072 21 344 82 046 16 361

5.0

8507

Source:  NSTSO (2009), unweighted responses 5 48 939.

IPSs and CICs (Ipsos MORI, 2009). CLSs would only be included if they were trading subsidiaries of registered charities. Thus the sample frame considered exclusively organizations that were legally obliged to have ‘primarily social objectives’ and restrictions on the ‘reinvestment of surplus’ embedded in their constitution. From this sample, a postal and web survey was sent to 104 931 organizations, with a response rate of 47 per cent. Analysis using Ipsos MORI’s narrow definition of social enterprise derived using all the above criteria produces an estimate that 5 per cent of TSOs can be classified as social enterprises, a total of 8507 nationally. The question on reinvesting surplus was perhaps irrelevant given that the sampling criteria were designed to capture only organizations which reinvested all surpluses in the organization or to pursue social goals. However, this question led to the 35 per cent of organizations making a loss not being considered as social enterprises. When excluding this question on reinvesting, the number of organizations meeting the other tests is shown to be 16 361 (see Table 2.3), a number not dissimilar to the estimate of 15 000 social enterprises from 2004. The NSTSO dataset is deposited in the UK Data Archive but the estimate of the number of social enterprises has not been reported by government, arguably because it does not support the myth of social enterprise growth. Of course the main reason for the apparent decline in the number of social enterprises was the decision to sample only third sector organizations which by definition had explicit social ownership. But this could not easily be explained by the government. The survey was undertaken during a period when the Labour government was heavily promoting the third sector as a site for policy intervention, particularly as a means of delivering public services (Carmel and Harlock, 2008; Di Domenico et al., 2009). As

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part of this process, departmental responsibility for social enterprise had shifted from the DTI to the new Cabinet Office of the Third Sector (OTS). The government claimed that: ‘social enterprises are part of the “third sector”, which encompasses all organisations which are nongovernmental, principally reinvest surpluses in the community or organisation and seek to deliver social or environmental benefits.’ (OTS, 2006, p. 10). If this were true, then how might the government explain that the phenomenal growth in social enterprises was a consequence of the inclusion of organizations not considered part of the third sector? It would appear that protecting legitimacy was to be achieved by the careful suppression of evidence. Our methodological critique of the four government-sponsored surveys enables us to understand how the myth of social enterprise growth has been empirically constructed. All of the government-sponsored surveys have attempted to estimate the numbers of organizations meeting the social enterprise definition first specified by the DTI. While this definition has not changed, interpretation of the three key elements within it has altered dramatically. The first study undertaken by ECOTEC (2003) involved estimating from existing surveys what proportion of democratically controlled organizations with restrictions on the distribution of surplus derived at least half their income from trading. In the second study undertaken by IFF Research (2005) the criterion as to what constitutes a business was widened from achieving 50 per cent to just 25 per cent of income through trading. The apparently dramatic growth in social enterprises between 2004 and 2005 can be explained by changes to how the key element of ‘primarily social objectives’ was interpreted, from an emphasis on governance and ownership structures based on democratic participation to allowing respondents to decide whether they are a close fit with the DTI definition. At the same time, and perhaps crucially, the ‘reinvestment of surplus’ element has moved from a strict emphasis on surpluses only being distributed as stakeholder profit sharing (as followed by co-ops and mutuals) or used for the explicit benefit of the community to not using more than 50 per cent of surplus for personal profit. The reinterpretation of these elements allowed private businesses to be classified as social enterprises such that almost 90 per cent of the mythical 62 000 social enterprises are organizations which would not have been considered social enterprises under the original interpretation of the definition. The most recent National Survey of Third Sector Organisations allows an approximation as to how many social enterprises there are in the UK meeting the 2004 interpretation of the definition. Our analysis suggests around 16 000 third sector organizations would be considered social enterprises using this approach. Counting for-profit organizations as social enterprises seemingly accounts for almost all of the apparent growth between 2003 and 2007.

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CONCLUSION Organizational actors can use evidence as symbolic proof of organizational legitimacy. Evidence can also be symbolically managed to legitimize policy action. Where policy decisions are made for ideological reasons, evidence which confers pragmatic legitimacy on these decisions can be a particularly powerful tool. For example, evidence showing productivity growth or declining unemployment is often used to highlight the success (or failure) of government initiatives. Scientific evidence has a symbolic value far beyond the intrinsic value of the data which conceals the social construction of empirical categories. This enables policy makers to construct evidence and to use it to legitimize their actions through selective presentation. But while decisions made as to how to construct Gross Domestic Product or unemployment statistics are highly political, ­(relative) consensus as to what is meant by unemployment or national output places limits on the scope for political manipulation. To some extent, it may be that this is because unemployment and recession are policy problems. However, like Lysenkoism, social enterprise is a policy solution which perhaps makes it easier to redefine according to prevailing ideologies. The wider contribution of this chapter has been to show that where a policy solution such as social enterprise is highly contested, governments have more scope to select those aspects that fit its own ­ideological agenda and provide legitimacy to policy actions. A wide range of organizational types lays claim to the social enterprise concept. Each has its own compelling stories to tell. This has enabled governments to selectively draw attributes from competing myths in order to create a loose policy construct of social enterprise. Concealing ideological underpinnings of pervasive belief in market-based systems, and a desire to reduce the direct state provision of public services, this policy solution shifts over time and can seemingly be adapted to fit wider social and political contexts and respond to pressing social problems as they arise. One myth accepted by most protagonists is that of social enterprise growth. It is here that those attempting to promote social enterprise as a policy solution want to show the increasing importance of social enterprise to bolster their own legitimacy, and, as academics, we are not immune to this. In particular, the myth of social enterprise growth has enabled policy makers to lay claim to the success of their policies and to justify future policy action using social enterprise. But, as this chapter has shown, the myth of social enterprise growth can primarily be explained by political decisions to reinterpret key elements of the concept in response to shifting ideologies. Even where growth has been measured using the same (ASBS) survey, this is not a consequence of new organizations being formed as social

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e­nterprises, but rather existing organizations claiming to meet the social enterprise definition. We would argue that as the language of social enterprise (and the DTI definition) has infiltrated popular discourse, more individuals are aware of the social desirability or normative legitimacy attached to self identifying with this definition. Whether this growth reflects any real change in organizational behaviour is far from clear. So, the myth of social enterprise growth has been constructed through governments being able to manipulate survey methods and to selectively present evidence supporting the myth while concealing contradictory evidence. The widely referred to figure of 62 000 social enterprises does not accurately represent the types of (socially owned) organizations that government policy is aimed at. Despite being aware of this, governments have used the 62 000 figure to justify the success of their policy measures. Thus, just as organizations use evidence symbolically to portray legitimacy (Brown, 1994), governments can manipulate perceptions through the selection of data collection tools and reporting strategies. This would seem a form of symbolic action used to legitimate policy measures driven by ideology, particularly pertaining to the encouragement of third sector organizations to adopt more sustainable (market-orientated) funding mechanisms and to become involved in the delivery of public services. Our study has direct implications for practitioners and researchers. For entrepreneurship research, there is a need to go beyond accepting that definitions can change over time due to political influence, and to recognize that evidence is a social construct. Research is needed that explores the creation of such statistics rather than taking them as a singular truth. For practice and policy actors there is a common need to challenge evidence based on loose definitions, and for those using such data to be explicit on what they are collecting, what they are presenting and what they are excluding. With respect to social enterprise, this chapter shows that understanding the concept is not possible without understanding how myths are constructed and how such myths influence (or are influenced by) ideologies in policy and practice.

NOTES 1. See Nicholls (2010b) for an excellent account of the legitimization of the social entrepreneurship field by different institutional actors. 2. For an overview of the different legal forms adopted by social enterprises in the UK see Smith and Teasdale (2012).

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isomorphism in a pre-paradigmatic field’, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 34 (4), 611–33. Office of the Third Sector (OTS) (2006), Social Enterprise Action Plan: Scaling New Heights, London: Cabinet Office of the Third Sector. Office of the Third Sector (OTS) (2009), Enterprising Services, London: Cabinet Office of the Third Sector. Parkinson, Caroline and Carole Howorth (2008), ‘The language of social entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 20 (3), 285–309. Peattie, Ken and Adrian Morley (2008), ‘Eight paradoxes of the social enterprise research agenda’, Social Enterprise Journal, 4 (2), 91–107. Peredo, Ana M. and James J. Chrisman (2006), ‘Toward a theory of communitybased enterprise’, Academy of Management Review, 31 (2), 309–28. Rehn, Alf (2008), ‘On meta-ideology and moralization: A prolegomena to a critique of management studies’, Organization, 15 (4), 598–609. Ridley-Duff, Rory and Mike Bull (2011), Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice, London: Sage. Simmons, Richard (2008), ‘Harnessing social enterprise for local public services: The case of new leisure trusts in the UK’, Public Policy and Administration, 23 (3), 177–202. Smagorinsky, Peter (1995), ‘The social construction of data: Methodological problems of investigating learning in the zone of proximal development’, Review of Educational Research, 65 (3), 191–212. Smith, Graham and Simon Teasdale (2012), ‘Associative democracy and the social economy: Exploring the regulatory challenge’, Economy and Society, 41 (2), 151–76. Spear, Roger, Chris Cornforth and Mike Aiken (2009), ‘The governance challenges of social enterprises: Evidence from a UK empirical study’, Annals of Public and Co-operative Economics, 80 (2), 247–73. Teasdale, Simon (2012), ‘What’s in a name? Making sense of social enterprise discourses’, Public Policy and Administration, 22 (2), 99–115. Teasdale, Simon, Pete Alcock and Graham Smith (2012), ‘Legislating for the Big Society? The case of the Public Services (Social Value) Bill’, Public Money and Management, 32 (3), 139–55. Teasdale, Simon, Stephen McKay, Jenny Phillimore and Nina Teasdale (2011), ‘Exploring gender and social entrepreneurship: Women’s leadership, employment and participation in the third sector and social enterprises’, Voluntary Sector Review, 2 (1), 57–76. Westall, Andrea (2001), Value Led, Market Driven: Social Enterprise Solutions to Public Policy Goals, London: IPPR. Young, Niki M. (2011), Social Enterprise Coalition Rebrands as Social Enterprise UK, Civil Society, 4 August 2011, available at http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/ finance / news / content / 10183 / social _ enterprise _ coalition _ rebrands _ as _ social _ enterprise_uk. Zimmerman, Monica A. and Gerald J. Zeitz (2002), ‘Beyond survival: Achieving new venture growth by building legitimacy’, The Academy of Management Review, 27 (3), 414–31. Zott, Christoph and Quy N. Huy (2007), ‘How entrepreneurs use symbolic management to acquire resources’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 52 (1), 70–105.

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3. Nonprofit commercial revenue: a replacement for declining government grants and private contributions? Janelle A. Kerlin and Tom H. Pollak INTRODUCTION Nonprofits in the United States have used commercial activities to support mission-related activities since the founding of the country, when religious and community groups held bazaars and sold homemade goods to supplement voluntary donations (Crimmins and Keil, 1983). Over the past decade, some nonprofit scholars have noted an expansion in the use of commercial transactions by nonprofit organizations. They largely agree that commercial growth was stimulated primarily by cutbacks in government funding to nonprofits in the late 1970s and 1980s and, at times, decreases in private contributions. Lack of strong empirical support has led other scholars to contest these claims though without strong support of their own. To test the claims in this debate, this study uses large nonprofit revenue data sets spanning a 20-year period to determine whether a rise in nonprofit commercial revenue occurred and whether or not it replaced income lost from declines in both government grants and private contributions. Specifically, the study draws on weighted samples of charitable organ­ izations in the Internal Revenue Services’ Statistics of Income database to track nonprofit revenues from 1982 to 2002. As its primary hypothesis, the study proposes there was an increase in nonprofit commercial income as a percentage of total revenue from 1982 to 2002 that was greater than any increase in other revenue streams.1 As a secondary hypothesis it proposes that an exceptional2 rise in nonprofit commercial revenue is correlated with decreases in government grants as well as decreases in private contributions occurring separately or together. The study tests these hypotheses on the entire nonprofit sector (excluding nonprofit hospitals and higher 40

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­41

education institutions) as well as two nonprofit subsectors: arts and culture and human services.

LITERATURE REVIEW The nonprofit literature suggests that increases in public funding in earlier decades set the stage for the large impact of government cuts later on. Starting with Great Society programs of the 1960s, the federal government invested billions of dollars in poverty programs, education, health care, community development, the environment and the arts, channeling many of these funds through nonprofit programs spurring the expansion and creation of these organizations (Hodgkinson et al., 1992; Salamon, 1995; Young, 2003). However, the economic downturn in the late 1970s brought welfare retrenchment and large cutbacks in federal funding in the 1980s. By one estimate, social welfare cuts in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the loss of US$38 billion for nonprofits outside the health care field (Salamon, 1997). Other authors noted that hopes that private contributions would fill the gap were not realized, as private contributions dropped from 26 percent of nonprofit revenue in 1977 to 18 percent in 1992 (Hodgkinson and Weitzman, 2001). Scholars have attempted to show that nonprofits relying on government funding turned to commercial activities as a way to fill the gap left by cutbacks (Crimmins and Keil, 1983; Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004; Young, 2003). Salamon (1993) states, ‘[b]etween 1977 and 1989, nearly 40 percent of the growth of social service organization income and 51 percent of the growth of civic organization income came from fees and other commercial sources’ (p. 24). However, Foster and Bradach (2005) argue such statistics are taken out of context: ‘Fees and charges grew no faster in that 20-year period than other sources of revenue; they represented nearly half of the sector’s total revenue in 1997, just as they had in 1977’ (p. 93). Unfortunately, scholars have largely lacked the data to substantiate claims that government cuts directly resulted in increased nonprofit commercialization. The only analysis to rely on substantial nonprofit revenue data was conducted by Foster and Bradach (2005), who found that the share of total nonprofit revenue coming from commercial revenue declined by 3 percentage points from 1991 to 2001. They thus contested the claim that there even was a rise in nonprofit commercial revenue. However, their study only compared two points in time 10 years apart, considered only program service revenue (leaving out other forms of nonprofit commercial revenue), and failed to exclude hospitals and higher education institutions, which are clear outliers in the data. They also did not examine whether the

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relative decline in commercial revenue could have been because of a relative increase in some other revenue stream rather than an overall slowdown in growth in commercial revenue. Related research has also lacked empirical rigor. Based on a survey of 13 social service nonprofits in the Detroit area, LeRoux (2005) concluded that government cuts and decreased private contributions appeared to play a role in the adoption of earned income strategies but could not establish a causal association. Scholars have also attempted to extrapolate from findings in related large-scale data studies. For example, Guo (2006, p. 125) suggests that findings of a negative relationship between the sum of private donations and public funding and commercial income (Young, 1998) and an inverse association between commercial income and government funding (Stone et al., 2001) are evidence that ‘downsized private donations and public funding led to an increase in commercial revenues of nonprofits.’ Guo (2006) makes the same assumption based on a similar finding from his study of 67 nonprofit social service agencies, where donative revenues have an inverse relationship with nonprofit commercialization. Researchers who claim an increase in commercial revenue often use resource dependency theory to explain their findings. According to this theory, organizations depend on outside resources to operate and use ‘proactive strategies that can be pursued to deal with environmental constraints’ (Jaffee, 2001, p. 218). Thus, resource dependency proposes that nonprofit losses in government grants and other traditional funding may prompt an increase in commercial revenue as a replacement. Indeed, drawing on this theory, Eikenberry and Kluver (2004) maintain that, when public and private funders falter, one of the strategies nonprofits pursue is the use of market approaches to generate revenue. LeRoux (2005) similarly concludes that nonprofits ‘adopt [entrepreneurship] activities as a coping strategy when financial circumstances threaten to limit the scope of their service provision’ (p. 360). Other nonprofit literature alternatively proposes that more gradual rising costs to nonprofits and increased competition for private and government dollars may be the reason behind a continuing rise in commercial activity (Dees, 1998; Weisbrod, 2004). Rather than resource dependency, this line of reasoning is more compatible with institutional theory which broadly examines the effect of an operating environment on an organization (DiMaggio and Powell, 1988; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1995). Here institutionalization provides a means of coping with pressures from the outside. This perspective suggests that a nonprofit organization’s survival requires it to conform to the institutional environment in which it exists. Indeed research indicates that nonprofit organizations in complex environments succumb to normative and mimetic isomorphic pressures to

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­43

survive (Flood and Fennell, 1995; Rao, 1998). Thus, the highly commercial environment in the United States may be influencing the way nonprofits are responding to external pressures. A nonprofit’s increase in commercial activities may therefore be viewed as a passive acceptance of the broader environment in response to a number of outside pressures rather than a deliberate effort to subsidize declining revenue from discrete sources.

METHOD AND DATA This chapter examines nonprofit trends in government grants, private contributions and commercial activity over a 20-year period from 1982 to 2002 using financial data from IRS Forms 990 that 501(c)(3) charitable organizations file with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The data are from the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data files at the National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute. The SOI data set provides a number of advantages over other forms of data previously used for research on nonprofit commercialization trends. Among the most important, the sampled data set draws directly on financial information from all IRS-filing charitable organizations in the United States over a 20-year period. Financial information is taken from discrete lines of the IRS Form 990 that, in large part, allows for clear and consistent identification of revenue sources. However, the data set also has a number of limitations, including several that skew the analysis toward larger organizations. Most importantly, only nonreligious 501(c)(3) organizations with annual revenue above US$25 000 are required to file IRS Form 990 and are therefore in the data set. Also not included are organizations that file IRS Form 990-EZ (possible for organ­ izations with gross receipts of less than US$100 000 and total assets of less than US$250 000). Forms 990-EZ are available in separate SOI databases; however, they could not be used in this study because they do not have a line that separates out government grant information from total contributions as found on Form 990. The data set, created by the IRS every year,3 is based on stratified probability samples (later weighted) of IRS Forms 990 filed for a given tax year in the following two calendar years. For example, the 2002 study file consists of returns filed by organizations whose fiscal periods began in 2002 and ended any time between 31 December 2002 and 30 November 2003, and who filed a return for that period in calendar years 2003 or 2004. For each tax year, the IRS stratifies the samples by asset size with higher sampling rates for larger organizations.4 As a result the data set is heavily skewed toward medium and large nonprofits when not weighted (see Table 3.1). Sampling rates varied year to year. For tax year 2002, a

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Table 3.1 Number of organizations in SOI data set by size of total expenses (1982–2002 aggregated) Unweighted Less than 100K 100K to 250K 250K to 500K 500K to 1M 1M to 5M 5M to 10M Greater than 10M Total

Weighted

Number

Percentage

Number

Percentage

13 361 12 217 11 887 15 693 47 881 24 458 43 465 168 962

7.9 7.2 7.0 9.3 28.3 14.5 25.7 99.9

777 200 620 914 392 459 322 098 392 903 78 326 69 323 2 653 223

29.3 23.4 14.8 12.1 14.8 2.9 2.6 99.9

sample of 17 569 Forms 990 was taken from a total of 255 732 (Arnsberger, 2005). Also, data sets for the first few years of SOI data are relatively small in terms of overall numbers of organizations, creating problems for the separate analysis of some nonprofit subsectors in these years. Lastly, SOI data for the year 1984 are not available because the IRS did not collect a sampled data set for that year. The SOI data sets for each year were calculated in 2003 US dollars to adjust for inflation. Also, hospitals and higher education institutions were excluded because, as outliers in the data set, their long, stable and high level of earned income tended to mask new developments in the rest of the nonprofit sector in terms of commercial activity. Indeed, Foster and Bradach (2005) are critical of empirical research on nonprofit funding trends that includes hospitals and higher education. In addition to the entire nonprofit sector, the study also examined the arts and culture and the human service nonprofit subsectors. Nonprofit subsectors are divided into dominant service areas which often make use of different patterns of revenue streams (Young, 2006). As a consequence, they may be more or less vulnerable to shifts in their particular forms of funding and exhibit different types of responses. We therefore test our hypotheses on two different subsectors to see if findings remain consistent with those for all nonprofits. The arts and culture subsector consists of organizations involved in the media arts (film, television, radio, printing) to museums (art, history, natural history, science) and the full spectrum of performing arts (ballet, theater, orchestras, opera). It stands out as a subsector supported heavily by private contributions. The human service subsector is one of the larger nonprofit subcategories and also one of the most dependent on government grants. It consists of a large range of social

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­45

services including federated service organizations such as the American Red Cross, Young Men’s Christian Association and Salvation Army, as well as adoption and foster care services, family support services, victims’ services, residential care including hospices and centers that support the independence of the elderly, women, disabled, immigrants and homeless. Financial information on government grants, private contributions and commercial revenue, the three largest funding streams for nonprofits, was taken from specific lines on the IRS Form 990. Government grants (line 1c) include all government contributions that enable the recipient ‘to provide a service to, or maintain a facility for, the direct benefit of the public’ (IRS, 2001, p. 18). Private contributions (line 1a plus line 1b) include both direct contributions (gifts, grants, bequests from individuals, giving by corporations, estates and foundations, any funds raised by an outside fundraiser in the name of the organization) and membership dues (for which there is no return benefit to the giver) and indirect contributions (funds received indirectly through solicitation campaigns by federated fundraising agencies (for example, United Way) and from affiliated organizations such as parent organizations) (IRS, 2001). Commercial revenue combines four separate lines: program service revenue; dues and assessments; income from special events; and profit from sales of inventory. Program service revenue (line 2) includes funds collected directly from recipients receiving services from the organizations (for example, fees for service) or third-party payers (for example, insurance companies).5 Program service revenue also includes income from government contracts6 for work performed on behalf of or for the government and fees paid for by government funds (such as Medicare or Medicaid coverage for hospital services). Dues and assessments (line 3) includes only those dues and assessments that pay for membership benefits that individuals may receive as a member. Any amount in excess is included under contributions (IRS, 2001, p. 19).7 Likewise, with revenue from special events (line 9c) the revenue is reported under special events and the excess under contributions. Also included under commercial revenue is income from sales or inventory (line 10c) which includes ‘sales of those items the organization either makes to sell to others or buys for resale’ (IRS, 2001, p. 20). We include government contracts in program service revenue because they strongly resemble service agreements nonprofits engage in with for-profits and individuals.8 Indeed, at times government contracts cover direct fees the nonprofit would have charged individuals for services. Nonprofits also increasingly compete for these government contracts with for-profits (Salamon, 1997), who clearly view these contracts as market

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transactions. Also, government contracts are more important for some nonprofit subsectors than others, including the health industry and some social services that receive large Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Thus, the question of how government contracts are categorized may be more important for some subcategories than others and depend on the questions being considered. In contrast, government grants generally more loosely support a nonprofit’s mission or programs and are not intended to provide an immediate benefit to the donor (as government contracts provide). Indeed, government grants are closely aligned with private contributions in the IRS Form 990 instructions which state: ‘A grant or other payment from a governmental unit is treated as a [government] contribution if its primary purpose is to enable the donee to provide a service to, or maintain a facility for, the direct benefit of the public rather than to serve the direct and immediate needs of the grantor [the government] even if the public pays part of the expense of providing the service or facility’ (IRS, 2001, p. 18). We take two approaches to analyzing the data. We first perform a trend analysis to see whether, in the aggregate, commercial revenue rises in response to declines in private contributions and government grants. We then perform a panel analysis to determine whether growth in commercial revenue is a function of gain or loss in government grants and private contributions over six-year periods. For the panel analysis, we used SOI data to create a panel of financial records of individual organizations that could be used for assessing changes in revenue activity over time. We hypothesized that when an organization experiences a loss in private contributions or government grants, its managers respond by putting greater effort into generating commercial revenue through fees for goods and services. We expected that the results of these efforts would be most visible six years after noting such a loss because the business research literature often holds that new businesses need at least six years to mature and show performance in terms of profit (Amason et al., 2006; Hmieleski and Baron, 2009; Shrader et al., 2000; US Small Business Administration, 1992). Though not all commercial activities in our study were business venture in nature, the analysis was constructed to factor in a six-year lag from the year showing a decline in either private contributions or government grants to the year the commercial revenue of the organization was assessed. To achieve this, we constructed an unweighted data set containing all records from the SOI files dating back to 1982 excluding higher education and hospitals. Whenever financial data for a particular organization were available for two consecutive years plus a third period six years later, we created a new observation. For example, one observation might contain

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­47

Table 3.2 Number of organizations in panel and original data sets, 1982, 1985–96 (unweighted, excluding hospitals and higher education institutions)

1982 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 Total

Panel data sets (number of organizations in 1st file year)

Total SOI organizations

1344 1445 2613 4271 4048 4282 4535 4646 4973 4297 4687 5083 5191 51 415

2713 3476 5093 7689 9592 7809 8199 7189 7695 8086 7408 8141 9041 92 131

financial data for 1986, 1987 and 1993 for the same organization. The same organization could have multiple observations in the file (for example, it also had data for 1990, 1991 and 1997). Each ‘panel’ record was placed in one of two groups: government grants declined in absolute terms by more than 5 percent or government grants grew in absolute terms by more than 5 percent. The same action was taken in terms of private contributions. The groups were also tested respectively for declines and increases of 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent. If the literature is correct, one would expect to see greater commercial activity from year 2 to year 8 for those organizations that showed a decline in government grants or private contributions between years 1 and 2. Table 3.2 provides information on the size of the panel data set by first year in comparison with the original file year from the Statistics of Income data set.

RESULTS A Rise in Nonprofit Commercial Activity? Data findings showed that commercial revenue accounts for over half of all nonprofit revenue, even when excluding hospitals and higher

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Social entrepreneurship 300

Commercial revenue Private contributions Government grants

Billions of dollars

250 200 150 100

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

0

1982

50

Years

Figure 3.1 Selected sources of revenue for all nonprofits 1982–2002 in 2003 US dollars (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions) education, and it has been steadily increasing (Figure 3.1). From 1982 to 2002,9 the commercial revenue of nonprofits increased by 219 percent, private revenue by 197 percent and government grants by 169 percent.10 As a result, commercial income as a percentage of total nonprofit revenue rose from 48.1 percent in 1982 to 57.6 percent in 2002 (Figure 3.2). The percentage of total revenue from private contributions and government grants also rose slightly. These three sources increased steadily in real dollars, whereas revenues from rent, investment and assets remained relatively stable. Association of Commercial Activity with Other Revenue Streams The data on each revenue stream were examined to determine whether there was an association between declines in government grants and private contributions and increases in commercial activity that would have compensated for those losses. The only significant decrease in government grants came in 1986 when they fell by 18 percent. During this period private contributions picked up most of the slack by rising 24 percent. However,

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­49 70

Percentage of total revenue

60 50

Commercial revenue Private contributions Government grants

40 30 20 10

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1982

0 Year

Figure 3.2 Selected sources of revenue for all nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions) this increase in private contributions was not a deliberate response to the drop in government funding. Passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 encouraged increases in private giving in that year before less favorable tax policy for charitable contributions came into effect in 198711 (Auten et al., 1992). Commercial activity only grew by 10 percent during this time, about its annual average. The only noteworthy drop in private contributions occurred in 2002 when they fell by 7 percent. Commercial revenue continued to increase during this year but lack of data for subsequent years makes it difficult to determine whether this is an e­ xceptional occurrence to compensate for losses in private contributions. Panel Data Analysis Our panel analysis further confirmed that commercial revenue was not a factor in ‘filling in’ for losses in government grants and private contributions. As discussed above, we examined the commercial activity of organizations over a six-year period from a given tax year in which absolute gains or losses in government grants and private contributions were noted. Our analysis of change in government grants found there was

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Social entrepreneurship

Table 3.3 Percentage of nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions (excluding hospitals and higher education institutions) Government grants 1982 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Private contributions

Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

74 65 65 68 65 71 67 66 70 66 64 61 61

77 74 70 70 69 67 71 70 65 66 69 66 65

70 69 65 69 67 67 66 63 62 63 64 64 61

70 68 67 67 67 67 66 63 64 63 63 61 62

no significant difference in the percentage of nonprofits with increased commercial activity between the set of organizations that had an increase and the set of organizations that had a decrease of more than 5 percent in government grants (see the first two columns in Table 3.3). For example, in the second line of Table 3.3, 65 percent of nonprofits whose government grants dropped by more than 5 percent between 1985 and 1986 experienced a real growth (more than 5 percent) in commercial revenue by 1992. However, contrary to expectations, a slightly higher percent (74 percent) of nonprofits whose government grants rose by more than 5 percent also experienced real growth in commercial revenue. These findings for the two groups remain consistent for subsequent years with only minor variance. Thus, losses in government grants appear to make no difference in commercial activity when compared to increases in government grants for organizations. Our analysis of change in private contributions similarly showed no significant difference in commercial activity between the set of organizations that had an increase and the set of organizations that had a decrease of more than 5 percent in private contributions (see last two columns in Table 3.3). Government grants were considered to be a particularly volatile source of funding because of the possible sudden addition and conclusion/­

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Nonprofit commercial revenue ­51

termination of large government grants. To establish a point of comparison with our panel data set findings, we examined the average range of change in government grants on a yearly basis and found that with the exception of a few years, nonprofits experienced a range of 0 percent to 10 percent gain in government grant revenue from year to year. Given that our analysis tested only a 5 percent rate of change for government grants, we also tested rates of change at 10, 15, 20 and 25 percent and found no significant difference in findings. We also conducted ordinary least squares regression analysis on the panel data to ascertain any relationship between declines in government grants and private contributions and increases in commercial revenue. Independent variables were created that captured the percentage change in government grants and private contributions between the first and second years. We also created interaction variables for government grants and private contribution using a dummy variable when the percentage of change in government grants or private contributions was greater than 5 percent. An unrestricted net asset variable was also included to test whether access to funding reserves was influential. For all independent variables, results showed no association with increases in commercial revenue even when controlling for size (determined by annual expenses) and nonprofit subsector (see Table 3.4). We were also concerned that nonprofits following an overall growth strategy may show data patterns consistent with possible findings that did show an association between losses in government grants and private contributions and increases in commercial revenue. However, regression results, with an independent growth variable capturing percentage change from year 1 to 6 in all revenue except commercial revenue, showed no association.

ARTS AND CULTURE NONPROFITS A Rise in Nonprofit Commercial Activity? We examined the arts and culture nonprofit subsector to see if findings for the entire nonprofit sector held true across this nonprofit category that has a funding pattern quite distinct from other nonprofit subsectors and the nonprofit sector as a whole. The SOI data for these organizations show that in contrast to the picture for all nonprofits, commercial and private contribution revenue contributed almost equally until the late 1990s when private contributions surpassed commercial revenue by a large margin with the upturn in the economy during that period. Overall, from 1982 to

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52

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Variables of interest  Percentage change in   government grants  Percentage change in  contributions  Government grants   interaction variable  Contributions interaction  variable   Unrestricted net assets Controls   Total expenses   Arts and culture   Human services Intercept R2 Number of observations 0.0000 5.9110 1.7436 0.3443 .0001 51 415

0.0101

b

0.0000 60.6373 60.5613 60.5060

0.0366

SE

Model 1

0.0000 5.9156 1.7532 0.3472 0.0001 51 415

0.0005

b

0.0000 60.6374 60.5613 60.5060

0.0079

SE

Model 2

0.0000 5.9108 1.7442 0.3433 0.0001 51 415

0.0100

b

0.0000 60.6373 60.5613 60.5060

0.0366

SE

Model 3

0.0000 5.9157 1.7533 0.3472 0.0001 51 415

0.0005

b

0.0000 60.6374 60.5613 60.5060

0.0079

SE

Model 4

Table 3.4 Results of ordinary least squares regression to predict increases in commercial activity

0.0000 5.9122 1.7607 0.3469 0.0001 51 415

0.0000

b

0.0000 60.6373 60.5636 60.5060

0.0025

SE

Model 5



Nonprofit commercial revenue ­53 50 45

Percentage of total revenue

40 35 30

Commercial revenue Private contributions Government grants

25 20 15 10 5

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

0 Year

Figure 3.3 Selected sources of revenue for arts and culture nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue 2002, the commercial revenue of arts and culture nonprofits increased by 205 percent, private revenue by 337 percent, and government grants by 166 percent. Between 1982 and 2002, the share of arts and culture revenues coming from private contributions rose from 29.6 percent to 43.8 percent, whereas government grants dropped slightly (from 16.4 percent to 14.8 percent; see Figure 3.3). Though the share because of commercial revenue fluctuated somewhat, it was nearly the same in 2002 (36.6 percent) as in 1982 (35.4 percent). Thus, in the case of arts and culture nonprofits, increases in private contributions outdistanced increases in commercial revenue, in contrast to what is seen in the sector as a whole. Overall, it appears that revenue in the arts and culture subsector may be highly sensitive to changes in the overall economy, given the large increases in revenue when the economy was good in the late 1990s and decreases with the downturn in 2001.

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Table 3.5 Percentage of arts and culture nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions Government grants 1982 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Private contributions

Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

72 68 75 60 63 70 67 75 77 72 70 62 56

85 77 61 66 62 71 74 75 67 76 74 65 63

78 68 61 64 60 70 70 65 61 70 66 58 57

82 70 72 64 67 70 63 68 71 71 68 61 60

Association of Commercial Activity with Other Revenue Streams However, the data for arts and culture revenue streams paint a picture similar to all nonprofits when examined for associations between declines in government grants and private contributions and increases in commercial revenue. In 1986, government grants decreased 30.3 percent for arts and culture organizations. Not surprisingly, private contributions, which increased 40.4 percent, again appeared to compensate for losses. When private contributions fell 10.4 percent in 2001, commercial activity also fell 1.64 percent and government grants continued to rise 12.7 percent. In 2002, all three revenue streams fell by 3 to 5 percent. Thus, with the arts and culture subsector, declines in government grants and private contributions appear not to be associated with increases in commercial revenue. Panel analysis of the arts and culture revenue data also shows findings similar to those for all nonprofits, providing support for the argument that despite different funding patterns, nonprofits in different subcategories do  not appear to compensate for losses in private contributions and ­ government grants through increases in commercial revenue (see Table  3.5). Regression analysis that controlled for the arts and culture subsector similarly indicated no association between these variables (see Table 3.4).

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HUMAN SERVICE NONPROFITS A Rise in Nonprofit Commercial Activity? The large human service subsector is one of the most dependent on government grants, and therefore is assumed more likely to search for alternative sources of revenue (including commercial) in the face of government funding uncertainties. Indeed, SOI data show that although commercial income is the strongest revenue generator for these nonprofits, it is not increasing as fast as government grants. From 1982 to 2002, the commercial revenue of human service nonprofits increased by 270 percent, private contributions by 80 percent, and government grants by 337 percent. The rise in commercial revenue for human service nonprofits in particular may be driven in part by Medicare and Medicaid funds and other government contract situations. Overall, the human service subsector is the only one examined where government grants grew faster in dollars than other revenue streams. Both commercial revenue and government grants appear to be growing in importance for the human service subsector. In 1982, commercial income made up 50 percent of nonprofit revenue, but by 2002 it accounted for 59 percent. Government grants saw a similar, though slightly smaller, increase from 18 percent to 25 percent. Meanwhile, private contributions declined from 24 percent to 14 percent (see Figure 3.4). In contrast to all nonprofits and the arts and culture subsector, this subsector was the only one to experience a consistent increase in government grants as a share of total revenue that was on a par with the increase in commercial revenue. It was also the only one to see a significant drop in private contributions. SOI data findings of steady increases in government grants for the human service subsector have raised some questions about the reliability of the data, especially given known government cuts in the area of human services during the 1980s. A careful review of the federal government budget for human services during those years shows that, although certain government programs were cut, others rose in their stead, with the overall result being a relatively stable, increasing aggregate line for human service funding (see Figure 3.5). Thus, one explanation for the rather steady flow of government grants reported by human service nonprofits through the 1980s and 1990s is that when funding dried up in one federal program, nonprofits sought grants in other programs. Another may be that states stepped in with funding when the federal government cut programs in areas important to nonprofits (IRS Form 990 government grant data do not distinguish between federal and state funds). Also, this study’s finding that government grants to human service nonprofits increased steadily can

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Percentage of total revenue

60 50

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Figure 3.4  Selected sources of revenue for human service nonprofits 1982–2002 by percentage of total revenue only be attributed to larger human service nonprofits because of the nature of the SOI data set (organizations with less than US$25 000 in annual revenue and those that filed a 990-EZ Form are not included). Thus, it is possible that government cuts to specific programs had a greater impact on smaller nonprofits, an event which cannot be captured here. Another question raised in relation to the human service subsector in particular, is whether or not an increase in government contracts fueled much of the increase in nonprofit commercial revenue as shown in our data. The question arises because, as noted earlier, it is not possible to separate out government contract figures from program service revenue because of how the two are reported as an aggregate figure on IRS Form 990. However, research on state and local government contracting out provides a partial picture of its impact on nonprofits during the 1990s. Survey research sponsored by the Council of State Governments in 1997 found that out of about half the states (those that reported), on average 38 percent had privatized specific human service programs12 (Chi and Jasper, 1998). Survey research conducted in 1998 by the American State Administrators Project further showed that the actual extent of contracting out was modest: ‘More than one-half of the agencies (55.1 percent)

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18 16 14

Community service block grants

12

Interim assistance to states for immigration Payments to states for AFDC work programs

10 8

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Figure 3.5  Total federal human service outlays to state and local governments 1982–2002 (in billions of 2003 US dollars) contract out 10 percent of their budgets or less, and one-third contract out less than 5 percent of their budget’ (Brudney et al., 2005). In both surveys, contracting out predominately included both nonprofit and for-profit contracts, which diluted the actual nonprofit share involved. Thus these survey results indicate that contracting out on the state level may not have been the widespread government divestiture of programming that some have assumed. Also compelling is longitudinal survey research on the local level (including city and county governments) which found that, with the exception of a few outliers, the level of contracting out (to both nonprofits and for-profits) changed little through the 1990s. This held true for the human service programs13 tracked in the study (Greene, 2002). If local government contracting out remained largely steady during the 1990s while nonprofit commercial revenue increased during the same period, local contracting out is unlikely to be the main contributor to the growth in commercial revenue.

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Association of Commercial Activity with Other Revenue Streams When considering the association of human service commercial income with other revenue streams, the data here also show little evidence of a connection with downturns in either government grants or commercial activity. In 1999, when government grants fell 3.06 percent, commercial revenue all but leveled off with only a 2.70 percent increase, far below its average annual increase. Private contributions increased 6.86 percent, but only at about their average annual increase. In 2002, private contributions decreased 12.48 percent. During this time, commercial income grew only slightly at 4.26 percent, again below its average annual increase, and government grants fell 1.23 percent. The lack of association between increases in commercial revenue and declines in government grants and private contributions is further confirmed by the panel analysis we conducted on the human service subsector. Findings again showed results similar to those for all nonprofits (see Table 3.6). The finding of the same pattern indicates that even a subsector’s greater reliance on government grants may not result in increased commercial revenue over time. Regression analysis controlling for the human service subsector (see Table 3.4) also indicated no association between these variables.

Table 3.6 Percentage of human service nonprofits with absolute commercial revenue growth as a share of those with losses and gains in government grants and private contributions Government grants 1982 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

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Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

Losses > 5%

Gains > 5%

85 73 66 77 73 83 71 77 75 78 78 68 74

84 78 75 77 79 79 80 78 78 75 76 75 72

82 84 76 81 81 85 79 79 74 78 77 78 70

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CONCLUSION Evaluation of findings in relation to the three hypotheses presented in this study shows that some claims made by nonprofit scholars can be supported by this study whereas others cannot. Nonprofit commercial revenue (excluding hospitals and higher education) has risen as a share of total nonprofit revenue, though the rise from 48 percent to 58 percent from 1982 to 2002 may not have been as great as many assumed. There was also variation when considering some nonprofit subsectors. In the arts and culture subsector, private contributions rose faster than commercial ­revenue; commercial revenue only grew from 35 percent to 37 percent of total revenue during the same period in which private contributions rose from 30 percent to 44 percent of all revenue. Although the human service subsector saw large increases in commercial revenue as a percentage of total revenue (50–59 percent), government grants were close behind at 18–25 percent. On the other hand, this study found limited evidence to support nonprofit literature that argues that an increase in nonprofit commercial revenue was spurred on by cuts in government grants and private contributions. Indeed, although more analysis of individual subsectors is needed, the present research found no association between increases in commercial revenue and declines in either government grants or private giving. Findings also suggest implications for the use of resource dependency and institutional theories to explain changes in nonprofit resources over time. Resource dependency theory proposes that commercial revenue is a replacement strategy for lost traditional revenue. However, with limited episodes of losses in government grants and private contributions this theory is ultimately unable to explain the long, steady rise in commercial income. Institutional theory, on the other hand, suggests that the very steady rise in commercial activity without revenue losses elsewhere can be explained by broader outside pressures and environmental influence on nonprofits over time. Indeed, one of the most significant pressures on the nonprofit sector has been the recent dramatic increase in the overall number of nonprofits. According to Weitzman et al. (2002, p. 124), the number of 501(c)(3) organizations filing with the IRS rose 39 percent from 1992 to 1998, an average annual growth rate of almost 6 percent. Thus, it is likely that as the number of nonprofits has increased, so has competition for private contributions and government grants, traditional forms of nonprofit revenue. Indeed, the data in this study and other research14 show that traditional forms of nonprofit revenue have not kept pace with the increase in the number of nonprofits. This situation may have put pressure on nonprofits to seek out commercial forms of revenue.

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Another pressure on nonprofits has been growth in the need for nonprofit services. Weisbrod (1998) states, ‘need, as reflected by the number of uninsured persons, has grown [. . .] thereby increasing the pressure on nonprofits to find additional resources’ (p. 9). In addition, another likely source of pressure is the rising costs nonprofits have faced as they try to maintain their services over time. Institutional theory suggests that when a nonprofit faces external pressures, it will draw on institutional solutions from its environment. Thus, in their use of commercial activities, nonprofits may have drawn on a US environment rich in commercialism and commercial institutions when faced with outside pressures such as increasing costs, needs and competition for resources. Findings from this study therefore suggest that nonprofit finance trends may be best understood using institutional theory. To reiterate, this theory proposes that ‘organizations are best understood as embedded within communities, political systems, industries, or coordinative fields of organizations’ (Feeney, 1997, p. 490; see also DiMaggio and Powell, 1988; Milofsky and Hunter, 1994; Scott, 1995). This approach helps provide an understanding of the general upward trend in nonprofit commercial revenue as more directly related to environmental influences in terms of both pressures and solutions. Institutional theory may also be helpful in explaining other findings of this study. For example, private contributions in the arts may have risen dramatically in the second half of the 1990s because of the strong economy and excess disposable income associated with the time. The theoretical discussion also points to some practical implications. First, care should be taken when applying resource dependency theory to understand the financial behavior of nonprofit organizations. Although it may provide insights into the nonprofit solicitation of grants and contributions which can be obtained more immediately in the face of declines in revenue, it appears to be less useful in explaining when nonprofits venture into commercial activity. In this new territory, the market and competition create different rules of the game and require different development ­strategies; among them are the initial needs for large amounts of capital and a long start-up time to reap the desired revenue. Second, the institutional explanation behind the increase in commercial revenue supports the thesis that the ever-rising number of nonprofits is putting pressure on traditional forms of nonprofit revenue which are not keeping up. Indeed, the shift shown in this study from traditional to commercial revenue providing over 50 percent of total nonprofit revenue should be a signal to policymakers that traditional approaches to assisting the nonprofit sector need to be reevaluated. Changes might include policies that develop and leverage the sector’s ability to capitalize on commercial income while maintaining its nonprofit mission.

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Future research will examine the apparent relationship between the increasing number of nonprofit organizations and the simultaneous rise in commercial revenue, as well as further investigating the revenue trends of smaller nonprofit organizations not captured in this study.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Mahesh Somashekar and Amy Blackwood for their invaluable work on data analysis and Lei Zhang and Geoff Edwards for their research assistance.

NOTES   1. Where the increase in nonprofit commercial revenue as a percentage of total revenue reflects a rise in actual dollars rather than a decrease in other revenue streams.   2. ‘Exceptional’ is defined as any increase above the average annual increase in nonprofit commercial revenue.   3. For more information on IRS SOI sampling for years 1994 to 2002, see IRS publication, Charities and Other Tax-Exempt Organizations for those years at https://www.irs.gov/ statistics/soi-tax-stats-charities-and-other-tax-exempt-organizations-statistics.   4. For example, for the 2002 tax year, ‘sampling rates ranged from 1.03 percent for organizations reporting total assets less than $500,000 to 100 percent for organizations with assets of $30,000,000 or more’ (Arnsberger, 2005, p. 265).   5. Aside from typical service charges, this also includes tuition received by a school, funds from admissions to concerts or other events, registration fees for conferences and other forms of compensation received in exchange for a benefit.   6. Government contracts differ from government grants in that contracts typically involve a request for a particular, highly specified service with higher levels of oversight over the length of the contract. It is also often work that the government would have done itself and may have done in the past to further its own immediate purposes.   7. IRS instructions state that dues and assessments that exceed the worth of membership benefits should be reported under contributions in line 1a.  8. Although the question is an open debate in the field, some other nonprofit scholars agree government contracts are a form of commercial revenue for nonprofits (see Dees, 1998).  9. In Figure 3.1, the apparent drop in commercial revenue in the year 1998 occurred largely because two sizable organizations lost their tax-exempt status in the prior year: The Teachers Insurance Annuity Association and the College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF; Arnsberger, 2001). 10. We also calculated the average annual increase to account for year-to-year fluctuations. From 1982 to 2002, the average annual increase was 9.87 percent for commercial revenue, 9.08 percent for private contributions, and 9.13 percent for government grants. 11. The reform particularly impacted capital gains tax on gifts of appreciated property. Auten et al. (1992) note that, ‘In 1986 [. . .] average non-cash gifts in the highest income class more than doubled, from about $36,721 to $89,029, and accounted for 62.7 percent of contributions’ (p. 273). 12. State-level human services here included domestic violence services, group homes (juvenile rehabilitation), group homes (youth), day-treatment services, foster homes,

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specialized foster care, shelter care, child care, independent living support services, domestic violence, foster care, programs for the elderly, services for the disabled, transportation of clients, child welfare services, teen pregnancy prevention, family planning services. 13. Relevant local-level human services included day-care facilities, child welfare programs and programs for the elderly. 14. See Weisbrod (1998) for additional evidence of the relative stability of government grants and individual giving.

REFERENCES Amason, Allen C., Rodney C. Shrader and George H. Tompson (2006), ‘Newness and novelty: Relating top management team composition to new venture perform­ance’, Journal of Business Venturing, 21, 125–48. Arnsberger, Paul (2001), ‘Charities and other tax-exempt organizations’, accessed April 2006 at http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/charitablestats/article/0,,id597176,00. html. Arnsberger, Paul (2005), ‘Charities and other tax-exempt organizations’, accessed April 2006 at https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-charities-and-other-taxexempt-organizations-stati​stics. Auten, Gerald E., James M. Cilke and William C. Randolph (1992), ‘The effects of tax reform on charitable contributions’, National Tax Journal, 45, 267–90. Brudney, Jeffrey, Sergio Fernandez, Jay E. Ryu and Deil S. Wright (2005), ‘Exploring and explaining contracting out: Patterns among the American states’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15, 393–419. Chi, Keon S. and Cindy Jasper (1998), Private Practices: A Review of Privatization in State Government, Lexington, KY: The Council of State Governments. Crimmins, James C. and Mary Keil (1983), Enterprise in the Nonprofit Sector, New York: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Dees, J. Gregory (1998), ‘Enterprising nonprofits’, Harvard Business Review, 76 (1), 55–67. DiMaggio, Paul and Walter W. Powell (1988), ‘The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields’, in Carl Milofsky (ed.), Community Organizations: Studies in Resource Mobilization and Exchange, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–99. Eikenberry, Angela and Jodie D. Kluver (2004), ‘The marketization of the nonprofit sector: Civil society at risk?’, Public Administration Review, 64, 132–40. Feeney, Suzanne (1997), ‘Shifting the prism: Case explications of institutional analysis in nonprofit organizations’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 26, 489–508. Flood, Ann Barry and Mary L. Fennell (1995), ‘Through the lenses of organizational sociology: The role of organizational theory and research in conceptualizing and examining our health care system’, Journal of Health and Social Behavior (Extra Issue), 154–69. Foster, William and Jeffrey L. Bradach (2005), ‘Should nonprofits seek profits?’, Harvard Business Review, 83 (2), 92–100. Greene, Jeffrey D. (2002), Cities and Privatization: Prospects for the New Century, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Guo, Baorong (2006), ‘Charity for profit? Exploring factors associated with the commercialization of human service nonprofits’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35 (1), 123–38. Hmieleski, Keith M. and Robert A. Baron (2009), ‘Entrepreneurs’ optimism and new venture performance: A social cognitive perspective’, Academy of Management Journal, 52, 473–88. Hodgkinson, Virginia A. and Murray S. Weitzman (2001), ‘Overview: The state of the independent sector’, in J.S. Ott and L.A. Dicke (eds), The Nature of the Nonprofit Sector, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 9–22. Hodgkinson, Virginia A., Murray S. Weitzman, Christopher M. Toppe and Stephen M. Noga (1992), Non-profit Almanac 1992–1993, San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (2001), Form 990 instructions for 2001. Jaffee, David (2001), Organizational Theory: Tension and Change, New York: McGraw-Hill. LeRoux, Kelly M. (2005), ‘What drives nonprofit entrepreneurship? A look at budget trends of metro Detroit social service agencies’, American Review of Public Administration, 35, 350–62. Meyer, John W. and Bryan Rowan (1977), ‘Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony’, American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340–63. Milofsky, Carl and Albert Hunter (1994), ‘Where nonprofits come from: A theory of organizational emergence’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, San Francisco. Rao, Hayagreeva (1998), ‘Caveat emptor: The construction of nonprofit consumer watchdog organizations’, American Journal of Sociology, 103, 912–61. Salamon, Lester M. (1993), ‘The marketization of welfare: Changing nonprofit and for-profit roles in the American welfare state’, Social Service Review, 67 (1), 16–39. Salamon, Lester M. (1995), Partners in Public Service, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Salamon, Lester M. (1997), Holding the Center: America’s Nonprofit Sector at a Crossroads, New York: Nathan Cummings Foundation. Scott, W. Richard (1995), Institutions and Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Shrader, Rodney C., Benjamin M. Oviatt and Patricia P. McDougall (2000), ‘How new ventures exploit trade-offs among international risk factors: Lessons of the accelerated internationalization of the 21st century’, Academy of Management Journal, 43, 1227–47. Stone, Melissa M., Mark A. Hager and Jennifer J. Griffin (2001), ‘Organizational characteristics and funding environments: A study of a population of United Way-affiliated nonprofits’, Public Administration Review, 61, 276–89. US Small Business Administration (1992), ‘The state of small business, 1992’, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Weisbrod, Burton A. (1998), ‘The nonprofit mission and its financing: Growing links between nonprofits and the rest of the economy’, in Burton A. Weisbrod (ed.), To Profit or not to Profit: The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–22. Weisbrod, Burton A. (2004), ‘The pitfalls of profits’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2 (3), 40–47.

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Weitzman, Murray S., Nadine T. Jalandoni, Linda M. Lampkin and Thomas H. Pollak (2002), The New Nonprofit Almanac and Desk Reference, New York: Jossey-Bass. Young, Dennis R. (1998), ‘Commercialism in nonprofit social service associations: Its character, significance, and rationale’, in Burton A. Weisbrod (ed.), To Profit or not to Profit: The Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 195–216. Young, Dennis R. (2003), ‘New trends in the US non-profit sector: Towards market integration?’, in OECD (eds), The Nonprofit Sector in a Changing Economy, Paris: OECD, pp. 61–77. Young, Dennis R. (2006), Financing Nonprofits: Putting Theory into Practice, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

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4. Bursting the bubble: the mythologies of many social enterprises and enterpri$ing nonprofits Raymond Dart The murky nexus of social enterprise discussions continues to grow. Attempts to untangle this nexus are themselves frequently subject to being further enveloped in the miasma. How a social enterprise researcher myself, with my own forays into this perilous land, might usefully comment about two new pieces of research focused on the extent and importance of social enterprise-like activity, then, is problematic. I will begin commentary on the Kerlin and Pollak, and the Teasdale, Lyon and Owen chapters on a very basic and even colloquial basis. To me, the broad question area that these chapters engage is: ‘To what extent is the “social enterprise movement” (if we may call it that) an indication of large numbers of social enterprises and/or “enterprising” (meaning moneymaking) nonprofits?’ And contrariwise, ‘to what extent is the “movement” more of an indicator of semiotic shifts in names, labels, representations, categories, classifications and identities?’ From these two chapters, the short answer is that the data seem to strongly suggest the latter proposition. At very minimum, the Popperian answer would probably be that the data do not support the former proposition. Both the Kerlin and Pollak, and the Teasdale, Lyon and Owen chapters present data that question and problematize numerous and nearly ubiquitous claims that the number of social enterprise organizations is substantially growing and that the revenue generation approach used by nonprofit organizations is substantially changing. Both chapters do demonstrate change in the sector, but they also characterize this change based most strongly on the evolving political and social dynamics of labels, labeling and categorization. In short, many more organizations are calling themselves (or being called) social enterprises, and many more nonprofit organizations are reporting more commercial revenue, but these names and claims have problematic connections to underlying reality. There is more at stake here and it does relate to the nature of social 65

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enterprise. Numbers of organizations and amounts of earned revenue have not always been the central vision of what might be important about social enterprise. In the morass surrounding the endless debates about the definitions, meanings and importance of concepts such as social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation, it is all too easy to forget the authentic and distinctive hopefulness of the origins of the present day movement. I personally recall the sense of excitement when, as a doctoral student, I read New Social Entrepreneurs (1996) by social enterprise pioneers, Jed Emerson and Fay Twersky. Part of me (and of many in the nonprofit organization community) fearfully regarded their work initially as hubris. A slightly later and more excited part of me pondered whether this might follow George Bernard Shaw’s aphorism that ‘all great truths begin as blasphemies’. Was this a major conceptual and mindset breakthrough for those of us working in difficult nonprofit/ charitable ­settings? In Emerson and Twersky’s volume, there were interesting case study examples that inspired a lot of deeply fresh thinking and experimentation about different and perhaps better ways to help highly marginalized communities in highly difficult contexts. What is frequently lost as the social enterprise movement has grown, changed and institutionalized, however, is a clear idea that the basis for Emerson and Twersky’s inspiration was the sense that there were really innovative intervention and service models to be created that might dramatically improve social and environmental problem solving. Their inspiration was not first or centrally about creating a popular new form of legal structure. It was not first or centrally about making money either, except as an indirect byproduct of better models that helped vulnerable people. Their approach was more about opening our minds to perspectives and approaches to better help individuals and communities beyond those institutionally pervasive and arguably stale welfare state charitable service models that had become the norm. Yes, these models were business based, but their key importance was that they offered new models of intervention and engagement. Almost a decade later, Greg Dees (by no means a critic or outsider of the social enterprise mainstream) noted how far the emerging social enterprise movement had evolved away from Emerson and Twersky’s focus on program innovation. His call, that ‘social entrepreneurship is about innovation and impact, not income’ (2004, no page), was notable because of the emerging countercurrents that were much more focused on the primacy of fundamental marketization, of new ‘hybrid’ legal structures, of revenue generation, and of business planning. The distinction between these approaches – on the origin where fundamental service model innovation was the focus and it was approached often through business-like

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goals and business-like processes (Dart, 2004), and on the emerging social enterprise movement’s primary focus and even fetishization on those quasi-commercial means and structures themselves – is a great deal of what is at stake in current social enterprise practice, discourse and mythology. It is also the center of the research of the chapters in this section on political representation and myth-busting. As an academic researcher and a consultant, I have observed the drift from social enterprise as ‘daring new problem solving model to improve mission fulfillment’ to social enterprise as ‘hybrid quasi-commercial structure and operations’. The etiology of the change and rebalancing of means and ends is complex and political. Internal to the sector, many of us have found that ‘frame breaking innovations’ are actually quite difficult to create (surprise?) and may happen infrequently despite the plethora of social enterprise toolkits, consultants and international speakers. ‘Better problem solving’ is also hard to count by researchers in academia and government (and by practitioners who report to them), unlike either legal structures or revenue types. The point is that it is not only easier to count money and structures than it is to count innovation,1 but also that in our particular ideological climate counting anything that shows vast numbers of social enterprise organizations and vast amounts of earned revenue may be the preferred course of action, even if the counting requires considerable ontological and semiotic flexibility. The two chapters in this section address issues of the mythologies of the social enterprise movement(s) and the sociopolitical contexts in which these mythologies live and thrive. Empirical issues and political agendas are at stake here. Consider the widespread belief in the explosive growth of the social enterprise population. Several jurisdictions in the world (the UK, Israel, Australia or the United States, among others) have staked significant political, resource and reputational space as being leading sites for this species of innovation. The chapter by Teasdale et al. deconstructs the highly lauded apparent growth of social enterprises in the UK. Their thorough and interesting chapter documents the kind of fudging (there is no better word for it) of ambiguous social enterprise population statistics that seems ubiquitous in contexts with political interests in this area. In my own work in Canada (Dart et al., 2010), we experienced an almost comical research process in our attempt to count in some manner the population of social enterprises in the Canadian province of Ontario. The fundamental intersection of definitional plasticity and ambiguity with basic methodological limitations meant that we could have created/ counted a huge population of social enterprises if we followed the advice of several in the social enterprise community (including a number of

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academics) and included all organizations that produced both social and economic value. However, even some social enterprise stalwarts would have been uncomfortable with the inclusion of organizations like large chartered banks and waste management companies in the social enterprise population count. And such a catch-all approach would also have meant double counting organizations that were otherwise comfortably situated in either nonprofit/charitable or business sectors. Contrariwise, we could have produced social enterprise numbers in the low dozens in Canada’s most populous province if we looked for organizations which more strictly pro-socially innovated à la Emerson and Twersky. Of course, the more fine grained (that is, rigorous, specific and particular) the definition of social enterprise, the more difficult, costly and time consuming was the data collection since all cases would need to be examined individually. In other Canadian jurisdictions, other researchers have found much higher densities of social enterprises, though they normally include many organizations and broad organization categories (such as farmers markets or credit unions) that have and had been understood and identified as normal parts of the community organization, nonprofit organization, cooperative and charity tapestry for decades. The size of any social enterprise population clearly depends on a number of decisions made by those who count the population. This means that the counter creates the population first, and then subsequently counts it afterwards. We do not know how many pro-social organizations (nonprofit, hybrid or business) are attempting and/or succeeding in kinds of innovative social problem solving suggested by those at the beginning of the social enterprise movement. Given the idiosyncratic nature of phenomena such as innovative social problem-solving approaches, they are likely to be uncountable in any kind of simple and systematic manner. We can only easily count things for which data are systematically collected, such as type of incorporation or categories of charitable revenue. Unfortunately, these data are deeply problematic if we are trying to count the numbers of organizations that are engaged in innovative social problem solving. Categories of incorporation (or even self-descriptions of identity) will only give us fragmentary and ambiguous data if we seek to understand what organizations actually do. Those of us with more than a cursory connection to the field know that most of the organizations presented as paragons of social enterprise are (in legal terms) reasonably straightforward nonprofit/charity organizations. How can we count social enterprise organizations which are, in behavioural terms, only gradationally different from their comparators and which have identical legal structures?2 While relatively few jurisdictions have (as yet) popular legal/structural

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categories of social enterprise, many more have taken growth in ‘earned revenue’ by charities and nonprofits as a reasonable proxy of both nonprofit sector progress and of social enterprise-like organizational activity. Here, the assumption is that nonprofit and/or charitable sectors are being transformed along enterprising nonprofit and social entrepreneurial themes. The widespread myth is that as governments have shifted from liberal welfare state models to most recently neo-liberal regimes, nonprofits and charities can maintain and even enhance their activities by marketizing their services, diversifying their revenue sources and reducing their dependence on decreasing government funds. Kerlin and Pollack’s chapter deconstructs this belief, though perhaps even more than the authors realize. Their huge American dataset shows no pattern of earned revenue following declines in government grants to charitable sector organizations. There is no evidence in their data that nonprofits transform into social enterprises in response to governmental funding cuts, at least not systematically. However, the authors do document a very significant increase in ‘commercial revenue’ in the sector which itself could support the beliefs of some of the proponents and advocates of the social enterprise movement. My own research experience with Canadian and New Zealand social enterprise organizations led me to query more closely the ‘commercial revenue’ category reported here. Several of the organizations that I have worked with and studied have included a number of highly curious items in what they have described as commercial revenue or earned income. Kerlin and Pollak note a significant growth in the ‘commercial revenue’ stream via the ‘earned revenue/earned income’ categories of American nonprofit organizations. However, they are clearly aware that ‘earned income’ also includes government contracts and third party payment for services (which is frequently governmental, such as the medical reimbursement in Obamacare). This suggests that at least a significant portion of the widely trumpeted shift to so-called commercial revenue is actually the much more broadly understood shift in governmental funding in most OECD jurisdictions from governmental grant funding to more transactional governmental and quasi-governmental contracts and fee-for-service (for example Smith and Lipsky, 1993; Scott, 2003). Rather than the myth of earned revenue replacing government funding, it might more accurately be understood as a relabeling and a reorganization of governmental funding under what was formerly called New Public Management contractual and structural terms (Hood and Dixon, 2015; Osborne et al., 2015). It is worth considering the broader implications of these two important chapters. The implications for those of us working at the organizational level, either as practitioners or researchers in/of social enterprises and

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nonprofit organizations, are relatively straightforward. We are challenged to recall the essentially important issue that the social enterprise movement emerged as a response to the need for better social change and intervention models. This suggests that the more tactical focus on either organizational structure or modes of revenue generation needs to be understood as only a means to this strategic end, rather than an end in itself. We are challenged (on one hand) to look through the mythologies of enterprising nonprofit revenue generation and social enterprise hybrid legal structures and to focus more rigorously on the pro-social mission-serving dimensions of organization and intervention design. On the other hand, if we consider the implications of the findings of these chapters beyond the organizational level, and look at the macro political context, then we look at correspondingly more expansive implications. What political agendas and interests are served by the cultivation of a mythology of a vast social enterprise transformation of nonprofit and charitable sectors? Cui bono? What is the political context of the expect­ ations and hopes regarding social enterprise such that both its numbers and impacts are being massively oversold? The inflated claims of the advocates of the social enterprise movement seem the equivalent of skirmishes in a bigger proxy war waged by neoliberal managerial triumphalists against their enemies. It is increasingly clear that much of the statistics, research and attempts at knowledge creation by social enterprise advocates are in fact advocacy rather than information, and created to confirm assumptions and even hopes rather than dispassionately and critically to assess information. Here, we may be well advised to recall Weber’s distinction between the use of words as weapons and the use of words as ploughshares (Weber, 1947). This can help to illuminate the difference between the manner in which academia might ideally3 approach the construction and utilization of knowledge around social enterprise (‘ploughshares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought’) and those used in a more political social enterprise advocacy context (‘means of canvassing votes and winning over others [. . .] they are swords against the enemies’). The mythologies of the social enterprise movement may not withstand academic and critical empirical scrutiny, although they are certainly within what would be considered ‘normal science’ (Kuhn, 1962) inside the pervasive neoliberal political paradigm. Kuhn suggested that challenges to accepted ‘facts’ of a particularly paradigmatic environment are normally refuted, ignored or marginalized because the alternative is an unacceptable challenge of a broader and taken-for-granted intellectual and institutional framework. In that sense, given the ideological resonances between the social enterprise movement and our broader intellectual,

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political and ­economic environments, our modest attempts at mythological bubble-bursting may be mostly ineffectual, even if accurate, unless they also squarely and explicitly point to the business-privileging neo-liberal context in which they are legitimized and validated.

NOTES 1. Here, I must echo editor Pascal Dey who noted that this is evidence that even scholars are tempted by lower hanging fruit. 2. It is easier to understand why we might want to count them, of course. And it is easier to understand why governments and other stakeholders might want those counts to be high. 3. Though we do understand all academia as normative and subject to both macro and micro interests.

REFERENCES Dart, Raymond (2004), ‘Being “Business-Like” in a Nonprofit Organization: A Grounded and Inductive Typology’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 33 (2), 290–310. Dart, Raymond, Erin Clow and Ann Armstrong (2010), ‘Meaning difficulties in the mapping of social enterprises’, Social Enterprise Journal, 6 (3), 186–96. Dees, Gregory J. (2004), Social Entrepreneurship is about Innovation and Impact, not Income, CASE Collection Newsletter, Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, Duke University. Emerson, Jed and Fay Twersky (1996), New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Non-profit Enterprise Creation, San Francisco, CA: The Roberts Foundation. Hood, Christopher and Ruth Dixon (2015), ‘What we have to show for 30 years of new public management: Higher costs, more complaints’, Governance, 28 (3), 265–7. Kuhn, Thomas (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Osborne, Stephen P., Zoe Radnor, Tony Kinder and Isabel Vidal (2015), ‘The SERVICE framework: A public-service-dominant approach to sustainable public services’, British Journal of Management, 26 (3), 424–38. Scott, Katherine (2003), Funding Matters: The Impact of Canada’s New Funding Regime on Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations, Ottawa: Canadian Council on Social Development. Smith, Steven R. and Michael Lipsky (1993), Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weber, Max (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, New York: Free Press.

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PART II

Social entrepreneurship, ideology and power effects

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5. The tale of the veil: unweaving Big Society and the social enterprise myth Chris Mason and Michael Moran INTRODUCTION The purpose of this chapter is to appraise the position of social enterprise within a defined political context and policy agenda: the Big Society in England under the Conservative–Liberal Democratic coalition government of David Cameron, and its largely still-born transmission to Australia under the Conservative Liberal–National coalition of Tony Abbott between 2010 and 2014. Social enterprise has become a central feature of government efforts to prop up civil society’s engagement with the public and private sectors in recent years. Despite the heightened polit­ ical focus and policy activity, social enterprise still represents something of a ‘problem child’ as governments seek to provide a supportive framework to aid development, while also rolling-out cuts to essential public services. There are two factors influencing the choice of context, both of which were shaped by the broader issue of macroeconomic retrenchments. The first is the status of the Big Society policy agenda by the United Kingdom (UK) government, which experienced some major implementation difficulties (Whelan et al., 2012). Having been launched in 2010 as part of the Conservatives’ vision for civic renewal and community-led public sector reform, it was dogged by a number of ideological and implementation difficulties. This is of interest to the social enterprise scholarly debate, since the Big Society represented a major political movement bringing social enterprise closer to the heart of governance reform, illustrated symbolically by the presence of 16 social entrepreneurs at the inaugural Big Society launch in May 2010 in Liverpool (Allen et al., 2012). There is an ongoing debate about the suitability of social enterprise in these reforms, and the place of social enterprise at the centre of Big Society policy-led action. With this in mind, we frame social enterprise as a source for political myth, because it is through social enterprise that stories of 75

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sustainable social change and multi-sector engagement are thought to be achieved. Consequently, social enterprise plays a significant part in validating the political goal of achieving economic recovery alongside social regeneration, while ostensibly marking a shift from ‘big state’ to Big Society (Flinders and Moon, 2011, p. 652). To further extend our analysis, we adapt the notion of ‘veil politics’ as proposed by Wingo (2003) as our conceptual framework, to explore the execution of the myth into public life. Following Bottici and Challand (2006), we utilize the normative and purposive position of Wingo’s initial veil politics by viewing his three types of political veils in a critical light. Rather than examining political myths as necessary in spreading civic and democratic virtues (as Wingo does), we see the veils as also capable of obscuring clarity, distorting facts, and misrepresentation. Although the veils are useful techniques in the political sphere, they are not necessarily deployed in the best interests of key public stakeholders. The second factor looks to the future and portability (as well as the iterability) of the Big Society, especially its future destinations and possible applications. To examine this, we review the political conditions in Australia under the leadership of the relatively short-lived prime ministership of Tony Abbott. We assess whether the change in government brought in a variant of the Big Society, by stealth as much as by explicit design, through the adoption of a policy agenda that attempted to forge a similar so-called Red Tory alternative to state and market and a more overt reliance on the voluntary sector (including social enterprise). In the lead-up to the 2013 Australian federal election, the Big Society received significant attention from the Conservative Liberal Party of Australia, with the then opposition leader, Abbott, and several key shadow ministers meeting Big Society guru and original proponent of the term, Phillip Blond, during a speaking tour of Australia. The core tenets of the Big Society were also earlier echoed in Abbott’s key social policy platform, A Plan for Stronger Communities, in which he focused on ‘empowered’ communities and the voluntary sector (Abbott, 2012a; Whelan et al., 2012). After the election of the Liberal–National coalition government, explicit talk of adopting the Big Society into the Australian public policy environment cooled somewhat but it offers an interesting comparative case study for assessing the portability of conservative ideas regarding social enterprise based on our understanding of the ‘myth and veil’ approach.

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POLITICAL MYTH AND SOCIAL ENTERPRISE Myth has a well-acknowledged place in studies of political discourses, although attempts to capture a definition of myth remain quite elusive (Flood, 2002). Myth covers a broad terrain, encapsulating content, form and process, as well as its co-location in narratives and discourses (Bottici, 2011). Myth is often used in reference to a specific set of social narratives that create an alternative conception of reality. Importantly, myth is often inaccurately referred to as evoking a sense of what is true/false (Dey and Steyaert, Chapter 6, this volume), and our understanding of myth aligns with what Bottici (2011, p. 36, italics in original) refers to as ‘the process of elaborating the possible variants of a story’. This view encourages taking myth beyond a mere object of analysis, thereby accommodating the view that myths contain a narrative core that is worked upon to shape myths to new audiences. Importantly, myth refers to how an object has already been worked upon to enable the creation of an alternative meaning. For this reason, we turn our attention to political myth, and consequently the place myth holds in political discourses. Flood (2002, p. 44) defines political myth as ‘an ideologically marked narrative which purports to give a true account of a set of past, present or predicted future events and which is accepted as valid in its essentials by a social group’. The process of political myth-making, or mythopoeia, refers to infiltrating public discourses in order to re-shape their meaning to better represent the interests of powerful political actors. Thus, we frame our understanding of mythopoeia as the intentional distortion of meaning in discourses (Tudor, 1972), with the ultimate aim of reinforcing prevailing political power structures. Mythopoeia, as Bottici and Challand (2006, p. 316) phrase it, is part of a ‘continual process of work on a common narrative’, whereby the myths are used to add to prevailing narratives that epitomize a political regime. The same narrative can therefore be worked upon to create ‘significance to the political conditions and experiences of a social group’ (Bottici, 2011, p. 39). Myths are also linked to discourses as a consequence of the contribution core narratives make to them, and this is conceptualized as a complex relationship. There has been a growing emphasis in research on the types of myths that surround social enterprise and related areas. For example, Teasdale, Lyon and Owen (Chapter 2, this volume) argued that the idea of social enterprise growth is something of a myth. This view is supported by evidence from their analysis of the UK government’s methodological approach, which obfuscates the reliability between sources used. The implication is that data on social enterprises has been used by those with a controlling interest in the growth of the sector to legitimize the ‘success’

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of past policies and approaches. Of course, the evaluation of ‘success’ in social policy implementation is a highly contested variable itself (Dryzek, 1982; Pawson, 2002) and researchers have tried to find different means of evaluation that focus on the localized experiences of initiatives, often finding ‘hard truths’ about the efficacy of policy (Pawson et al., 2005). There are also important implications from this ‘policy work’ in the way social entrepreneurs perceive themselves (Mason, 2013; Seanor and Meaton, 2007). In shaping the environment within which social enterprises operate, government is in a strong position to shape discourse, but this also includes a multitude of social action, such as debates, practices, norms and opportunities for participation. As Connor (2010) noted on the myth of ‘community’, government can easily shape discourse – in this case by perpetuating the myth of ‘saint versus sinner’ among economically deprived communities in the UK and Australia. By emphasizing how emerging crises neatly illustrate their broader political goals, government can propel favoured ideas (or forms of ideas, like social enterprise) into the heart of public life. Thus, government is afforded the opportunity to set the boundaries of understanding for an idea, term, concept or practice by virtue of its controlling grip on the allocation of resources needed to diffuse, sustain and/or grow social enterprise (Baines et al., 2010). Unsurprisingly, this imparts a view on social enterprise from a political level that is set and taken up by some institutional partners and practitioners further down the line (Teasdale, 2012). Also, it is notable how this push can be (and has been) strongly resisted, creating a contested discourse on the meaning and practice of social enterprise (Mason, 2012). Importantly, this practice can (and does) occur without the need to identify as a social enterprise, rather the sector’s plurality shines through the political veil (Wingo, 2003). There have been a few studies looking into social enterprise as the object of myth-making, and related fields (that is, non-profit studies). In a review of the types of myth-making that go on in this field, Dey and Steyaert (Chapter 6, this volume) discuss the different forms that it can take. They argue that ‘busting’ a myth in its entirety is not possible, so instead look at the kind of myths that make the subject more plausible, that is ‘from below’. In their study, they argue that localized constructions of the subject (social enterprise) form a dialectical contestation of a (politically) imposed myth ‘from above’. This view is important when addressing the basis for how individuals make sense of, and enact, social enterprise, because the very idea is openly contested and challenged, and other work has shown similar evidence from the divergences between the language of practitioners and official narratives (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). It appears that in some discourses, social entrepreneurship is packaged into the form ‘social enterprise’, thus acquiring a different meaning, or at least different

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mythical properties that arise from an underlying political intent, such as ‘marketization’ (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004; Eikenberry, 2009). Myth is therefore a useful rhetorical device for masking this intent, since it presses ideology into the myth itself and naturalizes its meaning into the fabric of discourses. Myths are a sleight-of-hand: they allow hegemonic discourse actors to wrap ideological domination into more palatable language, without revealing the ideological intent behind the message. In our understanding, myths expedite ideological control in a discourse. Naturally, many discourses are strongly contested, and we have seen this played out in social enterprise discourses too, especially in the UK (Teasdale, 2012; Teasdale, Lyon and Owen, Chapter 2, this volume). In other discourses, such as those on public sector privatization and welfare reforms, social enterprise is often conjoined with other so-called non-social enterprises, and sometimes conflated into the ‘third sector’ or ‘civil society’ (Milbourne, 2009; Najam, 1996). However, none of the existing studies fully address the myth-making techniques deployed by political actors in social enterprise discourses, that is, how myths are propelled into public discourses that interface with political regimes. Specifically, if we are to accept that social enterprise is subjected to mystification, can it clearly be seen as a linguistic process from above? The prior studies have focused on the language use of practitioners, or the language of government policies. Yet we still do not know how the form is moulded around the concept: how might a government promote social enterprise in a space which has become contested? We know that there are many organizations under the social enterprise umbrella, but why might the collective term be rendered meaningful (or meaningless) by interventions in discourse? Political involvement in this space fills the void of meaning in social enterprise, and others have argued that these approaches are made to appear legitimate to others in discourse (Carmel and Harlock, 2008). Illustrative in this regard are Bottici and Challand (2006) who addressed the issue of political myths by combinatory analysis of the construction of over-arching narratives. These narratives are the product of on-going myth-work by political actors and agents, with the aim of directing grand political vistas thereby appealing to people’s imagin­ ation. As Connor (2010) showed, this sense of public imagination can be swayed by a prevailing common sense which can be (re)informed by media. This grand direction of political narrative, apparently overly simplistic, in fact becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because causality, in all its many forms, is glossed over and supplanted by the convenient narrative (Bottici and Challand, 2006). Typical narratives include ‘Broken Britain’, ‘Border Protection’, ‘immigration’ and ‘social exclusion’ – among many others that become problematized and for which social policy is offered forth as a

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solution (Atkinson, 2000). Having addressed the nature of myth in social enterprise politics, we now explore how myths are packaged into policy frameworks and executed as part of a political agenda, using veil politics.

VEIL POLITICS Wingo (2003, p. 5) defines veil politics as ‘a style of political practice that recognises the force of veils and [. . .] intentionally uses veils – creating, manipulating, and modifying them – [to make them] lie, as it were, on an axis orthogonal to the political spectrum’. In his own application of veil politics, Wingo argues that veils are used by political structures to ‘gloss over historical details or aspects of the political apparatus, offering instead an idealised image of the system or a stylised representation of a civic virtue’ (ibid., p. 4). They also have a dual function of mystifying the subject while simultaneously enhancing it. The focus of his analysis was the justification of liberal politics and the motivation of citizens to live in accordance with those principles. Thus veil politics offers great value to those seeking to enhance the best features of a history, politician, event and so on, while maintaining positional legitimacy (that is, legitimacy to govern). For critical appraisals of politics, the appropriation of veils as a metaphor is also useful, but has been underemployed in such pursuits. Wingo illustrates veil politics by reflecting on the heroic monuments that symbolize political values in the United States, as illustrative of the necessary opacity required to govern within liberal democracies. Thus, he uses the idea to explain how we come to accept such symbols, ideals, political leaders, and so on, and are justified as representative of those values (in this case liberal democracy). By smoothing away or obscuring truths inherent in each of those phenomena, the process makes them palatable for a broader audience. Before we elaborate our own use of veils for a critical assessment of policy, we describe some of the key features of Wingo’s veil politics. Veils contain structural and functional levels and processes that give rise to myths. The superficial structural level refers to the image the veil portrays to the intended audience. At the functional level, Wingo distinguishes three basic, but interoperable, types: as aesthetic adornment, as temptation and as idealization. Aesthetic Adornment In terms of the aesthetic nature of policy, we are interested in the history of the political idea of social enterprise, and of how this history is presented in the most appealing way to the audience. Aesthetic adornment

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is principally a method for drawing attention to the veiled object, ‘shaped by a whole cluster of social, historical and political features’ (Wingo, 2003, p. 7). This enables the audience to be led to understand an altered nature of the object, emphasizing components that are evidently believable, pleasing, logical and/or rational. Thus the veil becomes aesthetically pleasing to observe, or in policy terms, palatable (particularly its rhetorical delivery and public performance; see Mauksch, Chapter 8, this volume). Aesthetic veils are also context and time specific, so what is considered pleasing on the surface at one time might be deemed inappropriate at another. This depends on how tastes, norms, institutional practices and broader cultural expectations change over time. In the context of policy, this is observable when considering the predilection of modern governments to rely on public relations strategies to promote their policies. However, this component is not effective in isolation, since it only provides a single mode of communication about a specified object. Temptation The political veil can also be used to offer some further meaning to an existing practice, as a way of drawing people into deeper engagement with it. This transcends the aesthetic level by use of a device, for example rhet­ oric that indicates to the audiences that there is a deeper level of interest that presently eludes them. Thus, the role of policy is not only to appeal at the surface level, but to indicate a more significant resonance with the polity. Wingo (2003, p. 8) refers to this kind of veil as the ‘aesthetics of hiding and revealing’, where the audience is motivated to seek more information on the idea as it is portrayed, or at least to sense that there is more to an object than appears on the surface. As a process, this may involve obscuring facts from an audience, a consequence that Wingo (2003) argues risks ‘misleading persons by sins either of omission or of commission’ (p. 51). Idealization Finally, veils enable idealization, the process which creates simplicity from where complexity presides. This is especially useful for highly complex ideas and/or paradoxical concepts that require significant pre-knowledge before an audience can engage with them. In so doing, reducing complexity also reduces the possibility for conflict and enhances motivation and acceptance. The process of simplification enables the spread of political messages that harmonize (or avoid) points of tension between audiences with opposing positions. Thus veil politics employs analogy, imagery or ideology that connects social activities with a broader sense of purpose,

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building towards a clearly stated ideal. As a result, the observer becomes familiar with the activity and the outcome, and comes to respect it for the values and ideals that it espouses. To summarize, aesthetic adornment provides the superficial image and content of the veiled object, in order to draw attention to it. Temptation entails encouraging the audience to seek more knowledge and investigate the deep layer of the veiled object, following on from observing its aesthetic, superficial qualities. Finally, idealization results from work on the myth to eschew existing details, histories or facts that detract from the superficial and deep content of the veiled object. In seeking to simplify the object’s meanings, this process allows for more consistent and palatable dissemination. Each of these processes engenders myths by facilitating the ‘work’ that is done on ideas, concepts, policies, practices and people, to alter their presentation and meaning. Indeed, in this regard there are some parallels with other interpretations of political myth. For example, the later phase of Ernst Cassirer’s (1946) work on myth emphasized the possibility of a technical use of political myth – specifically language and cultural practice, and their manipulation by the Nazis. Thus, we see that Wingo’s veils adopt a similar position of instrumentality and political orientation, and the types of ‘work’ that artificially endow political myths with significance. Yet in Wingo’s approach they differ by virtue of their intent, that is, to explain the positive impact of political myths in liberal democratic states. Importantly, Wingo deems each of the three outlined processes as crucial to the production of veiled politics and therefore a fundamental part of maintaining and diffusing liberal democratic values and institutions.

REFLECTION Given our succinct overview, we now address some critical issues with veil politics, and seek to amend this approach to allow for a robust critique of the veil politics process and associated outcomes. The major problem with Wingo’s approach is that it presents an essentially simplistic view of the interaction between politics, veils and the intended audience. In principle, the three veils offer criticality by stripping away different layers of control over the dissemination and perception of ideological political manoeuvres. Although the veils are argued to be interoperable, it becomes difficult to interrogate the overarching political narratives obscured by veils, without exploring the deeper ideological entrenchments and connections therein. The veils are a mechanism for controlling both the content of the message, as well as the mode of communication. Obscuring information, tempting

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further engagement and presenting an ideological veneer on the ‘surface’ of policy are different approaches to controlling the message, without revealing the impact of the message itself. Yet, as Bottici (2011) argues, these veils cannot so easily be used, in isolation, to explain the consolidation of liberal democratic values through myths. In Wingo’s approach, the veils were used to explain the prolifer­ ation of liberalism without detailed explanation for public agency against the message, and how this changes the form of the veils. Thus, although the veils offer three different lenses through which we see the control of ideological shifts in politics, it does not reveal or trace the process through which core ideas are presented and/or change through iterative social action. Indeed, his categorization schema is very broad so it becomes difficult to determine how symbols and myths, for example, are analytically distinctive and treated as separate ideas, concepts or phenomena. We see this conflation as an important limitation in using veil politics as an analytical framework and utilize an Australian case to provide a counterpoint to its typically descriptive application. Criticality can be actioned in this framework if we explore the connectedness of ideological undercurrents to expose the ‘sleight of hand’ of myth building. This leads to further critical examination of whether the veils produce durable policies, that is addressing whether such approaches are sustainable in a time of economic crisis and growing public scepticism of the ability (and legitimacy) of government to manage society’s problems. Thus, having explored the critical potential of Wingo’s veil politics, we find it most useful if we accept the notion of a functional veil, that is, a politically derived mechanism that obscures facets of a political object to assist in its acceptance by a political audience. In the following section, we discuss the first of our primary contexts, the UK and Big Society, and uncover how social enterprise is used to convey the ideological glossing that veil politics promotes.

THE BIG SOCIETY: VEIL POLITICS IN ACTION? The impact of economic downturn and regime change at the heart of British politics, expedited significant changes to state infrastructure (Alcock, 2010). Despite a period of extraordinary change during New Labour’s tenure in government in the UK, initially under the guise of its own societal vision, the Third Way, the Conservative-led coalition proposed an alternative policy direction. Importantly, this change in direction was based on extending lateral governance of civic engagement with state retrenchment, a contrast to Labour’s policy philosophy that initially

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sought to use the state as agent for extending partnership with the voluntary sector (Sullivan, 2012, p. 145). As Smith (2010) pointed out, this shift was exposed largely by the financial crisis and its impact on UK economic and social infrastructure. Labour’s commitment to expanding the welfare state, and the resultant growth of links with civil society, was repositioned to the electorate by the coalition, focusing instead on growing civil society by shrinking the welfare state. This rhetorical twist laid the foundations for David Cameron’s flagship policy vehicle, the Big Society: What is it I am really passionate about? It is actually social recovery as well as economic recovery. I think we need a social recovery, because as I have said lots of times in the past, there are too many parts of our society that are broken, whether it is broken families or whether it is some communities breaking down; whether it is the level of crime, the level of gang membership; whether it’s problems of people stuck on welfare, unable to work; whether it’s the sense that some of our public services don’t work for us – we do need a social recovery to mend the broken society. To me, that’s what the Big Society is all about. (David Cameron, 2011)

Although apparently simple, the Big Society was quite an unusual policy platform. The popular reinvention of Big Society had origins in a relatively marginal political think-tank (ResPublica), and was inspired by Phillip Blond’s (2009) articles in the British magazine, Prospect, subsequently extended in the treatise, Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It (2010). In it, Blond argued that the programmes of both the left (as in progressive-liberal) and the right (as in Thatcherite conservative) demonstrably failed to resolve Britain’s problems and in fact exacerbated them. Progressive liberalism arose as a response to absolute monarchy and so developed into an ‘extreme [. . .] defence of individual liberty’ (Blond, 2009). This led to a pathological distrust of constraints on individual liberty and in its most extreme variant ‘autonomy [that] requires repudiation’ of societal units – from the family, the community, and the nation (Blond, 2009). The only way to govern a ‘society so constituted would be one that required a powerful central authority’ (Blond, 2009), and hence even communitarian liberals attempted to nurture community using the levers of state power. The ultimate legacy of British liberalism was therefore the atomized individual under the shadow of hierarchy and a return to the absolutism it aimed to overthrow. Its consequence has been the managerial state and the destruction of the mutualism of the working class. Ergo, modern conservatism, particularly that expounded by Margaret Thatcher, sought to fracture the monopolistic British corporatism that had developed under the guise of the post-war Keynesian consensus. By

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using state authority to shift power from labour to capital – or ‘owner and entrepreneur’ – liberalization of the economy had the perverse effect of the benefits ‘accruing mostly to the top’, with Britain remaining in a ‘contested, class-based capitalism’ (Blond, 2009). Indeed according to Blond (2009), the defective corporatism that so characterized the late Keynesian era was reproduced in the neo-liberal era – with a tactile shift from ‘state monopoly’ to what he terms ‘modal monopoly [. . .] in which a certain way of doing business constitutes a cartel’. He argued that this is most cogently illustrated by the housing bubble and its distortion by global capital, a market far removed from that ‘envisaged’ by classical political economists, for example, Ricardo or Smith’s ideal of ‘thousands of small investors’ engaged in mutually beneficial exchange (Blond, 2009). The ultimate legacy of Thatcherite, capital C Conservatism was market fundamentalism and the ‘triumph of monopoly and speculation in the name of free trade’ (Blond, 2009). In short, ‘both 20th-century socialism and [modern] conservatism have converged on the market state’ (Blond, 2009). The loser, according to Blond, has been community ‘with the intermediary structures of civilised life [. . .] eliminated, and with them the Burkean ideal of civic, religious, political or social middle, as the state and market accrue power at the expense of ordinary people’ (Blond, 2009). Blond’s Prospect piece was timely. While explicitly aimed at giving direction to ‘Cameron’s nascent civic conservatism’ (Blond, 2009), even the author must have been surprised at the reception it received with Cameron and his advisors, notably Steve Hilton (McAleer, 2011, p. 58). In much the same way that Tony Blair deployed Anthony Giddens’ The Third Way (1998) to modernize New Labour by breaking with Labour’s socialist roots and reconciling with the market, or the ‘radical centre’, Cameron latched onto Red Tory to act as a policy philosophy and modernizing force within the Conservative party, as part of his attempt to reposition it as centrist by ditching the ‘image’ of the ‘nasty party’ (Coombs, 2011, p. 81). Thus, through similar sleight of triangulation Cameron aimed to reframe the Conservatives as compassionate, modern and progressive. Social enterprise was at the centre of this vision. Rather than divert from or retrench the prior Labour regime’s welfare state investments and reforms, it actually carried its legacy forward in a similar direction. In doing so it extended Labour’s incremental shift from New Public Management to new governance that relied heavily on the incorporation of charities, cooperatives and other voluntary sector organizations into service delivery. However, under Labour the state was central to the orchestration of governance, best encapsulated by Labour’s Compacts – formal agreements between government and the third sector

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designed to frame its role in public service provision, but also to maintain independence (Alcock 2010). In the Big Society the locus of influence was said to shift to citizenry and self-governing communities through deepening cross-sectoral collaboration and hybrid forms of organization such as social enterprise. In the Big Society environment, the key priorities included (Alcock, 2010): ●● ●●

●● ●●

●●

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A social investment bank, the Big Society Bank, to provide financial assistance to social enterprise development. Encouragement of citizen-led participation, including volunteering and focusing on community-driven ‘giving-back’ programmes, under the broad rubric of ‘localism’ as exemplified by The Giving White Paper (Mohan, 2013, p. 8). Reducing bureaucracy to hasten the reform of public services. An extension of New Public Management-style contractualism known as ‘commissioning’, which brought in greater contestability from private and non-profit providers. Pay for performance contracts such as social impact bonds and other market-based mechanisms to promote private financing of public service contracts. Increased reliance on philanthropy and social investment to fund service delivery and the gap left by the retreat of the state.

There are some further issues regarding where and how the Big Society was implemented. First, due to the devolution of political responsibility for civil society in regions of the United Kingdom, the Big Society only applied to the regulatory and policy framework in England, and is, as Alcock (2010, p. 381) put it, ‘a peculiarly English phenomenon’. Therefore, in drawing on a ‘tradition of public duty and the social responsibility of the well off to the disadvantaged’ (Smith, 2010, p. 830), the Big Society neglected to explain how existing regional and cross-sectional partnerships figure in practice. Alcock (2010) argues that in developing the Big Society framework, the coalition government sought to erase the existing use of the term ‘third sector’. Reframing the discourse by removing the notion of a ‘sector’ of similar organizations creates further complexities, not least regarding how new terminologies affect which organizations are included or excluded from policy. In turn, this disrupts any sense of a unifying configuration of third sector organizations: ‘This strategic unity will inevitably be challenged by the reductions in government support for the sector and the potentially divisive impact of further transfer of public services to agencies created [. . .] to replace state provision’ (Alcock, 2010, pp. 386–7). However, these moves marked an important stage in building the myth,

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because to accept the prevailing infrastructure and its terminologies works against the rhetorical position that ‘Britain is broken’. Thus, supplanting third sector with Big Society and also with ‘civil society’, were part of a necessary framing process that must be built into the myth before the veils can be deployed. In casting a generic social problem that requires ‘fixing’, the scene is set for a policy platform, and certain organizations, that can help to do so. Although not the only organizational form mentioned in the Big Society, social enterprise was central to the programme. This is because it packaged together the required flexible and entrepreneurial solutions to supplant the burden of state-funded services. It was also useful as a hybrid organizational form, transcending established sectoral boundaries of state, market and civil society. Yet this has often been contrasted against the reality that community and voluntary organizations are seeing their funding and support cut in favour of alternative, sanctioned, delivery models (such as social enterprise). In turn this creates an explanatory justification for the importance of financially independent but community-driven alternatives.

A BIG SOCIETY IN AUSTRALIA? A further twist in the tale is that the Big Society garnered international interest, notably in Australia. At the time of the Big Society launch in England, Australia was embarking on the beginning of a contentious parliament, where the incumbent Labor Party entered a period of minority government – the first in the post-war era. The government was under considerable pressure from the Conservative opposition coalition of the Liberal and National parties, whose leader, Tony Abbott, was big on rhetoric around the failures of the government, but often small on policy detail, including in critical areas of social policy. Nonetheless one area where Abbott offered broad direction on his thinking was in the philosophical underpinnings of his social policy – both prior to assuming the leadership of the opposition (see, for example, Abbott, 2009) and through his policy platform A Plan for Stronger Communities, released early in 2012 and later expanded on in the 2013 election campaign, in the platform, A Strong Australia (Abbott, 2012b). In the heavily partisan document – more election pamphlet than policy – Abbott shed light on his views on associational life. He observed that ‘Australian suburbs and towns are almost unique in the range of community organizations they spawn from service clubs to charities’ (Abbott, 2012b, p. 47). Directly quoting the classical conservative philosopher, Edmund Burke, he described ‘volunteer associations’ as ‘“little platoons” of life [. . .] between the individual and the state’ (Abbott, 2012b, p. 47).

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Further anchoring his views in the Burkean tradition, Abbott (2012b, p. 47) also argued that ‘government cannot create these organisations but it can certainly hinder them if it habitually assumes officials know best’. Some noted that the similarities with Blond’s vision were many (Whelan et al., 2012). Indeed, it was observed that Abbott’s traditionalist disposition sat more easily alongside Blond’s than Blond’s champion Cameron, ‘an urban sophisticate [. . .] more palatable to the cocktail-party crowd’ (Rittelmeyer, 2012). At the same time, Blond described Abbott as ‘philosophical, thoughtful and a gifted man’ (Rittelmeyer, 2012). Beyond the shared Burkean influence, the synergies between Blond and Abbott were palpable. Abbott’s worldview was informed by Catholic social teaching and in particular the views of his mentor, the late communitarian, conservative Catholic community activist and politician, B.A. Santamaria (Rundle, 2013), while Blond’s views were shaped by the thirteenth-century Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas and the nineteenth-century distributist Hilaire Belloc (McAleer, 2011, pp. 58–9).1 Neither vision sat neatly (or comfortably) with modern post-Reagan/Thatcher conservatism, outwardly neo-liberal and with deference to the market. In fact, the seeming contradiction encapsulated by Red Tory might usefully describe Abbott, not easily pigeon-holed, as a ‘social conservative whose rightism does not necessarily extend very far into economics’ (Craven, 2013). The parallels did not end with Abbott and Blond’s shared outlook. In reporting on Blond’s speech to a party think tank, the Menzies Research Centre, Rittelmeyer (2012) noted that Blond explained ‘that the Big Society would be easier to implement in Australia’ due to its ‘comparatively sound budget and firmly-established charitable sector’. Based on Australia’s bipartisan embrace of New Public Management throughout the 1980s and 1990s, during which successive governments outsourced and introduced competition to the key pillars of service delivery, notably in employment services, which was at the time the largest privatization of public services in history, Blond’s observation held true. These reforms transformed large swathes of both the religious and secular charitable sector into large-scale enterprising non-profits with responsibility for provision of key functions of government. This was not lost on the sector itself. Leading charity, Mission Australia’s CEO Toby Hall, embraced the Big Society and urged the Abbott government to enact further reforms that would lead to decentralization, enabling ‘local communities instead of public servants in Canberra’, Australia’s federal capital, to ‘decide how to end welfare dependence and poverty’ (Karvelas, 2013). Recognizing that by then Big Society had become the embodiment of austerity rather than policy innovation, Hall noted that while ‘on the surface Australia’s social services have undergone a radical

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contracting out process’, this has led to a compliance burden that has morphed these organizations into the ‘government agencies they have replaced’ (Karvelas, 2013). He advocated devolution and looking to the local level to empower ‘communities’ across small towns and regional cities to ‘display innovation and flexibility’ through more nimble organizational forms namely, social enterprise (Karvelas, 2013). While in a pre-election debate on the future of the non-profit sector in Australia, the subsequently appointed social services minister, Kevin Andrews, expressly rebuffed parallels with the Big Society and the term went out of favour due to its association with government cutbacks (Andrews, 2013a), there were clear signs that it would broadly follow the British coalition’s lead. For instance, in a separate speech to the Associations Forum, Andrews (2013b) argued that the previous ‘government’s approach to civil society [had] been a paternalistic mix of treating the sector as mere extension of government – an agent of service ­delivery – [. . .] and at times a mouthpiece’. The specifics – and contradictions – of the Abbott government’s prior­ ities became clearer following its first federal budget. To a large extent, its policy programme mirrored those in Britain, but within a largely manufactured, rather than genuine, context of fiscal crisis, with Australia having largely weathered the global financial ructions that began in 2008. This followed a familiar trajectory of policy transfer between the two states in which British New Labour took its ideational lead from the reformist Australian Labor Party (ALP) in its own reinvention and the ALP absorbing, albeit selectively, cues from Thatcher (Pierson, 2003). In an Australian Big Society environment, the priorities were to include a strikingly similar suite of policy reforms: ●●

●●

●● ●●

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A variant of devolution and subsidiarity, which reoriented responsibility for service delivery to the state (for example provincial) or local government level (Abbott, 2012b). A variant of localism, which transferred decision-making power from government to communities – for example, in public hospitals ‘from head office to the local hospital’ (Abbott, 2012b, p. 52). Reducing federal oversight of federally-funded programmes and putting more control in the hands of non-profits (Karvelas, 2013). Disbanding the newly established regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission, in place of a lean centre for excellence (Andrews, 2013a). A similar emphasis on growing philanthropy and social investment, as in the UK, through re-establishing the Prime Minister’s Community Business Partnerships initiative.

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The similarities with the Cameron government’s reform programme were clear, appearing to suggest a level of portability of Big Society ideas (in part facilitated by the concept’s ambiguity and ‘deliberate vagueness’ that means it can be interpreted to be all things to different people (Szreter and Ishkanian, 2012, pp. 2–3)). It self-evidently borrowed from the UK’s emphasis on devolution, localism and subsidiarity. It pushed a reform agenda that advocated rolling back the state, underpinned by strikingly similar rhetoric around its shortcomings. At its centre was a lionization of community – and the voluntary sector – that encouraged a shift from government collaboration with the sector to a focus on civic and private sector action, which supplanted rather than partnered them with public agencies. Crucially the broad programme was buttressed by a philosophical framework that seemingly harked back to classical conservative political theory. As a reform agenda, it had obvious appeal, particularly to elements of the non-profit and voluntary sector that were ostensibly to be accorded greater flexibility. Certainly, through a discursive framing by key governmental actors, the sector – that is, all players that are non-government including for-profit providers – was to be vested with agency to tackle the intractable social problems that the bureaucratic state has failed to resolve. This reproduced the myth-making, outlined above, that has manifested in England around the reframing of civil society. For example, Andrews (2013b) explicitly rejected the term ‘not-for-profit sector’, as the term ‘connotes an economic framework’, in favour of ‘civil society’, which ‘conveys a different, broader notion, of which the economic is one part’. At the same time Andrews (2013b) also offered the same contradictory logics deployed in the UK that the sector is problematic (that is, a ‘mouthpiece for government’) but also the solution. Yet the experience in England was that the charitable and voluntary sector was sidelined in the Big Society: simultaneously squeezed between competition with new private sector contractors and government cuts associated with austerity (Mohan, 2013). Likewise in Australia, the government’s engagement with the sector swiftly moved from one of feting elements of civil society and tentative rapprochement to hostility as it attempted to unwind popular reforms of the previous Labor government including the new regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

DISCUSSION In this final section, we reflect on the theoretical explanations for the differing trajectories of the Big Society in England and Australia. Specifically,

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we apply Wingo’s three stages of political myth to explain the similarities and differences in the two approaches. Before we do so, it has to be noted that, despite its apparent portability to the Australian environment, it is important to recognize that through application to new contexts, concepts invariably enter a process of adaptation and modification. For instance, even within the UK, the concept’s journey between Blond and Cameron evolved and took on new meaning – or to borrow from Derrida, constituted a process of iterability. In Derrida’s conceptualization, iterability does not follow its literal designation – iter as in again – but rather is a fluid notion in which a concept is ‘not original in the sense of being known or experienced without reference to anything but itself’ (Fish, 1982, p. 703). Through non-identical repetition – or iteration – a concept such as Big Society enacts differences as well as similarities and in ‘essence becomes its other’ (Fish, 1982, p. 704). For example, as noted, the parallels between Blond and Abbott led some commentators to speculate that Australia might in fact be a site where the programme could be implemented in its purest form. Yet as the agenda of the government led by Abbott moved from platform to programme, its foundations shifted from its initial meaning, particularly the communitarian disposition that supposedly characterized its leader’s Burkean philosophy. This was most cogently seen in reforms enacted through the federal budget, which harshly targeted marginalized communities – pensioners, the young, those on low-incomes, and so on – through punitive measures rather than a renewed civic responsibility. The stark contrast with the vision outlined by Abbott in Battlelines (2009) with the post-budget ‘small government rhetoric’ was such that one commentator noted he seemed ‘to finally have joined the [free market] Liberal Party’ (Marr, 2014). This followed the idea’s similar co-optation by neo-liberal interests in the UK. It also highlights the rubbery philosophical foundations of the Big Society that enabled the concept to be modified to craft an appealing narrative to disparate interests, illustrating its strength as a rhetorical device (Albrow, 2012). Having set the scene for the myths that surrounded the Big Society, using Wingo’s veil politics, we now attempt to answer the question: how and why is social enterprise deployed by the Conservatives to push a particular reform agenda? Consequently, we turn our attention to a critical deployment of veil politics, beginning with aesthetic adornment. Big Society as Aesthetic Adornment A major theme arising from the Big Society was how the underlying principles represented a natural return to the philosophical roots of Conservative politics. Smith (2010, p. 830) noted that ‘[t]he Big Society speaks to a Tory

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tradition’ that ‘[p]eople do not need the state but can organise themselves for the public good through a tradition of volunteerism’. Thus, a great deal of effort was put into the historical legitimacy of the origin of the idea, and the suitability of a progressive Conservative-led coalition government in achieving apparently conflicting aims. This myth-building groundwork sought to provide a legitimate face on policy by appealing to core values of their political supporters. As a project, the Big Society fitted with the historical discourses upon which conservatism has been built (a facet shared between England and Australia), while simultaneously seeking to mollify a sceptical voting public having a long-held disaffection with previous Conservative regimes. Thus, a technical sleight of hand is at work by conflating historical conservative principles as central to answering the social and economic problems facing communities. Without this veil, the two positions would seem incongruous, but by acknowledging the past and using it to underpin state reform, Big Society became a necessity to contextualize the problems alongside ‘new’ solutions. However, for the Big Society in England, the lack of congruence between the social, historical and political aspects led to its demise. The loose historical (and for that matter, philosophical) connections were greatly exposed by the heavyhanded public relations exercise, which exacerbated negative sentiment among an already sceptical public concerning Big Society motives and content. The aesthetic appearance of the Big Society was not sufficiently effective in altering how the central thrust (accelerating public sector reform while reducing central government engagement) was perceived as a positive altering of the object. Regarding Australia’s ‘failure to launch’, only very minor attempts were made to present a Big Society-style reform agenda to the voting public. Although former Prime Minister Abbott made some pre-election pronouncements that cohere with a shift towards public-sector reform (particularly the philosophical links to Edmund Burke), the time-lag between elections that slowed policy development, combined with the stalling of Big Society in England, limited its uptake. However, we note that attempts were made to lay the groundwork for a Big Society that sought to test institutional and wider public sentiment for a similar approach. Tempting Wider Engagement The second layer of the veil involves tempting engagement with the idea of Big Society, and this draws on the ideas formulated and embedded from the aesthetic adornment stage. Big Society was executed using a rhetorical strategy to motivate citizens to first accept the premise that ‘Britain is broken’ – dealing with the issue of public scepticism and seeking to garner

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a broad base of support for the central premise. One could argue that the voting public generally agreed with this premise through a shift away from Labour voting in the 2011 general election towards Conservatism. Second, once tempted, the approach is reinforced by elaborating that the political strategy had a clear pathway to ‘fixing Britain’, based on the conservative roots expounded by its key political supporters. To encourage this fixing, a key part of Big Society was citizen participation in its implementation, requiring the public to be encouraged to work with existing (or create new) organizations to help rebuild communities. Big Society was, of course, built on the assumption that volunteerism among private individuals is a more appropriate way for social capital to grow. This is key to the implementation stage, because in delivering the policy message, key audiences needed to see the obvious benefit of giving their time to volunteer. Implicit in the message is the idea that the individual citizen can help communities while also helping themselves, an activity that the state is ill-equipped to perform. Therefore, in order to make Big Society a workable and sustainable project, the aesthetic adornment and temptation veils fed off each other, at once providing a historical context to legitimize the strategy, while making clear the benefits for delegating the performance of Big Society away from government. The goal was thus to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the development of a Big Society reform programme became the most obvious, logical and pleasing way of dealing with the unpalatable problem of a broken society. This shift, as noted, requires a compelling a priori social, historical and political argument to make it a legitimate pathway to reform. Failing to maintain its resonance with the wider public and counter the increasingly negative perceptions of the scheme expedited its quiet removal. Of course, the Big Society also showcased the difficulty of legitimizing policy change during times of global crisis. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Big Society was meant to re-engage communities in civil society. However, it was often seen (perhaps unfairly) as an attempt to make dealing with austerity easier for government, by off-loading service design and delivery to non-state agents. Attempts to further tempt participation were doomed because the UK government did not successfully or compellingly argue against this perception. Social Enterprise as Idealization Finally, we consider the idealization veil. We look upon the central role of social enterprise in Big Society as an important marker in idealizing the general approach, since it also deals with contrasting aims but seeks ways to circumvent them. Social enterprise would seem to be well suited

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to the task of simplifying the essence of Big Society into a notion closer to communities. Yet a central, contentious, feature of the Big Society was the drive to reduce the public sector resource burden of providing their services (set within the backdrop of austerity), thus accelerating the retrenchment of that sector. As we have explained above, there are several competing logics that underpin the Big Society concept. Some of these are derived from abstracted philosophical ideas, while others arose from more recent political, economic and social developments. As other studies have shown, especially McCulloch’s (1997) analysis of educational policy in England, idealization of complex histories can be effectively achieved through the deployment of myths to silence perspectives that do not fit with ‘an idealised image of a national of local “tradition” that [. . .] policy must continue to pursue’ (ibid., p. 70). Social enterprise became useful here because it was an increasingly familiar term used in public policy, and had a degree of recognition among the wider public. Thus, social enterprise became a central part of the spirit of the Big Society to sustain the myth. Social enterprise has been the target of significant investment by UK governments over a prolonged period, placed as a great enabler of community action through enterprising activities. A common feature of political dialogue over the past decade has been the importance of social enterprise in breaking up received logics in the public sector by harnessing private sector and civil society mental­ ities. This combinatory approach has often been showcased as a way of promoting how individuals can ‘get things done’ and create positive social impacts in communities. We argue that this marks an importance bridge between the impact of social entrepreneurs / enterprise upon communities left behind by the public sector, and the rhetorical message of the Big Society. To enact the myth effectively, the message itself must be clear, and social enterprise can be positioned in this message as exemplars of the Big Society in action. This was a convenient legacy for the coalition government, since the prior administration laid the foundations for developing a strong social enterprise sector in England through continued and supportive public investment. The goal of this myth-making was to idealize social enterprise as the enactor of Big Society, creating the conditions of the self-fulfilling prophecy noted by Bottici and Challand (2006). Thus, the pre-knowledge required to understand the Big Society was partly explained by the conflicting logics of social enterprise. If one can conceive of an organization that manages conflicting goals, then social enterprise is useful in expressing what the Big Society aimed to achieve, and how. Arguably, social enterprises were positioned by the previous New Labour government to achieve similar goals, in an attempt to engage participation in civil society. More

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to the point, there was a steadily growing critique of social enterprise as a vehicle for public sector reform by the back door. Thus, by attempting to harmonize tensions inherent in Big Society through the portrayal of social enterprises already serving this agenda, the UK government made a miscalculation: the mistaken assumption of a wide understanding among the general public of what constituted a social enterprise, which remains an important lack among scholars, policy makers and other stakeholders. The obscurity of the idealized object compromised its chances of harmonizing conflicting ideologies and ontologies among those from whom legitimacy is sought. As a consequence, social enterprise did not provide the scheme with a greater simplicity, as was intended. Rather, it added a layer of conceptual complexity to the scheme, and seemingly provided limited further buy-in to Big Society values. It is therefore unsurprising that Big Society failed to launch in Australia, given that the incoming government was probably aware that it was beset with ideational and implementation issues that could not be stage managed into existence.

CONCLUSION This chapter has subjected the Big Society to analysis using the veil politics framework, and discussed the transmission of the Big Society in an international context. By doing so we have used a critical reorientation of Wingo’s veil politics to deconstruct the place of social enterprise in a broad political agenda. We have shown how the UK government, under an apparently progressive Conservative-led coalition, deployed Wingo’s three types of political veils – aesthetic adornment, temptation and idealization – as a myth-building function. The outcome was to obscure its actual agenda, laying the foundations for government cutbacks that simultaneously placed constraints on the sector it aimed to strengthen which struggled with reduced resources, growing demands for services, and a shifting regulatory and policy environment. At the same time, the push for social enterprise was used as a framing device to break down established sectoral boundaries, but with a similar effect on communities and voluntary organizations – celebrated in classical conservatism – as large-scale private providers used their superior resources to secure access to the open public services agenda. We argue that this shift in significance of social enterprise illustrates how the veils have facilitated the work on myth, taking it beyond its first order meaning and into the empty shell of Big Society. Consequently, the process of myth created, tempted and idealized social enterprise into a new form and a different discursive arena. In many ways, this deviates from the expectations of the government’s

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early supporters – not least Blond, who expressed disquiet with the coalition’s direction. From this perspective, a more purist adoption of the Big Society would over time have created a space for moderated forms of market governance (that is, social enterprise) that reflected Blond’s appeal to small-scale trading entities such as mutuals and cooperatives. Arguably, however, the effect was the reverse, with a weakening of the community and voluntary action under the guise of social enterprise. All of which poses interesting questions about the iterability of Big Society in the Australian context. As we have outlined, there were strong overtures made to the ideological origins of the Big Society policy vehicle, and some indicative political statements aligned the Abbott government with Big Society aims. Yet, following shifts in the political mood in the UK, key ministers publicly distanced themselves from Big Society, perhaps chastened by the problems of its implementation in England. Nevertheless, we argue that this is merely another phase of mythopoeia – the Big Society can be re-formed (or indeed, worked-upon) to attach to social enterprise in different ways. The iterations of Big Society illustrate how the construction of compelling narratives within political discourses become paramount to their reattachment to new objects of significance. The use of veil politics only serves as an initial framework for understanding different (but linked) ways in which these myths can be constructed in political life. However, this approach is limited by its original emphasis on the necessity of veils as integral to robust liberal democratic systems of governance. In exploring the process of making the Big Society myth, we propose that these veils are only necessary for constructing more attract­ ive, tempting and ideologically consistent policies. As the Australian example shows, this is actually a fluid process where a different iteration of Big Society was required to match not only political conditions and contexts, but also prevailing narratives and discourses, and their significance to public audiences. We argue that, more generally, this offers an alternative approach to the analysis of government policymaking, policies and wider discourses. The Big Society is a useful case for exposing the hidden or opaque processes through which policymaking occurs. Cases such as this are indicative of the multiple strategies at play in government policymaking, at once aiming for a place in the ‘real world’ but also abstracted into a social imaginary, linking the two positions by myth and metaphor. Indeed, our analysis of Big Society indicates subtle fault lines in the character of two discourses between two countries with strong historical, cultural, social and political links. Our chapter offers a glimpse of an alternative, sophisticated strategy for policymaking analysis. This, and other strategies, can develop knowledge of comparative policymaking that goes beyond descriptive case studies or historical show-and-tell.

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Indeed, framing policymaking as an asynchronous, unstable and rhetorical  phenomenon reveals (we would argue) a more accurate ­ ­portrayal of how policymaking tends to play out.

NOTE 1. Distributism is a philosophy that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, premised on the principles of Catholic social thought. As per Blond’s (2009) articulation above of the Big Society, it is premised on the central tenet that the ownership of the means of production should be widespread – that is, distributed – and not concentrated in the hands of the few, whether through the state (as in socialism) or the corporate power (as in a plutocracy).

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Milbourne, Linda (2009), ‘Remodelling the third sector: Advancing collaboration or competition in community-based initiatives?’, Journal of Social Policy, 38 (2), 277–97. Mohan, John (2013), ‘The conservative party, the “Big Society” and the third sector in the United Kingdom: Stable foundations, uneven contours?’, Third Sector Review, 19 (2), 5–26. Najam, Adil (1996), ‘Understanding the third sector: Revisiting the prince, the merchant, and the citizen’, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 7 (2), 203–19. Parkinson, Caroline and Carole Howorth (2008), ‘The language of social entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 20 (3), 285–309. Pawson, Ray (2002), ‘Evidence-based policy: In search of a method’, Evaluation, 8 (2), 157–81. Pawson, Ray, Trisha Greenhalgh, Gill Harvey and Kieran Walshe (2005), ‘Realist review: A new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions’, Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 10 (Suppl.), 21–34. Pierson, Christopher (2003), ‘Learning from labor? Welfare policy transfer between Australia and Britain’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 41 (1), 77–100. Rittelmeyer, Helen (2012), ‘A visit from the Big Society: Philosopher Phillip Blond believes Cameron’s ideas could take root here’, The Spectator, 1 September, accessed at http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/8357641/a-visit-from-thebig-society/. Rundle, Guy (2013), ‘Abbott’s pitch is to abandon his party’s principles  to  win’, Crikey, 29 August, accessed at http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/29/rundle-abbo​ tts-pitch-is-to-abandon-his-partys-principles-to-win/. Seanor, Pam and Julia Meaton (2007), ‘Making sense of social enterprise’, Social Enterprise Journal, 3 (1), 90–100. Smith, Martin J. (2010), ‘From big government to Big Society: Changing the state–society balance’, Parliamentary Affairs, 63 (4), 818–33. Sullivan, Helen (2012), ‘Debate: A Big Society needs an active state’, Policy & Politics, 40 (1), 45–8. Szreter, Simon and Armine Ishkanian (2012), ‘Introduction: What is the Big Society? Contemporary social policy in a historical and comparative perspective’, in Armine Ishkanian and Simon Szreter (eds), The Big Society: A New Agenda for Social Welfare, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1–24. Teasdale, Simon (2012), ‘What’s in a name? Making sense of social enterprise discourses’, Public Policy and Administration, 27 (2), 99–119. Tudor, Henry (1972), Political Myth, London: Macmillan. Whelan, James, Christopher Stone, Miriam Lyons, Natalie-Niamh Wright, Anna Long, John Ryall, Greta Whyte and Rob Harding-Smith (2012), Big Society and Australia: How the UK Government is Dismantling the State and What it Means for Australia, Sydney: Centre for Policy Development. Wingo, Ajume H. (2003), Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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6. Myth in social entrepreneurship research: an inquiry into rationalist, ideological and dialectic practices of demystification Pascal Dey and Chris Steyaert INTRODUCTION When it was first introduced to the non-profit sector, social entrepreneurship was primarily understood as a pragmatic approach to the challenges associated with state and market failure (Peredo, 2011). Social entrepreneurship was largely seen as positive, as holding the potential to render non-profit organizations more efficient, financially self-sufficient, and sustainable (Chell, 2007; Dees et al., 2002). In more recent years, however, social entrepreneurship has lost its unadulterated esteem because of some serious objections (Andersson, 2011; Berglund and Wigren, 2012; Lounsbury and Strang, 2009). While social entrepreneurship has been criticized from quite different theoretical angles (for an overview see Dey and Steyaert, 2012), in this chapter we contribute to this nascent and still fragile analytic endeavor by inquiring into the critical potential of different understandings of myth (also see Teasdale, Lyon and Owen, Chapter 2, this volume; Brown et al., 2017). The first understanding includes both popular and academic usages that see myth predominantly as an obstacle to the development of unadulterated knowledge. In the second perspective, myth is framed as an inherently ideological operation which mainly aspires to preserve the prevailing social order. The third perspective conceives of myth primarily as a site where dialectic tensions are played out: between consent and resistance, and between ideological reproduction and utopian breakthrough. We make two contributions in this chapter. The first consists of distinguishing three understandings of myth, which open up different, and partly complementary, possibilities for demystifying social entrepreneurship in relation to issues of truth/reality, ideology and dialectics; to ­substantiate 100

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our theorizing, we review how these practices of demystification have been applied in the (critical) literature on social entrepreneurship. Our second objective is to stimulate the conceptual expansion of the third and least developed strategy of demystification, which we call ‘demystification from below’; to do so, we offer an empirical illustration to expound on its workings. This chapter begins with a brief mapping of different understandings of ‘myth’ – that is, myth as false explanation, myth as ideology, and myth as dialectic potential – which sharpen the analytic options for demystifying social entrepreneurship. We then elaborate on and illustrate the three associated forms of demystification – that is, reality tests, denaturalization, and demystification from below – through existing research on social entrepreneurship, as well as through our own qualitative analysis of Swiss non-profit practitioners. In the conclusion, we argue that rather than being mutually exclusive, the three forms of demystification can be used in a largely complementary fashion. We further propose that the demystification of social entrepreneurship, to retain its critical edge, must constantly reinvent itself. The imperative of constant re-invention, we argue, is due to the ever-present possibility that demystification becomes neutralized to the point where it becomes a mere cliché of its initial promise.

MAPPING MYTH: RATIONAL, IDEOLOGICAL AND DIALECTIC TRAJECTORIES Etymologically, the word myth can be traced back to the Greek mythos, which means the ‘thing spoken’. Myth’s connection with stories and narrative is also palpable in contemporary scholarly work which primarily sees myth as a form of story (Munro and Huber, 2012). However, this is where consensus usually ends. Indeed, the term ‘myth’ is anything but univocal for it conveys a myriad of meanings and operates in a plethora of perspectives including psychoanalysis, folkloristic accounts, ethnography, anthropology, religious and biblical studies, cultural studies, and management studies. While some have discounted myth as a thing of the past, related to stories about god-like, superhuman creatures in ancient Greece, Egypt or Rome (Armstrong, 2005), others have preferred to see it as an inherent part of contemporary culture (Campbell, 1972). Another distinction of note relates to interpretations which see myth as a positive force that offers people direction and meaning (Von Hendy, 2002) and those which see it as being chiefly at the service of societal elites and thus mainly working to preserve the status quo (Tager, 1986). Against the backdrop of these tentative comments, and fully aware

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that there is not, and probably never will be, one best way in which myth can be signified, we have looked into the rich and variegated genealogy of myth and identified three understandings which we deem particularly productive for critically analyzing and reflecting on the literature on social entrepreneurship (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1 Three understandings of myth and demystification, as well as paradigmatic theorists and illustrative studies from the realm of social entrepreneurship studies Myth as false explanation Understanding   of myth

Error, mistake, primitive knowledge or belief Ultimate objective Exchange myth with logos Evaluative accent   of myth Mode of  demystification Philosophical  foundation Analytic focus Limitation

Paradigmatic  authors Illustrations in  the realm of social entrepreneurship

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Myth as ideology

Myth as dialectic potential

De-politicized language, necessary illusion

Both restrictive and explorative

Re-politicize myth Document the by pinpointing its dialectics of myth contradictions via local language usages Rational, Dystopian, Ambivalent, open non-political negative Reality tests, Denaturalization, Demystification ‘myth-busting’ ‘always historicize’ from below Critical Critical social (Post-transcendent) rationalism theory dialectics Reality ‘as it really Ideological Linguistic practices is’ ramifications of texts Myth of Quest for a space (Partial) inability mythlessness beyond ideology to change systemic forms of power and domination Popper (1935) Barthes (1972), Ricoeur (1986; Jameson (1981) 1991), Fiske (1989a; 1989b) Kerlin and Pollak Eikenberry, Parkinson and Dempsey and Howorth Sanders

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Myth as False Explanation It is probably fair to say that the first understanding of myth prevails not only in contemporary popular culture but also in many of today’s academic disciplines. This approach, which sees myth primarily as false explanation (read fiction or untested beliefs), is visible in approaches which juxtapose myth with reality, as in titles like The Myth of the Rational Market (Fox, 2009). In this view, myth is often not just seen as wrong, that is, incompatible with reality or the truth, but denoted as ancient or immature (Vattimo, 1985). The image of myth as false explanation thus often harks back to a historical split between pre-scientific knowledge (myth) and scientific knowledge and reason (logos). This mostly leads to a pejorative interpretation of ‘false explanation’ that conceives of myth as deceiving reality ‘as it really is’. ‘False explanation’ embodies several perspectives: one is expressed in certain strands of anthropology which hold that myth has been outgrown in contemporary society, while another sees myth as still exerting a potential threat to the creation of pure knowledge (Murray, 2004). What unites these two meanings is a more or less explicit belief that humanity will progressively advance from an age of myth to one ruled by scientific knowledge. The scientific ideal, notably expressed through Karl Popper’s (1935) critical rationalism, is seen as effecting a radical intellectual break and transition from the pre-logical nature of primitive thinking. As implied in Popper’s philosophy, the task of myth critique or demystification is to erase myth in order to achieve a state of pure, unadulterated knowledge, that is, logos (Bottici, 2008). As demystification, viewed as an antidote against ‘false explanation’, is based on the principle of rationality, critique is performed through the use of empirical reality tests. Myth as Ideology In literary work and critical social theory, a rich and heterogeneous tradition approaches myth in its ideological dimension (Halpern, 1961). Ideological approaches usually see myth as a form of narrative which fulfills ideological functions such as advancing the sectional interests of societal elites. An ideological understanding thus implies seeing myth in conjunction with the production of an imaginary world (Sorel, 1999) that tries to shape reality according to a certain image of ‘goodness’, ‘fairness’, ‘justice’, and so on. In his political theory, Cassirer (1946) saw myth as chiefly unifying nation states by giving them a sense of unity and wholeness which they did not necessarily possess. As a result, myth worked to mitigate potential rivalries and contradictions. In a similar vein, if more affirmatively, Campbell (1970) saw myth as ‘shaping individuals

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to the aims and ideals of their various social groups’ (p. 141). Thus, myth shapes reality artificially and in particular ways, and in doing so provides people with a sense of direction. Contrary to the first understanding that sees science as being all about facts and reason (logos) and myths as being purely fictitious (read false), an ideological account suggests that myth can be true and not true at the same time. Myth can be true in the sense of being grounded and drawn on and, as we will discuss more thoroughly below, appropriated in concrete human relations and experience. It can be not true as it is rarely about dealing with everyday life, but is instead about shaping a reality which is said to exist already. This is why an ideological perspective defines myth by its intention or function instead of by its ‘literal sense’. Given that mythic ideologies involve a linguistically formed process of reality-making, it must be borne in mind that such reality accounts are always selective, and therefore political. The political dimension of myth seems particularly pronounced in the work of Roland Barthes. For instance, in his Mythologies, Barthes (1972) presents myth as the ideological act of passing off contingent social achievement as ‘natural’. In Barthes’s view, myth is ideological in the sense that it renders natural a certain order of ‘reality’ or certain forms of identity, thus concealing the fact that they represent historical achievements. Myth, following Barthes (1972), is ‘depoliticized speech’ that ‘organises a world which is without contradictions’ (p. 143). Similar to Jameson’s (1981) contention that ideology removes from reality that which ‘hurts’, myth, according to Barthes, contains a political shaping of reality which more or less removes all political causes and ramifications. In Barthes’s (1972, p. 143) view, . . . myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explan­ ation but that of a statement of fact.

Thus, an eminent function of myth qua ideology is to present dominant cultural and historical values as self-evident and natural, while rendering the possible alternatives unthinkable. Meanwhile, demystification chiefly involves denaturalization as the operation through which depoliticized language is again historicized. This is important because things which are said to belong to nature are very difficult to change. Myth as Dialectic Potential Cohen (1969) pointed out that myth fulfills many purposes: explan­ ation, creative expression, manifestation of the unconscious, socialization, legitimation of social institutions, symbolic expression and reconciliation

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of conflicting principles. Many of these purposes do not have a ring as negative as the understanding of ‘myth as ideology’ just discussed. Indeed, Cohen’s treatise seems to advance a more nuanced comprehension of myth by demonstrating that myth often works in multiple ways at once: as a force that simultaneously seeks to pervade people’s lives (Cassirer, 1946) and to normalize dominant culture at the expense of more marginal forms of existence while also opening up new avenues of social imagination and being. The term ‘dialectic’ appears fitting in this context as it permits us to attend to how myth is located within a process of irreconcilable tensions and contradictions. Myth’s dialectic comes to the fore in the way it embodies a split between ideology and utopia (Ricoeur, 1991). Rather than just doing away with the ideological view of myth, a dialectic perspective essentially extends Barthes’s understanding of myth as expressed in Mythologies by proposing that myth is not just restrictive, in an ideological sense, but also explorative in that it enables novel types of social imagin­ ation to develop. The mode of critique made available by a dialectic view is what we would like to call ‘demystification from below’. The critical operation of demystification from below rests on using empirical experience to show that myth already embodies its own difference and resistance. Contrary  to (Hegelian and neo-Hegelian) dialectic approaches which engage in transcendence and grand synthesis, the viewpoint adopted here seeks to demystify myth in such a way as to ‘explore the possibilities that exist in keeping the opposites in tension and play’ (Mumby, 2005, p.  23). Demystification from below conceives of language and the common sense it conveys as the sphere where the dialectics of myth is epitomized most clearly. Demystification from below thus shifts focus from what myth tries to accomplish (that is, naturalize a particular social ­imaginary) to where and how myth is received ‘on the ground’ (Fiske, 1989a). Methodologically, demystification from below involves studying how individuals use language to render their lives meaningful and to create a sense of individual and collective identity. So conceived, a dialectic view suggests that local language is ‘the site on which the dominant ideology is constructed but [. . .] also the site of resistance and challenge to this ideology’ (Simon, 2005, p. 65). Premised on the assumption that counter-mythologies (Munro and Huber, 2012) can be found in the bliss of common sense (Lombardo, 2010), demystification from below inter alia shows how individuals, by appropriating and making selective use of ‘old forms’, are enabled to create something new (Murray, 2004).

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RATIONAL AND IDEOLOGICAL DEMYSTIFICATION OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP We will now explore how the various understandings of myth we have distinguished can be used to inform the demystification of social entrepreneurship. We will look for existing applications in the (critical) literature, and re-interpret existing studies as potentially relevant for a specific form of demystification. Before getting started, we should note that in the realm of social entrepreneurship myth is until recently a relatively unexplored topic. In those rare cases where the term is explicitly referred to (for example Andersson, 2011; Brooks, 2008; Page and Katz, 2012), myth mostly denotes ideas or beliefs which stand in an antagonistic relation with knowledge proper (read myth as false explanation). Also, though examples of ideological demystification are scarce, a few studies can help to outline such a form of critical analysis. As the literature has not yielded up any examples of demystification from below, we will develop a dialectic trajectory for it, and put forward our own empirical illustration to demonstrate the critical thrust of the dialectical view. Myth as False Explanation: Busting the Myth of Social Entrepreneurship Andersson’s (2011) paper offers an emblematic account of the understanding of myth as false explanation; he states that as the ‘popularity of social entrepreneurship has grown, many of the more spectacular and recurring stories have turned into myths, and myths can legitimize just as well as any statistic’. A similar understanding of myth is pursued by Page and Katz (2012), who refer to myth as indicative of how the official story of Unilever’s takeover of Ben and Jerry’s was false. The word myth thus hints at the incorrect assumptions or ‘idées fixes’ which prevent people from understanding that Ben and Jerry’s directors were not compelled by corporate law to sell the company; rather, they appeared to have far more agency than the myth of the takeover would suggest, thus essentially selling the company out of their own volition. Evidently, both Andersson and Page and Katz use ‘myth’ to hint at those aspects of social entrepreneurship that are not supported by scientific facts. Clearly, the lack of evidence produces a situation which significantly hampers a more comprehensive understanding of, for instance, what actually motivates and inspires social entrepreneurs (Nicholls, 2006). Also, some have questioned whether the myth of rapid growth of the social entrepreneurship sector (for example Diochon and Anderson, 2009) actually accords with the empirical facts (Lyon et al., 2010; also Teasdale, Lyon and Owen, Chapter 2, this volume). In a similar vein, some have asked

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whether hard data stand behind the stories about social entrepreneurship’s scalability and rate of success (Cukier et al., 2011). Andersson (2011) emphasizes how mythical stories endow social entrepreneurship with an aura of infallibility – though no one knows how high its success rate really is. As a result, social entrepreneurship gets viewed as being ‘more important for what it symbolizes than for its substance and applicability to nonprofits’. The corollary, evidently enough, is that rational critiques of myth are needed to address whether what is said about social entrepreneurship is actually true, or only taken to be true. Such rational critique is characterized by a willingness to ‘bust’ beloved myths to gain a clearer understanding of what social entrepreneurship really is and does. The academic purchase of rational critique as a pertinent means of ‘myth busting’ is reflected in a growing body of academic work endeavoring to fortify the evidence base of social entrepreneurship based on empirical inquiries (Teasdale et al., Chapter 2, this volume) or metaanalyses of them (Child, 2010). As an example of such ‘myth-busting’ endeavors, Kerlin and Pollak (2010; also Chapter 3, this volume) address one of the most powerful myths of social entrepreneurship: resource dependency theory (RDT). RDT holds that organizations depend on resources that are external to them. RDT predicts that changes in the availability of resources will have distinct effects on the organization’s behavior. This generic framework has been used to explain the rise and success of social entrepreneurship (for example Haugh, 2009; Yitshaki et al., 2008). RDT conceives of social entrepreneurship as a way in which non-profit organizations adjusted to declines in public grants and private donations; it points to scarcity of economic resources as the reason why non-profits began to immerse themselves in commercial activities (trading, contracting, service fees, and so on). The theory predicts that non-profits’ economic behavior is rational and opportunistic: during prosperous times, they rely on public grants (and public donations), and in less prosperous ones they look for earned-income possibilities to fill the financial gap (Anderson et al., 2002). In essence, Kerlin and Pollak’s results suggest that ‘commercial revenue was not a factor in “filling in” for losses in government grants and private contributions’ (p. 8). Hence, the authors disqualify RDT’s assumption that increases in non-profit commercial revenue are causally linked with cuts in government grants (as well as private contributions). Though such inquiry by Kerlin and Pollak and others creates a sense that something is fundamentally wrong with the way in which social entrepreneurship has been understood so far, it must remain clear that this rational mode of critique is not without its limits. Attempting to overthrow myth with knowledge (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002), this rational understanding of myth seems to ignore an intractable epistemological

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challenge: how can anyone truly know social entrepreneurship? A precise and complete understanding of the minutiae of social entrepreneurship is virtually impossible, precisely because the yardstick of ‘truth’ is not necessarily the reality principle. Myths are, at least in part, ‘immune to factual attack’ (Cuthbertson, 1975, p. 157). Consider, for example, the inquiry by Drakopoulou Dodd and Anderson (2007) into how the myth of the individualistic entrepreneur prevailed despite evidence that entrepreneurship de facto forms a thoroughly social endeavor. What this suggests is that the ‘facticity’ of a given statement often depends less on its correlation with reality than on its naturalization through myth. There are thus good reasons to do away with the belief in the omnipotent capacity of science to establish objective and accurate knowledge of social entrepreneurship. Myth as Ideology: Denaturalizing Social Entrepreneurship As ‘even facts cannot change the mythical operation’ of social entrepreneurship (Andersson, 2011), our focus shifts now to the question of why the sticking power of knowledge depends so much on processes of political naturalization. However, unlike the realm of entrepreneurship studies (Drakopoulou Dodd and Anderson, 2007; Nicholson and Anderson, 2005; Nodoushani and Nodoushani, 2000; Ogbor, 2000; Sørensen, 2008), ideological understandings of myth have attracted far less attention from social entrepreneurship scholars. On the most elementary level, an ideological reading of myth involves reflecting on social entrepreneurship in terms of the kind of reality it helps naturalize (including the fictions upon which this naturalization depends) (Von Hendy, 2002). By way of illustration, let us have a look at research on the ostensible demise of the welfare state which offers an insightful reflection into the kind of ideological micro-climate from which the myth of social entrepreneurship has been said to emerge (Boddice, 2009). From an ideological standpoint, the story of the withering welfare state holds that non-profits, in the face of ever scarcer public funding, had no other option than to accept that ‘they must increasingly depend on themselves to ensure their survival [. . .] and that has led them naturally to the world of entrepreneurship’ (Boschee and McClurg, 2003, p. 3, emphasis added). Though the narrative of the withering welfare state does not pass empirical scrutiny (Isin, 1998), it is when we look at the story from an ideological point of view that it becomes a ‘necessary illusion’: a political justification of why interventions into the non-profit sector are natural (read without alternative) and why non-profit entities must adopt earned-income strategies (Anderson et al., 2002). In making sure that people’s sense of justice is not violated, the narrative of the lingering welfare system is ideological precisely because it sidesteps

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the failed responsibility of the state (and the potential criticism this might evoke). Only naturalizing the view that many social problems have become ‘too expensive for public provision, and unprofitable for for-profit provision’ (Graefe, 2005, pp. 12–13) makes it possible (in fact justifiable) to thrust the responsibility for welfare back onto individual citizens. In this ideological analysis, the figure of the social entrepreneur plays a crucial role in explaining the crisis of the welfare system (thus buttressing the naturalness of ideology), meanwhile providing an account of how it must be tackled. The social entrepreneur, whose mythical attributes have been ever-present beneath the mask of non-ideological pragmatism (Dey and Steyaert, 2010), carries out this double function by endowing the current deadlock of the welfare state with meaning, while offering a particular style of existence as a remedy. The figure of the social entrepreneur enacts the crisis of the social by problematizing how things in the non-profit sector have traditionally been done, along with the things which were believed and cherished. The myth of social entrepreneurship responds to this urgency by suggesting the individual entrepreneur as the (only) solution. At heart, the myth sees every individual as able to accept that the best way forward as a non-profit manager, social leader, community activist and so on is to believe in the ideas of business entrepreneurship, to freely accept them, to integrate (that is, properly embody) them, and to carry them over into the realm of everyday work. Underlying the myth of the social entrepreneur is a Protestant work ethic which denotes bold individualism (Lounsbury and Strang, 2009) as the individual’s calling. Represented as a higher calling (instead of ordinary work), social entrepreneurship becomes a spiritual journey which offers people a deeply moralized style of existence (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). Hence, the social entrepreneur epitomizes how individuals freely and autonomously work upon themselves in order to play a strong and vibrant part in society (Blair, 1994). As this line of thinking demonstrates, the myth of social entrepreneurship needs to be criticized as it naturalizes particular realities based on triumphant ideologies. But the problem of ideology’s denaturalization begins when one tries to highlight social entrepreneurship’s other(s), that is, those aspects which are de-politicized by myth. It is not possible just to speak differently about social entrepreneurship, because language never stands in a position of exteriority to myth. As Lombardo (2010) eloquently put it, the mythologist is easily caught up in the dilemma of seeking ‘to tear through the veil of [mythical] illusions which we all create with the very language of these illusions’ (p. 58). Barthes (1972) was painfully aware of the inescapability of myth, going so far as to concede that ‘the mythologist is condemned to live in a theoretical sociality [. . .]. His [and her] connection with the world is of the order of sarcasm’ (p. 157).

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As there is no authentic space beyond myth, it easily becomes clear that every meaning leveled against myth is immediately susceptible to the charge of being an ideology in its own right. For instance, in her critical study of the marketization of the non-profit sector, Eikenberry (2009) made the case that social entrepreneurship symbolizes a shift toward more business-like conduct among non-profit organizations. To her, this is problematic as it ‘appears to compromise the contributions nonprofit and voluntary organisations might make to democracy’ (p. 588). Now, the issue with such a type of critique is that, since it is trying to do away with myth (that is, marketization) based on a seemingly more appropriate explanation (that is, democratization), it ends up just exchanging one myth for another. As Eikenberry (2009) seems aware of this, mentioning that she does not ‘intend to create another hegemonic discourse’ (p. 593), one can scarcely deny that this choice also reflects her own myths and ideological background.

MYTH AS DIALECTIC POTENTIAL: DEMYSTIFYING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FROM BELOW When ideological demystification can also be unmasked as myth, it creates a need for ways to critique the myth of social entrepreneurship beyond the practice of abstract contemplation (Vattimo, 1985). With ‘demystification from below’ we pursue this aim by demonstrating that the myth of social entrepreneurship is not a self-contained system: the individuals (for example practitioners in the non-profit sector) that it tries to address and shape in particular ways are never fully subordinated to its power. Seeing resistance as inherent in any analysis of the myth of social entrepreneurship, we study this resistance by considering the language usage of non-profit practitioners, placing particular stress on how their language reveals both the ideological and the utopian dynamic of myth. Where such a shift from mythopoeia (that is, myth-making) to the consumption of myth supports the view that social entrepreneurship is a highly contested and ambiguous idea, its critical potential lies in the fact that it captures ‘the voices of those most often assumed to be the object of, rather than a subject in the production of, the discourse of which they form the centre’ (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008, p. 305). Bringing to light some of the ways in which nonprofit practitioners punctuate the myth of social entrepreneurship by sensing ‘the significance of what is excluded, ignored or repressed’ (Froggett and Chamberlayne, 2004, p. 71), demystification from below engenders the freedom to exercise localized forms of knowing and being. The dialectic of myth is hence visible in the way that practices of resistance produce an

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opening for novel articulations that counteract ‘progressive solidification’ (Barthes, 1967). However, these localized forms of knowledge remain contested and thus prone to co-optation (Murray, 2004). We will now offer an illustration of this form of demystification based on an empirical study carried out in the Swiss non-profit sector, beginning with a brief introduction of the sort of analytic procedure being applied. Interpretative Repertoires: Conceptual and Analytic Considerations Where a dialectic view of myth stresses the ongoing tensions between the ideological and the utopian, we deem the theory of interpretative repertoires (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Steyaert et al., 2016) to be particularly apt for the task of demystification from below: it allows us to study how individuals use language in such a way that they can simultaneously reproduce and transgress the ideological context of which they are part. An interpretative repertoire, a concept which chiefly hints at the doxic aspect of language (Wetherell, 1998), is part of the symbolic toolbox belonging to members of the relevant interpretative community; thus it allows individuals not only to perpetuate the ideological climate in which they are located but to practice a certain degree of freedom by making creative use of the ‘range of linguistic resources that can be drawn upon and utilized in the course of everyday social interaction’ (Edley, 2001, p. 198). The analysis of interpretative repertoires hence chiefly concedes and takes into account that people are simultaneously the ‘master and the slave of language’ (Edley, 2001, p. 190). In the ensuing illustration, analyzing interpretative repertoires involves sticking as closely as possible to what non-profit practitioners say, with two aims: to better understand the variety of motives and ideologies they endorse (Boddice, 2009), and to bring to light not only how they are affected by myth but also how they use language to create meanings that might be unofficial or silenced (Murray, 2004). The question of identity is important in analyzing interpretative repertoires because what any given individual can think of herself/himself as a person depends upon the linguistic conventions that common sense offers to her or him. Hence, a key objective of the following analysis is to reveal the subject positions that are rendered available to individuals by their specific ways of talking. Case Description and Analytic Procedure The analysis of interpretative repertoires is based on 30 interviews with practitioners from 12 different non-profit organizations (Dey, 2016). All the organizations were accredited by a national certification agency which

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provides a seal of approval for non-profit organizations in Switzerland. Most organizations were involved in providing social services, notably in the domains of health and education. The sample mainly consisted of small and mid-sized organizations; only two organizations employed more than 100 people (both paid staff and volunteers); 14 women and 16 men took part in the study. The study included people from different hierarchical levels: office administrators, project administrators and assistants, heads of projects, and volunteers, as well as directors, managers and founders. Each semi-structured interview lasted between one and two hours, and was guided by a list of prepared questions. The focus of the questions was to establish a ‘field of visibility’ with regard to non-profit organizations’ main activities, purposes or raisons d’être, crucial challenges, and success factors. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. The subsequent paper-and-pencil analysis occurred in three steps. In the first step we repeatedly read the transcripts and took notes on recurring topics and frequently used words. In the second step we aggregated singular utterances and sentences on the level of interpretative repertoires, thus pinpointing ‘relatively internally consistent, bounded language units’ (Wetherell and Potter, 1988, p. 171) that constitute a particular view of non-profit organizations. In the third analytic step we categorized the repertoires with regard to their respective focus (how are non-profit organizations represented discursively?), their protagonists (what are the main characters in the discursive account?) and subject position (what ‘location’ of the self is discursively produced?). Analyzing Practitioners’ Language The analysis revealed three interpretative repertoires which we discuss below (see Table 6.2). The excerpts used to illustrate the repertoires were translated from the (Swiss) German transcripts. Interviews are numbered from P1 to P30. Benevolence repertoire: ‘Being among equals’ The first repertoire we named benevolence because it strongly and at times exclusively associates non-profit work with the organizations’ stated purpose. Making frequent use of terms such as ‘helping’, ‘supporting’ or ‘identification’, the benevolence repertoire portrays non-profit organizations as being chiefly concerned with the well-being of beneficiaries. Practitioners who mobilize the benevolence repertoire describe the work of non-profit organizations as ‘useful’ and ‘much needed’. Our analysis revealed that the positive evaluative accent of this repertoire largely derives from lauding the importance of human relations (P1: ‘[. . .] and that’s why it probably

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Table 6.2  Results from the analysis of interpretative repertoires Benevolence repertoire: ‘Being among equals’ Core terms

‘helping’, ‘supporting’ or ‘identification’ Addressee Beneficiaries Subject position Ideal-type helper ‘supportive, upright and non-dominant’ Emphasis Being close to the field, equality and pragmatism

Professionalism repertoire: ‘Doing the small things right’

Enterprising repertoire: ‘Enduring hardship to become free’

‘liability’, ‘reasonableness’ or ‘sincerity’ Donors Down-to-earth professionals

‘innovativeness’, ‘perseverance’ or ‘endurance’ Practitioner Autonomous and risk-taking starter

Being close to donors, efficiency of administrative practices

Innovativeness, hard work, being different

worked out in my case [. . .] because the factor “man” was pivotal, that is, the connection with human fate [. . .]’). It must be noted that the category ‘man’ for the most part encompasses the perspective of beneficiaries, that is, their relationship with the non-profit practitioners. The benevolence repertoire conveys detailed and normative descriptions pertaining to how the practitioners, or the organization quite generally, should be treating the beneficiaries. Practitioners relying on the benevolence repertoire often used words such as ‘sensitive’, ‘understanding’, ‘commitment’ or ‘empathy’ to delineate the proper mindset of non-profit practitioners (P7: ‘we decided to make those children in Y [name of country] our target group (hmm) that’s when we began to commit and identify ourselves’). Moreover, the benevolence repertoire uses terms such as ‘partnership’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘trust’ to pinpoint the relational side of non-profit work, which is usually depicted as something which requires time, patience and dedication. At base of the benevolence repertoire is the conviction that beneficiaries can be ‘empowered’ or ‘emancipated’. The support offered by the non-profit organization is mostly seen as temporary, as many accounts stress the principle of ‘help for self-help’. The sense of fulfillment associated with non-profit work derives from accounts which delineate encounters with beneficiaries as sites of mutual ‘learning’ and ‘growth’ (P11: ‘[. . .] we then went over to F [name of region] [. . .] I then realized that we could start an exchange [. . .] meaning that we could learn from each other’). Hence, acknowledging that both the helper and the recipient profit from the encounters allows the benevolence repertoire to defy a hierarchical

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pedagogy of help. Though non-profit organizations are associated with terms such as ‘emancipation’, we could not help noticing that this repertoire retains a decisively pragmatic spirit. Instead of, for instance, using political slogans to justify their accounts, practitioners using this repertoire engender a pragmatic vision of non-profit organizations by providing detailed descriptions of concrete projects. On the one hand, such elaborate reports of projects stress the everydayness of non-profit work. On the other hand, they discursively legitimate the speaker by purporting that she/ he is ‘in touch with’ or ‘close to’ the field. Being close to one’s beneficiaries thus forms a rhetorical trope for justifying that what the organization, or the practitioners, do is grounded in concrete experiences and knowledge. A final and important characteristic of the benevolence repertoire is that it emphasizes ‘equality’ between non-profit practitioners and beneficiaries: (P23: ‘[. . .] for instance [. . .] our approach in development work is based on the premise that one is among equals (hmmm) [. . .]’). The notion of ‘equality’ and ‘equals’ is employed to delineate the work of non-profit organizations as non-oppressive. Furthermore, it is by positioning normative ideals such as equality and sameness as a proxy for justice that the repertoire works to rule out possibilities of control, patronage or unequal relations of power at large. What is the subject position offered by the benevolence repertoire? It follows from the analysis that the ideal-type helper is supportive, upright and non-dominant. Interestingly, the beneficiary repertoire does not engender images of self-sacrifice. Though they stress activities such as ‘supporting’ or ‘helping’, helpers are not usually construed as persons who subordinate their own interests to those of beneficiaries. Instead, they portray working with beneficiaries as an activity that is equally fulfilling for the helper and the recipient. Helpers are assumed to understand that ‘equality’ forms a higher good which has to be constantly worked on and protected. Helpers thus simultaneously treat ‘equality’ as a pre-condition of successful nonprofit work as well as an end in itself. It is this latter aspect which renders the helper a subject for whom the journey (and not necessarily the journey’s outcome) forms the reward. Though a genuine interest in the beneficiaries is one of their key characteristics, helpers are not naive idealists with highflying dreams. In fact, the analysis revealed ‘show confessions’ (Antaki and Wetherell, 1999) through which speakers acknowledged that official claims about non-profit organizations’ transformative potential are up for critique. Instead of envisioning landslide changes, the helper is someone who remains in the ‘here and now’, thus focusing on the everyday challenges associated with non-profit work.

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Professionalism repertoire: ‘Doing the small things right’ Practitioners enact the professionalism repertoire to emphasize the crucial importance of donors and the role of administrative practices. At base, the professionalism repertoire construes non-profit organizations as being largely about ‘good management’. But the professionalism we describe here is not a version of the kind of doing business that has been popularized in conjunction with the ‘entrepreneurial new wave management’ (du Gay, 2000). Instead, this repertoire interweaves terms such as ‘liability’, ‘reasonableness’ or ‘sincerity’ in praising the ethos of bureaucracy. Conceiving of non-profit organizations as a bundle of well-coordinated yet divisible administrative practices, these practitioners see the yardstick of good management as ‘doing one’s job right’, that is, focusing on one’s immediate task without necessarily taking into account the ‘big picture’ (P14: ‘[. . .] the only thing which he [the director] asks me about is when he wants to make payments and that’s when I can say yes or no [. . .] other than that I don’t influence the decisions of the organization [. . .]’). On the face of it, stressing the view that the success of non-profit organizations is a matter of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, the professionalism repertoire connects practitioners’ liabilities to their immediate realm of specialization. That is, responsibilities and duties are defined and thus limited by the role, position or function a given individual holds within the organization. While this might be taken as indicating that professionals are people who are disinterested and who have no virtues, it should be noted that values are in fact enacted through this repertoire. Yet the professionalism repertoire mainly envisions values in relation with efficiency, in contrast to, for instance, the benevolence repertoire which is based on a strong moral foundation (read ‘equality’). In doing so, it promotes the idea that good things become possible only if each and every member of the organization fulfills her/his personal duties in the best possible way, that is, efficiently. What is of particular interest here is that efficiency functions as a dividing practice that distinguishes between admissible and inadmissible non-profit organizations; legitimate non-profit organizations are obviously those that are efficient (P9: ‘[. . .] what distinguishes us from others is our efficiency (hm) [. . .]’). On the other hand, legitimacy is also built by associating efficiency with the broader responsibility of non-profits. Hence, legitimate non-profits are not just those that are efficient but those that measure their efficiency and transparently communicate their performance to their donors (read accountability). Essentially, where the benevolence repertoire positions ‘being close to beneficiaries’ as both a moral imperative and a source of fulfillment, the professionalism repertoire construes the ethos of non-profit organizations in relation to ‘being close to donors’. Relations with donors are thus positioned in a business-case logic, meaning that

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practices of transparency and accountability are evaluated according to whether or not they increase the organization’s reputation and, ultimately, whether they secure donors’ financial support. The professionalism repertoire’s subject position construes non-profit practitioners as down-to-earth professionals who pursue their work in a calm and logical way. Professionals are construed as prudent and frugal problem-solvers who rely on their expertise and knowledge. Practitioners who use this repertoire clearly do not radiate the sense of excitement one finds in the subject position of the helper that comes with the benevolence repertoire. But this does not mean that professionals are not committed to their work. Rather, professionals convey a work ethos that construes responsibility in relation with expertise and efficiency. As a result, professionals act responsibly if they carry out their work efficiently in their respective field of specialization, thus explicitly not assuming responsibility beyond their designated institutional role. Professionals are deeply moral subjects to the extent that they accept that the success of non-profit organizations depends on the contribution of each and every individual and, consequently, that people must remain reliable, transparent and efficient. Enterprising repertoire: ‘Enduring hardship to become free’ The third repertoire, which we call enterprising, is clearly less palpable in practitioners’ accounts. In fact, we only identified the enterprising repertoire in accounts uttered by founders of non-profit organizations. In contrast to the benevolence repertoire, which focuses on beneficiaries, or the professionalism repertoire, which focuses on donors, the enterprising repertoire puts the perspective of non-profit practitioners center stage. Apart from construing non-profit work as being based on individual attributes such as ‘innovativeness’, ‘perseverance’ or ‘endurance’, the enterprising repertoire also stresses relational practices such as ‘collaborating’ and ‘dialogue’ (P19: ‘I (hm) [. . .] it would not have been possible to start L [name of organization] without [. . .] without leading discussions [. . .] without people with whom I was able to have discussions and whom I could ask things’). It needs to be borne in mind that this creates a tension with the extant literature which claims that non-profit organizations, due to increasingly scarce resources, are facing stiff competition (Dacin et al., 2011). A further point to be mentioned is that the enterprising repertoire prima facie seems to create a good fit with the benevolence repertoire as both employ attributes such as ‘involvement’, ‘commitment’ and ‘passion’. However, there are subtleties which clearly distinguish the two repertoires. In contrast to the benevolence repertoire, which relates the

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affective ­qualities of non-profit work with the beneficiaries and, by doing so, depicts them as ends in themselves, the enterprising repertoire uses those qualities in a more instrumental way. That is, practitioners who enact the enterprising repertoire suggest that affective qualities such as passion are necessary to endure the ‘hardship’ related to non-profit work. The notion of ‘hardship’ is thus endowed with two distinct meanings. On the one hand, individual ‘hardship’ is exemplified through the messes and obstacles of everyday life, and thus denoted as an inevitable ‘side effect’ in the pursuit of the organization’s mission. On the other hand, and more poetically, ‘hardship’ comes to be seen as one element in the quest to be free. That is, where non-profit work is conceived of as offering individuals an autonomous and free style of existence, ‘hardship’ becomes the materialization of the person’s transformation (P2: ‘of course we earn less than others (hmhm) but that doesn’t bother me much [. . .] all that counts today (hmm) is that I’m free to do what I please’). A striking aspect of the enterprising repertoire is that it produces a subject position of entrepreneur without actually using the term ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘enterprising’. Though apparently surprising, this does not strike us as a general paradox because the repertoire does produce the subject position of the entrepreneur based on attributes which are seen as typical of entrepreneurs. That is, interweaving attributes such as ‘self-made’, ‘persevering’ or ‘risk-taking’, the entrepreneur is produced discursively as someone who approaches work in an enterprising fashion. We should mention, however, that attributes such as ‘risk-taking’, though apparently forming part of an individual’s set-up, are discursively created as contingent behaviors. That is, our analysis showed that ‘risk-taking’ is construed as a behavior which becomes necessary because of the non-profit sector’s ‘open’ or ‘insecure’ prospects. Construing ‘risk-taking’ as a necessary consequence in the face of an uncertain environment rather than as an inherent quality of the person clearly challenges the idea of possessive individualism which sees the social entrepreneur as a free agent who owns herself/himself completely. Furthermore, the entrepreneur is not delin­eated as a larger-than-life figure but as a hard-working, at times creative, person and, most importantly, as someone who wants to be autonomous and free. At its core, the entrepreneur is someone who ‘sacrifices’ a normal life for a career which offers her/him freedom and individual self-fulfillment. By representing entrepreneurs as people who ‘go against the grain’, the enterprising repertoire does not invoke the image of the isolated maverick. Instead, it produces a logic which sees ‘being different’ as an element of the entrepreneur’s primary drive to become free in the first place.

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Discussion: Between Mythical Endorsement and Re-articulation of the Social Given that one of the main (ideological) functions of myth is to preserve the status quo (Tager, 1986), our identification of the three interpretative repertoires offers a preliminary sense of whether mythical representations of social entrepreneurship have captured practitioners’ imaginations through the spirit of post-welfarism based on a managerially defined understanding of enterprise (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). It is fitting to start our discussion by pointing out that the language of non-profit practitioners did in fact endorse mythical meanings, for instance by depicting work in non-profit organizations as a journey into unknown territories (enterprising repertoire). Framing this work as an alternative career trajectory whose intrinsic value derives from serving the community and not the economy (benevolence repertoire), practitioners construed such engagements as transformational experiences that presuppose dedication while (in return) offering salvation (personal growth, fulfillment). Moreover, what renders practitioners’ language mythical is that it delineates self-sacrifice as a sine qua non of both individual and societal redemption. In accordance with the myth of social entrepreneurship, practitioners’ language contains a secular dimension in that destiny (of both practitioners and their organizations) is critically linked with mundane business practices (professionalism repertoire). Though these exemplary cases indicate that practitioners’ language is not safe from the reproductive tendencies of myth, it is equally important to point out that fundamental differences do exist between practitioners’ language and the myth of social entrepreneurship. Above all, mythical enunciations differ from practitioners’ language in terms of how they signify change. The social entrepreneurship myth, as a result of its eschatology, entertains the view of a world which has chiefly reached its end, and which can only be saved through a reunion with the messiah (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). In absolute contrast to that view, the language of practitioners expresses a much more moderate and tempered understanding of change. Unlike the myth of social entrepreneurship which stresses an epochalistic ‘all-or-nothing’ logic (that is, life ‘as we know it’ has no more currency; the messiah will have to make all things new; Sørensen, 2008), practitioners’ language lacks that grandiosity and monumentality. Indeed, practitioners’ language hails small size, for instance by cherishing the intrinsic beauty of minor successes (benevolence and enterprising repertoires). A further distinction worth noting concerns mythical heroism. While it designates the very essence of that myth, practitioners’ language conveys a sense of mastery and individual agency (enterprising repertoire),

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and contains no mention whatsoever of individual superiority based on super-human capacities. Important distinctions between myth and practitioners’ language become evident not only on a substantive level (topics, themes) but on the level of form. In contrast to the myth of social entrepreneurship, which favors that which is discrete, linear and positive, practitioners’ accounts invoke quite heterogeneous ideologies which often cause irreconcilable ambivalences. Indeed, each of the three interpretative repertoires entailed tensions. For instance, practitioners who used the benevolence repertoire were often facing a need to balance and rhetorically justify the oppositional logics of ‘equality’ (beneficiaries treated as equals, as described earlier) versus ‘command’. That is, the non-profit organization must have the last word; for example, P2 said, ‘I mean one always remains friendly (hm) but we [. . .] work on the basis of the principle “whoever pays commands” or [. . .] “whoever pays gives friendly orders”’  (laughter)’. Though practitioners were mostly able to solve their ambivalences by applying certain rhetorical strategies (Edley, 2001), our analysis revealed that tensions often flared up again when the practitioners could not disband the oppositional logics once and for all. In effect, their reality accounts and discursive identities remained highly fluid and transient. Juxtaposing practitioners’ ambivalent use of language with the steadfast and coherent myth of social entrepreneurship brings into view the ideological function of myth. That is, the reason why we tend to overlook the inalienable difference and essential instability of the social is that the myth of social entrepreneurship, by purifying reality, gets ‘to draw a veil over the [. . .] variety of motives and ideologies carried by social entrepreneurs themselves’ (Boddice, 2009, p. 133). However, our analysis also indicates a dialectic potential, because the relationship between the mythical signification of social entrepreneurship and practitioners’ local language usage is one of simultaneous, if constantly shifting, opposition and complicity (Fiske, 1989a). Practitioners are going to perpetuate myths. That is a given, and it supports the ideological view on myth. However, they are also going to punctuate it in largely unforeseeable ways, rendering myth a site of struggle between the forces of consent and resistance (Fiske, 1989b). Consequently, rather than seeing social entrepreneurship as a mere negativity (as implied in the ideological view discussed above), the myth of social entrepreneurship is in the first instance always a means of both social control and social imagin­ ation (Ricoeur, 1991; see Dey and Steyaert, 2015). The myth of social entrepreneurship can avoid becoming hierarchical if its dialectic tensions and utopian spirit are kept alive: mythical ‘imagination may function to preserve an order [. . .] on the other hand, though, imagination may have a

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disruptive function; it may work as a breakthrough’ (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 266). Thus, demystification from below is less about explaining away myth as conservative, false, reactionary, and so on, and more about pinpointing how myth creates struggles and tensions which in turn materialize the potential for social change.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS In this chapter we have developed two contributions for the critical analysis of social entrepreneurship through the notion of myth: we have mapped different understandings of myth and demystification, and carved out, through an empirical study, the potential of ‘demystification from below’. From our review, it became clear that, thus far, the three understandings of myth and the practices of demystification have not been equally applied in the critical analysis of social entrepreneurship. So far, probing the truth value of the myth of social entrepreneurship through reality testing has been the preferred form of demystification; we see that as valuable as it offers an initial feel for the mythical operation of social entrepreneurship by testing the degree to which popular beliefs actually concur with empir­ ical reality. The main value of such tests is that they give some indication of whether or not social entrepreneurship is simply overblown rhetoric (O’Connor, 2006) and they point out aspects and topics of social entrepreneurship which require further empirical studies and ethical considerations (Dey and Steyaert, 2016). Concerning the ideological understanding of myth, so far only a few scholars have dealt with the level of social entrepreneurship’s social pragmatics, that is, how social entrepreneurship naturalizes a particular social reality it ostensibly only describes. The task of the mythologist qua ideology critic, following the plentiful inspiration Barthes (1972) has offered, would be to unmask social entrepreneurship as the artificial construct that it is, and to show that what appears to be natural about it is in fact historically shaped and thus open to adaptation and expansion. Following the practice of demystification through denatur­ alization, the primary role of the mythologist is to show that the social entrepreneur ‘is not a necessary or universal character, but a historically and spatially specific figure who is implicated in relations of domination’ (Jones and Spicer, 2009, p. 26). In a second contribution, we have turned to demystification from below; we believe it is important to develop this idea further as its emphasis on the dialectics of myth allows us to conceive of the ideology and utopia of social entrepreneurship as essentially inseparable. Moreover, where demystification from below reveals the pleasure based on the experience

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of being involved in creating socially pertinent meaning out of available common sense (Fiske 1989b), it responds to recent pleas to strengthen the interventionist side of social entrepreneurship (Steyaert and Dey, 2010). The resistance entailed in demystification from below hence offers novel insights as to how practitioners, who are called on ideologically to act in a socially entrepreneurial manner, are able to control meaning over what they do and who they are (identity). By implication, studying practitioners’ language makes it possible to develop an understanding of how they define themselves as subjects and whether their views are ‘consistent with those of the actors that study, fund and teach them’ (Hervieux et al., 2010, p. 61). On the other hand, such inquiries also have the potential to re-articulate social entrepreneurship, for instance by sensing ‘the significance of what is excluded, ignored or repressed’ (Froggett and Chamberlayne, 2004, p. 71) and by introducing antagonisms and dissensus into the dominant game of meaning-making (Charnley, 2011). Illuminating the rupture between the current ‘wave of euphoria and optimism’ (Bull, 2008, p. 272) and what could be possible but is not articulated, inquiries of socially embedded practices form the foundation for new meaning events based on the invent­ ive potential of language. Though our use of the analysis of interpretative repertoires was pedagogic rather than prescriptive, we nevertheless believe that language-based analysis forms an ideal candidate for advancing the critical research agenda of social entrepreneurship (Dacin et al., 2011), not least because it raises some interesting issues about how practitioners’ talk resists prevailing knowledge without actually opposing it head on. Furthermore, language-based analyses acknowledge that ideology and myth are not related to resistance in the sense of an opposite (Jones et al., 2008); rather, they form a relationship characterized by ‘a spiral that no simple infraction can exhaust’ (Foucault, 1998, pp. 73–4). Our analysis of interpretative repertoires has thus been instrumental for substantiating this point, notably by showing how non-profit practitioners’ language oscillated between endorsing and transgressing the mythical themes through which social entrepreneurship is conceived. To be sure, such oscillation is a good sign since it indicates that ‘social entrepreneurship’ is not (yet) annexed by the managerial enunciation of the social (Hjorth, 2013) and thus is still amenable to inventive articulations. Given that myth will always stay with us, our analysis has suggested that the task is to oscillate between myth (that is, significations which de-politicize social entrepreneurship) and its demystification, illuminating how mythical language reaches its limit, and how this in turn creates the space for new ideas to take shape. Indeed, demystification from below offers plenty of chances to probe the limits of social entrepreneurship’s myths, which creates the possibility for novel articulations of the social (Hjorth and Bjerke, 2006). And though

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demystification from below does not automatically mobilize people to take action, it must remain clear that resistance at the local level is more than just ‘ideologically evasive, it is a necessary base for social action’ (Fiske, 1989b, p. 10). Even if our mapping of practices of demystification has pointed at obvious gaps in the critical analysis of social entrepreneurship, and its considerable potential, it must be borne in mind that demystification carries within itself the seed of what Barthes (1967) called ‘progressive solidification’, that is, the dynamics through which potentially radical impulses become immunized, contained, dampened. However hard the mythologist tries to step beyond the influence of the dominant culture, that culture will find a way to appropriate it as an identity (that is, as part of itself). Where social entrepreneurship is never safe from dominant culture and its myths, the process of demystification becomes an ongoing process which depends on the invention of ever new concepts of myth and practices of demystification that can link up and thereby intensify transversal struggles. We must never stop calling into question the myths which are generally agreed upon and which suppress other, liminal voices. Constantly trying to speak differently, from somewhere else and for someone else: we suggest that as the motto of the mythologist who tries to make sure the myth of social entrepreneurship ‘does not thicken, that is doesn’t stick’ (Barthes, 1977, p. 162).

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Pullen and Carl Rhodes (eds), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organization, London: Routledge, pp. 231–48. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2016), ‘Rethinking the space of ethics in social entrepreneurship: Power, subjectivity and practices of freedom’, Journal of Business Ethics, 133 (4), 627–41. Diochon, Monica and Alistair R. Anderson (2009), ‘Social enterprise and ­effectiveness: A process typology’, Social Enterprise Journal, 5 (1), 7–29. Drakopoulou Dodd, Sarah and Alistair R. Anderson (2007), ‘Mumpsimus and the mything of the individualistic entrepreneur’, International Small Business Journal, 25 (4), 341–60. du Gay, Paul (2000), In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber, Organization, Ethics, London: Sage. Edley, Nigel (2001), ‘Analysing masculinity: Interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions’, in Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon Yates (eds), Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, London: Open University Press & Sage, pp. 189–228. Eikenberry, Angela M. (2009), ‘Refusing the market: A democratic discourse for voluntary and nonprofit organizations’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38 (4), 582–96. Fiske, John (1989a), Understanding Popular Culture, New York: Routledge. Fiske, John (1989b), Reading the Popular, New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel (1998), ‘A preface to transgression’, in James Faubion (ed.), Michel Foucault. Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 69–88. Fox, J. (2009), The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street, New York: Harper. Froggett, Lynn and Prue Chamberlayne (2004), ‘Narratives of social enterprise: From biography to practice and policy critique’, Qualitative Social Work, 3 (1), 61–77. Graefe, Peter (2005), ‘Roll-out neoliberalism and the social economy’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, 2 June, Ontario, Canada. Halpern, Ben (1961), ‘“Myth” and “ideology” in modern usage’, History and Theory, 1 (11), 129–49. Haugh, Helen (2009), ‘A resource-based perspective of social entrepreneurship’, in Jeffrey A. Robinson, Johanna Mair and Kai Hockert (eds), International Perspectives on Social Entrepreneurship, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 99–116. Hervieux, Chantal, Eric Gedajlovic and Marie-France B. Turcotte (2010), ‘The legitimization of social entrepreneurship’, Journal of Enterprising Communities, 41 (1), 37–67. Hjorth, Daniel (2013), ‘Public entrepreneurship: Desiring social change, creating sociality’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25 (1), 34–51. Hjorth, Daniel and Björn Bjerke (2006), ‘Public entrepreneurship: Moving from social/consumer to public/citizen’, in Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth (eds), Entrepreneurship as Social Change: A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 97–120. Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Isin, Engin F. (1998), ‘Governing Toronto without government: Liberalism and neoliberalism’, Studies in Political Economy, 56, 169–91. Jameson, Frederic (1981), The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, London: Methuen. Jones, Campbell and André Spicer (2009), Unmasking the Entrepreneur, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Jones, Robert, James Latham and Michela Betta (2008), ‘Narrative construction of the social entrepreneurial identity’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 14 (5), 330–45. Kerlin, Janelle A. and Tom H. Pollak (2010), ‘Nonprofit commercial revenue: A replacement for declining government grants and contributions?’, American Review of Public Administration, 41 (6), 686–704. Lombardo, Patrizia (2010), The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes, Athens, Greece and London, UK: The University of Georgia Press. Lounsbury, Michael and David Strang (2009), ‘Social entrepreneurship: Success stories and logic construction’, in David Hammack and Steven Heydemann (eds), Globalization, Philanthropy and Civil Society: Projecting Philanthropic Logics Abroad, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 71–94. Lyon, Fergus, Simon Teasdale and Robert Baldock (2010), ‘Approaches to measuring the scale of the social enterprise sector in the UK’, TSRC working paper series no. 43. Mumby, Dennis K. (2005), ‘Theorizing resistance in organization studies: A dialectic approach’, Management Communication Quarterly, 19 (1), 19–44. Munro, Ian and Christian Huber (2012), ‘Kafka’s mythology: Organization, bureaucracy and the limits of sensemaking’, Human Relations, 65 (4), 523–44. Murray, Stuart J. (2004), ‘Myth as critique?’, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 30 (2), 247–62. Nicholls, Alex (2006), ‘Playing the field: A new approach to the meaning of social entrepreneurship’, Social Enterprise Journal, 2 (1), 1–5. Nicholson, Louise and Alistair R. Anderson (2005), ‘News and nuances of the entrepreneurial myth and metaphor: Linguistic games in entrepreneurial sense-making and sense-giving’, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 29 (2), 153–72. Nodoushani, Omid and Patricia A. Nodoushani (2000), ‘Second thought on the entrepreneurial myth’, The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 1 (1), 7–12. O’Connor, Ellen (2006), ‘Location and relocation, visions and revisions: Opportunities for social entrepreneurship’, in Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjort (eds), Entrepreneurship as Social Change: A Third Movements in Entrepreneurship Book, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 78–96. Ogbor, John O. (2000), ‘Mythicizing and reification in entrepreneurial discourse: Ideology critique of entrepreneurial studies’, Journal of Management Studies, 37 (5), 605–35. Page, Antony and Robert A. Katz (2012), ‘The truth about Ben and Jerry’s’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 10 (4). Parkinson, Caroline and Carole Howorth (2008), ‘The language of social entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 20 (3), 285–309. Peredo, Anna-Maria (2011), ‘Social entrepreneurship’, in Leo-Paul Dana

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(ed.), International Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 410–14. Popper, Karl (1935), Logik der Forschung, Vienna: Julius Springer Verlag. Potter, Jonathan and Margaret Wetherell (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behavior, London: Sage. Ricoeur, Paul (1986), Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, New York: Columbia University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (1991), A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, New York: Harvester/Wheatsheaf. Simon, Roger (2005), Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Sorel, Georges (1999), Reflections on Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sørensen, Bent Meier (2008), ‘“Behold, I am making all things new”: The entrepreneur as savior in the age of creativity’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 24 (2), 85–93. Steyaert, Chris and Pascal Dey (2010), ‘Nine verbs to keep the research agenda of social entrepreneurship “dangerous”’, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1 (2), 231–54. Steyaert, Chris, Julia Nentwich and Patrizia Hoyer (eds) (2016), A Guide to Discursive Organizational Psychology, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Tager, Michael (1986), ‘Myth and politics in the works of Sorel and Barthes’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 47 (4), 625–39. Vattimo, Gianni (1985), ‘Myth and the fate of secularization’, Social Research, 52, 347–62. Von Hendy, Andrew (2002), The Modern Construction of Myth, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Wetherell, Margaret (1998), ‘Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and poststructuralism in dialogue’, Discourse and Society, 9 (3), 387–412. Wetherell, Margaret and Jonathan Potter (1988), ‘Discourse analysis and the identification of interpretative repertoires’, in Charles Antaki (ed.), Analysing Everyday Explanation: A Casebook of Methods, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 168–83. Yitshaki, Ronit, Miri Lerner and Moshe Sharir (2008), ‘What are social ventures? Toward a theoretical framework and empirical examination of successful social ventures’, in Gordon E. Shockley, Peter M. Frank and Roger R. Stough (eds), Non-market Entrepreneurship: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edgar Elgar Publishing, pp. 217–41.

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7. Social entrepreneurship: mythological ‘doublethink’ Lew Perren INTRODUCTION The preceding chapters have put forward convincing arguments that social entrepreneurship is a politicized myth (Dey and Steyaert, Chapter 6, this volume; Mason and Moran, Chapter 5, this volume). Myth in this context is not just a falsehood as in the commonplace use of the term, but a dominating ideological icon that reinforces standardized views about knowledge and society (Dey and Steyaert, Chapter 6, this volume, drawing upon classic work by Cassirer (1946), Barthes (1972) and Sorel (1999); also see the helpful summary of the theory of myth in Segal, 2004). Such myths not only normalize the status quo, but help sustain it by providing a ‘veil’ masking problematic truths, confounding ideological contradictions and amplifying positive imagery (Mason and Moran, Chapter 5, this volume, drawing upon Wingo, 2003). Drawing upon these insights and those of Orwell (1949), Barthes (1972) and Lakoff (2004), this chapter will argue that social entrepreneurship is a particularly troublesome myth that triggers conflicting mental frames provoking a disempowering Orwellian ‘doublethink’.1 Following advice from Lakoff (2004), an emancipatory reframing strategy will be proposed to counter the allure of social entrepreneurship mythology.

FRAMING MYTHOLOGICAL ‘DOUBLETHINK’ Barthes (1972) extends de Saussure’s linguistic theory (1911) to propose that myths are formed by a meta-level semiological system that constructs meaning from a recursive system of language signs below (also see discussion of Barthes in Mason and Moran, Chapter 5, this volume). The myth of social entrepreneurship can be considered in this way tracing its origin from the most mundane level of two word images (signifiers) – ‘social’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ – through to the byzantine meta-level myth. Each 127

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word image represents a concept (signified) in the mind of the reader. ‘Social’ perhaps provoking subconscious frames (Lakoff, 2004) associated with society, community and collective (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). ‘Entrepreneurship’ perhaps provoking subconscious frames associated with business start-up, risk-taking and profit (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). In each case the conjunction of the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’ is the ‘sign’, the tangible demonstration of meaning (de Saussure, 1911). The sign ‘entrepreneurship’ itself becomes the signifier of a meta-level myth, the signified being the reader’s subconscious frame (Lakoff, 2004) of the prototypical masculine hero that dominates Western mythology, bravely facing and winning the quest alone (Ogbor, 2000). The reader oscillates between the levels of language and myth; the sign ‘entrepreneurship’ is not a pure emblematic of the hero myth, it is too functional and associated with business for that; it is blurred and subsumed by the myth, yet amplifies and concretizes it (see Barthes’ (1972) discussion of ‘form and concept’). The conjunction of the ‘social’ sign and the ‘entrepreneurship’ myth becomes the signifier of the social entrepreneurship myth, the signified being the reader’s disorienting Orwellian ‘doublethink’ (Orwell, 1949) causing oscillation between the conflicting frames of the entrepreneurship hero myth and the thoughts of society, community and collective from the social sign. Drawing upon Orwell, the organizational theorist Willmott (1993) observes that in the ‘doublethink’ of corporate culture ‘the values of community and autonomy are simultaneously celebrated and contradicted’ (p. 541); similarly in the ‘doublethink’ of social entrepreneurship the values of profit seeking and philanthropy are ‘simultaneously celebrated and contradicted’ (p. 541). The Orwellian myth of social entrepreneurship spurred on by the ‘newspeak’ neologism of the political and academic class forces the reader ‘to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them’ (Orwell, 1949, p. 37).

MYTHOLOGICAL ‘DOUBLETHINK’ THWARTS DIRECT OPPOSITION For policy-makers and academics this ‘newspeak’ conflates long-standing dualisms – capitalism versus socialism, profit versus philanthropy, private versus public, and right versus left – into a surreal semiotic myth: social entrepreneurship. The naturalization of this myth is bolstered by ‘veil’ politics, amplifying its beauty and logic, attenuating its complexity, and teasing engagement to the point where even well meaning progressives may be seduced (Mason and Moran, Chapter 5, this volume, drawing upon Wingo, 2003). The combination of ‘newspeak’ and ‘veil’ politics

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frustrates ideological counter-discourse by capturing competing ideological platforms through the ‘social’ semiotic. This leaves the myth as an uncontested meta-narrative of the right that neutralizes the dialectic of the left. Denaturalization through a competing ideological stance could be argued to replace one myth with yet another and so just perpetuate the hegemony in an opposite direction (see discussion of Eikenberry (2009); Chapter 12, this volume in Dey and Steyaert (Chapter 6, this volume)). Postmodernists have warned against all meta-narratives, whether they are supporting or competing against orthodoxy (Lyotard, 1984). Yet there would be, surely, some safety in the competing myths cancelling each other, rather than one dominating discourse. Perhaps equilibrium through such dualistic tensions is outmoded, a romantic throw-back to modernist times. However, postmodernists need not fear, because whatever the merit of counter meta-narratives, the social entrepreneurship myth thwarts such progressive resistance by ‘newspeak’ conflation of competing ideological positions. Given that the myth of social entrepreneurship thwarts counter-­ discourse, how should progressives resist this ideological Trojan horse from the right? Progressive realists may turn to what they see as facts that contradict the myth, seeing rationality as the way forward (see for example the discussion of Andersson (2011) in Dey and Steyaert, Chapter 6, this volume). Unfortunately, factual challenges of particular aspects of social entrepreneurship (for example growth or success rates), rather than resisting the myth, will actually give it oxygen and capture progressive discussions in the detail of this right-wing ‘frame’ (Lakoff, 2004).

EMANCIPATION THROUGH INDIRECT REFRAMING OF THE MYTH The discussion above shows that direct opposition of the social entrepreneurship myth through ideological counter discourse or contradictory facts is likely to fail. Lakoff (2004) recommends indirect opposition through reframing. Direct opposition will become ensnared in the mythological frame. Indirect opposition, through reframing, will bypass the mythology and resist on different terms. Reframing changes the language and conceptual resources in debates from the orthodox worldview to that of the revolutionary (Lakoff, 2004). This will be demonstrated by applying Lakoff’s (2004) reframing tactics to simulate discursive instances of the social entrepreneurship myth (see Table 7.1). The first column of Table 7.1 provides simulated discursive instances of social entrepreneurship mythology. These are influenced by the influential report on social

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Table 7.1 A reframing of the social entrepreneurship myth following Lakoff (2004) Lakoff’s (2004) Simulated discursive reframing tactics instances of social entrepreneurship mythology (influenced by Leadbeater, 1997) Social entrepreneurs provide services to the vulnerable in society that are often forgotten, like AIDS victims and the elderly. Social entrepreneurship is the best way to reform the welfare state.

‘A useful thing to do is to use rhetorical questions: Wouldn’t it be better if [. . .].’ (p. 116)

‘Your opponent may use language that means the opposite of what he says, called Orwellian language [. . .] Use language that accurately describes what he’s talking about [. . .].’ (p. 119) ‘You should be able Social entrepreneurship to recognize the basic will be better than frames that conservatives the public service at use, and you should innovating welfare prepare frames to shift services. to.’ (p. 117) Social entrepreneurs are ‘Use wedge issues, cases where your opponent will good at putting underused buildings and other violate some belief he resources to good use for holds no matter what he their local communities. says.’ (p. 118)

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Applying Lakoff’s (2004) reframing tactics (draws upon some of Lakoff’s, 2004, reframing examples) Wouldn’t it be better if society cared about vulnerable people and our national health care was well resourced? Social entrepreneurship should be called ‘No Clear Safety Net’ as it promotes dismantling Beveridge’s welfare state and replacing it with an uncoordinated tangle of small-scale Victorian-like patronage. Important innovations, like the sewage system, road network and internet were all made by shrewd public investment. Bring up the issue of the local church hall that is under-used and would make a great venue for a social entrepreneurship helping vulnerable teenagers with a history of crime. The wedge: If they disagree they are joining the reframe and placing boundaries on the idea; if they agree they are threatening their ‘not in my back yard’ view of their local area (Collins, 2017).

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Table 7.1  (continued) Lakoff’s (2004) Simulated discursive reframing tactics instances of social entrepreneurship mythology (influenced by Leadbeater, 1997) Social entrepreneurs create innovative solutions for their community that the public sector would be incapable of considering.

How can you be against social entrepreneurs ‘tackling some of our most pressing and intractable social problems: youth crime, drugs dependency, chronic joblessness, illiteracy, AIDS and mental illness.’ (Leadbeater, 1997, p. 8)

Applying Lakoff’s (2004) reframing tactics (draws upon some of Lakoff’s, 2004, reframing examples)

Social entrepreneurship is an ideologically driven way of substituting progressive values of public service and welfare with the market-driven right wing values of ‘New Public Management’ (see discussions on NPM in Du Gay, 2000). ‘Never answer a question How can you be happy to live in a society where framed from your such ‘intractable social opponent’s point of problems’ are not at the view.’ (p. 116) core of our objectives to solve and are left to fragmented personally driven initiatives?

‘An opponent may be disingenuous if his real goal isn’t what he says his goal is. Politely point out the real goal.’ (p. 118)

e­ ntrepreneurship by the political think-tank Demos (Leadbeater, 1997). It should be emphasized that the discursive instances are simulations to illustrate reframing; while they are influenced by Leadbeater (1997), they do not necessarily fully reflect views in the report and as such the reframing is not intended to represent a critique of the report. The second column provides reframing tactics from Lakoff (2004). The third column applies Lakoff’s (2004) reframing tactics to the simulated discursive instance from the first column. To illustrate, in the first column, first row, social entrepreneurs are portrayed by the Right as giving help to vulnerable members of society who are overlooked (drawing upon Leadbeater, 1997). Direct opposition to this frame is likely to appear as arguments against helping such people. Lakoff (2004, p. 116) suggests the reframing tactic of using the ‘rhetorical question: wouldn’t it be better if [. . .]’. Applying this tactic to the case provides the reframing question, ‘Wouldn’t it be better

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if society cared about vulnerable people and our national health care was well resourced?’

CONCLUSION Social entrepreneurship is a worrying mythology that can charm progressives and thwart factual and ideological counter-discourses. Fortunately, indirect opposition through reframing has shown the potential to resist the oscillating frames of Orwellian ‘doublethink’. Progressive academics (that is, those who oppose the naive belief in the redemptive qualities of market dogmatism), policy-makers and practitioners will hopefully heed the lessons here and emancipate themselves and others from the hegemony of the social entrepreneurship myth.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thank you to Professors Chris Steyaert and Pascal Dey for suggesting this chapter and the insights I gained from early sight of their thoughtful contributions to this volume. Thank you to Dr Mark Hughes for his helpful feedback and suggestions. The coined term ‘doublethink’ in the title and elsewhere is of course from Orwell (1949).

NOTE 1. The term ‘doublethink’ was coined by Orwell in his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (Pynchon, 2009). It is ‘the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them’ (Orwell, 1949, p. 223). In the novel, citizens of Oceania must not even have thoughts that are contradictory to the ruling Party. They are constantly ‘under the eye of the Thought Police’ who consider any changes in behaviour, however tiny, ‘could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle’ with beliefs in the Party (Orwell, 1949, p. 219). Such potential doubts in the Party result in torture and execution. ‘Doublethink’ gave citizens the ability to be ‘goodthinkers’ who do not see contradictions in the ‘power and wisdom of the Party’ and were ‘unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatever’ (Orwell, 1949, p. 220).

REFERENCES Andersson, Fredrik O. (2011), ‘Social entrepreneurship as fetish’, The Nonprofit Quarterly, 18 (2), 64–8. Barthes, Roland (1972, 1993), Mythologies, London: Vintage Books.

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Cassirer, Ernst (1946), The Myth of the State, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Collins English Dictionary (2017), available online at https://www.collinsdiction​ ary.com/dictionary/english/nimby. De Saussure, Ferdinand (1911, 2011), Course in General Linguistics, New York: Columbia University Press. Du Gay, Paul (2000), In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber, Organization, Ethics, London: Sage. Eikenberry, Angela M. (2009), ‘Refusing the market: A democratic discourse for voluntary and nonprofit organizations’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38 (4), 582–96. Lakoff, George (2004), Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your Values and Frame the Debate, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Leadbeater, Charles (1997), The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, London: Demos. Lyotard, Jean-François (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ogbor, John O. (2000), ‘Mythicizing and reification in entrepreneurial discourse: Ideology-critique of entrepreneurial studies’, Journal of Management Studies, 37 (5), 605–35. Orwell, George (1949[2009]), Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin. Oxford Dictionaries (2015), available online at http://www.oxforddictionaries. com/. Pynchon, Thomas (2009), Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin. Segal, Robert A. (2004), Myth: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sorel, George (1999), Reflections on Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willmott, Hugh (1993), ‘Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organizations’, Journal of Management Studies, 30 (4), 515–52. Wingo, Ajume H. (2003), Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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PART III

Social entrepreneurship and its enactments

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8. ‘(It) is exactly what it was in me’: the performativity of social entrepreneurship Stefanie Mauksch INTRODUCTION The emergent field of critical perspectives on social entrepreneurship provides an important scholarly opportunity to scrutinize the celebratory language around entrepreneurial approaches to social problems. Critical scholars have refused to buy into the technical knowledge claims inherent in descriptions of the concept as an ‘effective method’ (Dees, 1998), and have challenged the idea that social entrepreneurship has an existence outside of language (Dey and Steyaert, 2010) and policy intervention (Teasdale, Lyon and Owen, Chapter 2, this volume). A variety of analyses in the field, for example, engage with the ‘making of’ social entrepreneurship, studying how, as a phenomenon, it is discursively evoked and enforced (Cho, 2006; Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Mason, 2012). They demonstrate that the evolution of a scholarly debate, coupled with the development of statistics around social entrepreneurship, is not an innocent and neutral process; instead it co-produces and frames the phenomenon it claims to describe. Through tracing how the concept is made ostensibly inevitable and developed into a rational response to unresolved issues, critical accounts turn the spotlight onto the way that academics and policy makers are involved in creating their own subject of investigation (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Teasdale, Lyon and Owen, Chapter 2, this volume). The main interest here lies in revealing how apparently descriptive accounts are in fact deeply loaded with political ideology. Whereas the projects above investigate how social entrepreneurship as discourse emerges, another cluster of critical studies has focused on understanding how ideals of social entrepreneurship inscribed in discourse (fail to) relate to social entrepreneurial action on the ground. Challenging the utopian rhetoric of social entrepreneurship, these projects tend to be targeted at what Luc Boltanski (2011, p. 11) describes as the ‘differential 137

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between the official and the unofficial’ or the ways in which claims of certain ideal orders fail to correspond to their actual outcomes. Scholars have revealed a whole range of divides between ideals and practical reality. Berglund and Schwartz (2013), for example, compare the ideal vision of a win–win situation against dilemma-laden practices of social entrepreneurship which often create win–lose and sometimes even lose–lose situations. Others engage with the practical insight that local narratives often take on a profoundly more complex and ambiguous shape than meta-discourses on social entrepreneurship (Berglund and Schwartz, 2013; Froggett and Chamberlayne, 2004; Mauksch, 2012; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Critical projects have also considered the flip side of the hero coin: the high risks to their reputations that social entrepreneurs take (Shaw and Carter, 2007) and their chronically problematic work–life balance (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). Such insights into the ambiguities of business practice demonstrate that idealistic discourses about social entrepreneurship often fail to represent and embed the complex realities of people acting under its umbrella. Revealing discursive structures and lacunae between ideals and practice is an important critical operation: it renders explicit some of the subtle workings of power, creates room for ambiguity and multiple perspectives, and hints at failures of social entrepreneurship. Yet the emergent emphasis on critiquing discourse is problematic in two respects. First, the starting point of investigation takes for granted the power of grand rhetorics of social entrepreneurship and thus risks envisioning a stealthily expanding project of entrepreneurializing the social that leaves no room for evasive manoeuvres. This tendency has already been pointed out by Dey and Teasdale (2013) who argue that presentations of a rapidly spreading market dogma neglect the multiple and paradoxical ways in which individuals engage with a discourse of power and begin to identify and/or disidentify with it. Through acts of counter-identification they may even undermine predominant discourses and change their possible directions. The second issue is even more profound since it concerns the very dichotomy between grand discourse and subjective practice. This juxtaposition assumes that both the discourse and the subject are preconfigured, separate entities before they interact, like two players who face each other and then react to this encounter in particular ways. Dey (2014) further illustrates this problem when he points at a fundamental misunderstanding of how power works in social entrepreneurship discourse. He draws upon the work of Michel Foucault to argue that discourse achieves political transformation not through simple shifts in ideology, but through more sophisticated and subtle acts of responsibilization and self-regulation. The ideal is not imposed on us in any straightforward way, but rather

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discursively transforms the way we think about and act in the social sector. Discourse, in other words, is not dichotomous to or distinct from modes of subjectivity, but deeply embedded in them. Discourse itself constitutes the subject, and fundamentally depends on acts of subjectification in order to come into being (Butler, 1999; Foucault, 2005). In this chapter I suggest a shift in the empirical-analytical perspective towards an in-depth engagement with the ways in which social entrepreneurial ideals and the formation of subjects are enacted within and through human action and encounter. This alternative critical operation understands social entrepreneurship as a socially situated and temporarily renewable process of identification. Taking a performative line of inquiry, it perceives identity not as a precondition for situated action, but as something emerging from it. It is interested in tracing empirically how individ­ uals are induced into the emergent profession of the social entrepreneur and the collective modes of mobilization that motivate transformations in their identities. It maps the performative acts by which social entrepreneurship becomes a ‘noun of being’, expressed, for example, in the explicit identity claim: ‘I am a social entrepreneur!’ To illustrate this envisioned shift in attention towards performative practices that create emergent identities, I ground my analysis in an ethnographic study of social business1 events as spaces in which a particular social entrepreneurial vision is staged and rendered accessible, and gains appeal as a realizable approach. Collective social business performances, as I show here, render obsolete the distinction between discourse and subject, because they constitute a mode of practice that simultaneously signifies and (bodily) enacts social entrepreneurial ideals. At social business events, subjects do both: they approach the topic intellectually and also perform the ideal through their very physical presence and emotional amenability. Formats like competitions, pitches, workshops, start-up weekends, global gatherings, and consultancies emerge from this study as important, yet neglected, stationary points on the road to becoming social entrepreneurs. This angle is theoretically informed by Judith Butler’s perspective on performative processes of identity formation. For Butler, language – speaking about social entrepreneurship – is inextricably linked with existence – being or becoming a social entrepreneur. In this sense, social entrepreneurship is a regulatory ideal by which ‘discourse produces the effects that it names’ (Butler, 2014, p. 2). I see three merits in Butler’s take on performativity. First, performativity is as a powerful analytical tool for learning how discursive power and subjective acts of identification come into play simultaneously and co-referentially, thus complicating critical studies’ vision of discourse as a political power encroaching on the subject. Second, a Butlerian perspective

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analytically emphasizes bodily acts of subjectification: the ways in which discourse is displayed onto the body and becomes a matter of one’s corporeal being in the world. This acknowledgement of bodily acts is crucial considering that most qualitative research approaches entrepreneurial identity through narrative analysis (Granados et al., 2011), rather than as a formation that linguistically conditions not just what is said, but also the range in which one can act meaningfully. And third, being primarily interested in unravelling the workings of power, Butler creates space for resistance and subversion, as for her every discourse remains incomplete and open to reinterpretation. In this respect, her account provokes a more ambivalent and less determinant view on the increasing prominence and prevalence of social entrepreneurship. This chapter starts off with a selective introduction to Butler, with particular interest in her concept of performativity and the notion of the culturally produced body. It then develops an ethnographic story of a field-configuring social business event that provides the opportunity to ‘put Butler to work’, that is to demonstrate through example how the simultaneous processes of subjectification and discourse-in-the-making take shape in the social entrepreneurship movement. The chapter ends with an exercise in interpreting and drawing sense from a Butlerian perspective and then concludes with how these insights contribute to our critical understanding of social entrepreneurship.

JUDITH BUTLER’S THEORY OF PERFORMATIVITY Butler’s poststructuralist understanding of performativity is deeply rooted in the philosophy of Michel Foucault and, to some extent, in the work of Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Lacan (see Jagger, 2008, for a detailed trajectory of these relations). What is distinct about Butler is that by developing these thoughts consistently along her prime case of gender she offers a rich example of how to unsettle or ‘trouble’ even the most deeply rooted kinds of essentialisms, such as the categories of ‘woman’ and ‘the feminine’. Butler’s project, in continuation of Foucault, is targeted at revealing the discursive traces of those cultural productions that create the effect of being natural, original or inevitable (Butler, 1999). In her view, it is not that power and discourses act on a pre-existing subject; instead, the category and the subjects it claims to describe emerge hand in hand in an anticipatory mode, ‘a fugitive operation of “what will be the case” under the rubric of “what is the case”’ (Butler, 1999, p. xxi). Butler’s register of performativity draws (via Derrida) from Austin’s notion of the performative speech act as a powerful metaphor for the way identities and

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relations are brought into being. The underlying idea is that the ‘issuing of an utterance is the performing of an action’ (Austin, 1962, p. 6). Saying something is doing something. In an attempt to adopt her theory of performativity to the field of organization studies, Hodgson (2005) and Dent and Whitehead (2013), among others, have argued that induction into professions occurs in a manner similar to the production of heteronormativity that Butler is primarily interested in. These scholars appreciate Butler’s intellectual engagement with identity formation and suggest that it may enrich our understanding of how professional, managerial or entrepreneurial identities evolve within discourses of power (Borgerson, 2005; Dent and Whitehead, 2013; Harding, 2003). The social entrepreneur, just like the professional, evolves into a figure who appears to be in the interest of everyone, taking up a new discursive subject position and an ‘ontological location, existentialised through the particular narratives and discourses which accrue around that identity position’ (Dent and Whitehead, 2013, p. 5). Like Foucault, Butler theorizes the subject’s being and becoming, but goes beyond him by interrogating the ways in which the production of the self connects with the discursivity of (gendered, professional) identifications (Harding, 2003; Hodgson, 2005). In a way, Butler deepens and expands the Foucauldian project by engaging with the intermingling themes of discourse as constitutive of, and power as productive of, subjects (Hodgson, 2005). Her primary assumption is that human practices do not express some pre-given identity prior to action, but practices themselves are the very means by which we come to be who we are: [I]f, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are. (Butler, 1997b, p. 2)

Thus identities are not something given by nature or simply represented or expressed in culture; instead, cultural practice is the process by which bodies and selves are produced (Butler, 1999). In Butler’s reading, culture is a process and ‘a kind of making, and we are what is made and remade through that process’ (Loxley, 2007, p. 118). An example shows why it is relevant to analyse the performative formation of subjectivity in the field of social entrepreneurship. The following quote, by a young female participant in a social business event, expelled into silence with a marked Spanish accent, was considered powerful enough to serve as a snippet in a new marketing video for social business events: ‘Social business is exactly what it was in me. . . with a new word on

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it’ (emphasis added). Beyond its rhetorical aesthetics, the exclamation is analytically significant because it hints at the ways in which the linguistic category of the social entrepreneur powerfully constitutes new modes of being – and is thus performative in nature. It illustrates the capacity of social entrepreneurship discourse to present this category as prior to its own figuration, as something that is ‘within’ people in an almost biological or physical sense. The linguistic workings Butler scrutinizes are relevant to critical interrogations into the emergent discourse because they develop a language through which it becomes possible to think and speak of oneself as a social entrepreneur. Social entrepreneurship discourse thus subtly changes the space of possibilities for personhood: ‘certain types of people  [. . .] have literally come into existence as experts developed a language to speak of them’ (Hacking, 2007, p. 109). This process is powerladen since ‘possibility’ should not be misconstrued as a voluntary option, but rather a mode in which we ‘should be’, whereas there are others in which we ‘cannot be’. Thus, as I engage with social business events in this chapter I am interested in the realm of identification that is developed and shaped during the performance: what kind of person is ‘called into being’ by collective, event-based activities? Butler develops the notion of a ‘stylized repetition of acts’ in order to trace how the subject takes form from language and gestures, a process that includes body language, speech acts and other forms of performative behaviour. Thus, in her understanding of corporeality, bodies cannot be understood as being positioned outside culture, as the ground or origin of our social identities. But neither are bodies inert or passive surfaces on which culture inscribes its meaning ‘like an author writing on paper’ (Loxley, 2007, p. 117). The relation between corporeality and identity is inherently complex. The kind of performativity she is interested in, then, works itself out through the body in a reflexive mode and includes gestures, movements and bodily styles. Butler emphasizes that performativity is ‘a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body’ (Butler, 1999, p. xv): [W]hat we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body. In this way, it showed that what we take to be an ‘internal’ feature of ourselves is one that we anticipate and produce through certain bodily acts, at an extreme, an hallucinatory effect of naturalized gestures. (Butler, 1999, pp. xv–xvi)

In short, bodily acts, just like acts of speaking, are constitutive. They create identity in being performed. Translated into the critical understanding of social entrepreneurship, Butler’s pronunciation of stylized acts draws attention to how social entrepreneurs create new identity not just by

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engaging in innovative thinking, but by subtly adapting the bodily ways in which they approach the social world. The analysis below will thus probe more deeply into the forms of corporeal engagement that organizers of social business events employ in order to render social business accessible, applicable, and deeply meaningful for their target groups. The routine quality of bodily acts is crucial for Butler, because a discourse becomes productive through the very repetitions that normalize it and support it in producing the phenomena it regulates and constrains. Norms, as Butler highlights, become law-like not by our simple obedience but by means of re-enactment. She adopts this principle of ‘iterability’ or ‘citationality’ from Derrida, including the notion that there is no original essence or ideal prior to the repetition (Butler, 1991; 1999). In this mode, drag not only demonstrates vividly that human beings, rather than following a pre-given biological script, perform and play out sexual identities, but also presents a form of iteration (of gender identities) for which there exists no original (Butler, 1999). To the contrary, the illusion of the original is an effect of the imitation itself: ‘there is no performer prior to the performed’ (Butler, 1991, p. 24). The gestures and performances of gender must be repeated endlessly in order to maintain the illusion of a ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ category of masculinity and femininity. Social entrepreneurship discourse thus depends on repetitive enactments through which it is reaffirmed, quoted and ultimately performed ‘into being’. Thinking back to the introductory quote, one may ask which social activities preceded the very moment in which social business became something the speaker recognized as a citation or projection of something that already existed in her. To put this in Butlerian terms, there is no primary referent to which this citation refers; instead, through various acts of (be)speaking that original state itself produced social entrepreneurship as something original. Thus, the empirical questions I ask here are: how do social business events figure in this scenario of subjectification? Which performative acts are played out that reinforce, in a repetitive mode, a particular kind of identity? Exclusion is an evident part of the processes through which categories of identity come into being. When ‘making up’ certain ways of being (Hacking, 2007), discourse simultaneously renders other ways of being unthinkable, thus creating an Other to the self. For Butler, the source of hope for disruption, re-interpretation and resistance lies exactly in the fact that the normalizing power of discourse is constituted by exclusion: in producing the normal it has to produce the abnormal as an Other. Powerful discourse has to create an outside: identities and practices which do not fall into the identity norm it produces. In this manner, the heterosexual norm is ‘haunted’ by the non-heterosexual in order to be what it is (Butler, 1999).

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Within the performativity of identity, there remains opportunity for dissonant or disruptive gestures by that which such performativity produces as its outside. For instance the identities of drag and butch/femme have the capacity to undo the presumed coherence between body and gender (Butler, 1999). A second crucial element for disruption – and here Butler shares common ground with the psychoanalytical philosophy of Lacan – is that the production of stable identities is an impossible project, a work of identification that in its very constitution cannot be completed (Butler et al., 2011). Acts of daily repetition never succeed in approximating their ideal; this makes room for subtle forms of resistance. The third potential for the ‘failure’ of performativity lies in the impossibility of an exact repetition. Here, Butler draws from Derrida who points out that citationality allows repetition only on the condition of a necessary difference. Citation is not a mere mechanical repetition, but ‘a repeatability which implies otherness and the possibility of alteration within it’ (Jagger, 2008, p. 67). Butler gives the example of the black civil rights activist Rosa Parks who remained seated on a bus even though she was supposed to give up her seat to a white passenger (Butler, 1997a). The case is an instance of reverse citation in which a ‘deviant repetition’ creates a twist on the normal act. From this perspective, it is of critical interest to understand what it is that social entrepreneurship produces as its constitutive outside. What silences and omissions does the discourse create, and what are instances of disruptive citation? The following ethnographic narrative is motivated not only by the conviction that social entrepreneurial identities are created in and through practice, but also by the empirical insight that performativity is an essential modus operandi of organizational efforts to evoke a social entrepreneurship movement. Butler’s work supports my interest in approaching what is somewhat hidden from the analytic spotlights of the social entrepreneurship debate: the ways in which subjects begin to identify as social entrepreneurs and through these acts of identification simultan­ eously co-produce the very discourse they engage in. If one envisions this discourse as an endless citational chain of performative acts, then events and global gatherings are not unique settings of identity production. Yet, as we collect a wide range of actors who engage intensely in these crowded physical spaces, full of expectations and openness towards the new, we can watch events emerge as appropriate settings to study discursive modes operating elsewhere.

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REFLEXIVITY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WRITING POSTSTRUCTURALIST ETHNOGRAPHY In the previous section I outlined conceptually how performative modes of social entrepreneurship can be investigated critically, but a question remains unclear: how can ethnography reflect this operation methodologic­ ally? Butler herself remains suspicious of empirical research, because ‘any effort at empirical description takes place within a theoretically delimited sphere’ (Butler et al., 2011, p. 274). Yet she draws (both critically and appreciatively) from a spectrum of anthropological work ranging from Claude Levi-Strauss’ investigation into kinship, to Mary Douglas’ body symbolism and Esther Newton’s analysis of drag artistry (Butler, 1999). This interest evolves almost naturally from her theoretical positioning of performative acts as constitutive of discursive subjectivity. It is in this emphasis on mundane, embodied practice and routinized behaviour that Butler comes close to ethnographers’ longstanding interest in the ‘mapping of those processes by which social realities are realised [. . .] [and] by which abstractions [. . .] congeal synoptically from the innumerable acts, events, and significations that constitute them’ (Comaroff, 2010, p. 530). Butler’s notion of performative acts thus bears deeper resemblances to the anthropological notion of ‘practice’ (Bourdieu, 1977) as the culturally meaningful social action that brings subjects into being (Strong, 2013). Yet the critical project of ethnography is far from straightforward if one takes seriously the poststructuralist problematizing of empiricism and language. Ethnographic analysis itself is inherently informed by the power/knowledge assemblages it seeks to disrupt. It follows that especially those ‘ethnographic representations that are (or pretend to be) isomorphic with that which is being presented should be met with suspicion’ (Fabian, 2000, pp. 217–18). Ethnographers depend on the plausibility of their own account, but are at the same time responsible for provoking ­methodological doubt and refusing textual innocence (Britzman, 1995). Ethnography is ‘partial truth’ or ‘fiction’ and has to struggle against the notions of transparency it evokes by using a methodological architecture of ‘speaking about the Other’ (Clifford and Marcus, 1986). Returning to the account at hand, that means the researcher has no position to speak from outside of social entrepreneurship as textual accounts are powerfully entwined with the discursive production of knowledge that social entrepreneurship essentially builds on (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). This ethnographic ­contribution – like any other research project (Steyaert et al., 2012) – thus has to acknowledge its own performativity, all the more when speaking from within an academic community as a locus of scientific authority. Even though there is no loophole to escape the fundamental dilemmas

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of writing (nor is there one for Butler’s texts which are also ‘caught in language’), new tactics of text production evolved after the ‘Writing Culture’ debate in anthropology. Authors now engage in modes of selfcritical writing to signal their awareness of the limitations of ethnographic representation and to disrupt notions of cohesive identity, seamless narrative, or mimetic representation (Britzman, 1995). The ethnographic approach I took in this study comes closest to Ford and Harding’s (2008) ‘reflexive ethnography’ of a management conference. It shares common ground with these authors’ attempts to develop a narrative of being at these events that aspires to use personal experience to inform the study, but seeks to overcome the notion of a ‘transparent self’ or ‘transparent account’. My ‘mirroring’ activity was the writing of a diary which included dialogic partners, for example myself as a future reader of these notes and the anticipation of a prospective academic audience that had not yet taken shape, but obviously impacted my analytical engagement. Furthermore, I inhabited diverse positions as an actor in the field; this allowed me to immerse myself in different angles on the modalities of discursive formation, without being ‘above’ or ‘outside’ it at any given moment. Early in 2011, I began to study social entrepreneurial events from the perspective of a participant, a role I shifted away from later on, when I became a co-organizer.2 During the whole course of the study, I routinely presented myself in yet another role, namely that of an academic researcher, which, however, merged with other ‘modes of being’ in this discourse, for example that of an intruder or outsider. From the perspective of the organizers, social business events have three major aims: promote a particular vision of social entrepreneurship (namely the social business concept of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus); develop a network of social business advocates; and motivate the foundation of actual social businesses. The organizers thus understand themselves as acting under the broader umbrella of social entrepreneurship discourse, but offering a more concrete vision. This vision includes a strong focus on financial self-sustainability and continuous reference to Yunus’ ‘seven principles of social business’ as fundamentals. It is not important here to report whether participants actually turned into ‘practitioners’ in the long run; I aim, rather, to provide a first analysis of the architecture, arrangement or discursive formation that enables the production of new subjectivities. This formative quality is an aspect implicitly highlighted by the organizers themselves; they frequently framed ‘the production of ideas’ and changes in mentalities as their primary motiv­ational cause. The conviction that events are a suitable means to trigger ideational change reflects a deeper awareness of their performative power. I perceive such inspirational events as appropriate spaces for ‘compressed

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ethnography’ (Land and Taylor, 2014), because a snapshot of them provides insight into a wider picture: the ways in which subjectification works in and constructs the broader discourse. So whereas ‘reflexive ethnography’ refers to the positionality taken by the researcher, ‘compressed ethnography’ reflects methodologically the assumption that social business events are representational of the deeper mechanics of subjectification. The single narrative I develop in what follows is fictionalized to the degree that I combine experiences from diverse events into a single story in order to produce an analytically dense account. From the Butlerian perspective I am taking in this engagement with social business events, I have three empirical focal points: (1) the ways in which other participants and I subjected ourselves to the discourse and reproduced it in the very act of subjection; (2) the ways in which our bodies became engaged in the performative; and (3) the ways in which the repetitive quality of the event opened space for re-interpretation. The episode follows a simple structure: I trace the typical course of activities from introductory sessions in the morning to a more ‘applied’ or practical workshop format and the presentation of a ‘social business idea’ in the afternoon and early evening. The narrative ends with a short anecdote on the ‘spiritual flavour’ of social business events, since it is here that the repetitive quality of this discourse demonstrates a fundamental potential for being disrupted by ‘inappropriate’ repetitions.

SOCIAL BUSINESS: LEARN ABOUT IT AND DO IT YOURSELF In the morning we had entered this unusual conference space that strongly reminded me of one of these new fancy cafés combining industrial design with launch-like, old-school sofa corners. Nicely designed stalls showcased environmentally conscious children’s clothing, a financially sustainable rainforest initiative, a new social business magazine printed on organic paper, and like-minded projects. The location itself was a revitalized industry hall with a rough and stylish appearance emphasized by bare bricks, laid-open steel girders and rusty steel doors. It was filled with carefully designed elements, ranging from small devices, like the pencils made from paper that came with our conference bags and hand-sewn name tags for the speakers, to big installations, such as a huge YY symbol positioned on stage. The two Ys refer to Yunus’s name and were routinely presented as one symbol of the social business movement. During the event, the YY was enacted in diverse forms: as a huge light installation, little red YYs projected on the walls, YYs on the material distributed, and photos of

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participants holding YYs. In addition, people created YY symbols with their hands by spreading the index and middle fingers of both hands, like a double peace sign. Now presented to us on a huge screen were small snapshots from a previous, larger annual event, accompanied by vibrant, rhythmic music. The video started with a carefully composed collection of close-ups. Standing or sitting at tables on a warmly lit stage, people of different genders, ages and cultural backgrounds expressed their feelings and expectations around social business: Human being is created with enormous, enormous capacity. But are we using it or are we wasting it? [. . .] This is your wake-up call, who will you call to action? [. . .] Social business is exactly what it was in me with a new word on it [. . .] I always asked myself what I could do to change this [. . .] We have no other choice but to take action together [. . .] That is not their future, it’s our future [. . .] Feel a bit of individual responsibility to change this world.

The dramatic quality of the opening video segued into a different sound and atmosphere, one that sustained the pervasive matte colours and ­unusual camera angles. The second part of the clip began with a wake-up call from the moderator: ‘the speeches are inspiring, but now it’s time to take that inspiration and put it to work!’ Participants in the video stood up and individually followed one of the workshop signs, carried by other moderators and trainers, dividing the overall project of social business into smaller content units and allocating it into different occupational fields such as social business marketing, finance and education, or sectors such as healthcare, nutrition and the environment. The introduction’s calm speech before a silent mass of listeners was subtly replaced by images of chatting, gesticulating participants in smaller rooms. Now the imagery pictured more energetic, even chaotic, scenes: the camera jumped from one room to the next, capturing the multiple activities going on in this afternoon dedicated to responding to the morning’s wake-up call. Surrounded by whiteboards, marking pens and post-it notes, the teams were caught in the act of producing a social business output in the form of sketches and business plans. The workshop moderators depicted in the video actually had to raise their voices to respond to and manage the groups’ lively discussions. In the third part of the video the crowd gathered again in the bigger hall, packed with fresh business solutions. On the big stage, a prominent male actor, well-known for starring roles in various action movies, made an announcement that personally addressed the celebrated founder of this concept: Muhammad Yunus. Within this very year, he would found a social business initiative, he said self-consciously, directly into the camera. Huge applause. In the next scene, a NASA astronaut presented his pictures from

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outer space showing, as he said, ‘the beauty of our planet’. The camera jumped into another video within the video and suddenly we were sitting right in the shuttle, saluting the earth with a social business perspective in mind. An opera singer backed up the images with long harmonic sounds. The clip ended with a man speaking in a calm voice: ‘My dream for the world is that [. . .] every kid in the world that is born receives the minimum opportunity to develop and become who they want to be’. The short film did not just create a jump back in time; it also developed a sense of continuity and anticipation. The follow-up event that was taking place right now, one year later, followed the very procedural script presented in the video and guided us in the mode of waking up, becoming active, and presenting ourselves on stage after this initiation ritual. Clearly, we had gathered at a different place at a different point in time and the speakers were different persons. But the event space and the flow of happenings were designed in a way that demonstrated the project’s coherence: the shades of green and other natural tones were similar, and we saw YYs in each and every corner, stylish furniture, warm pictures of people involved in their new business activities covering the walls. Our journey was again accompanied by cameras in order to produce the next video for the forthcoming generation of social business followers, thus creating an endless cycle of reference. Later, we would be tagged in Facebook photos, in similar situations of concentrated work on our social business approach: situations in which we drew schemas, debated the best model for generating income, and finally congratulated each other on what we had achieved in a short time. Another approach for perpetuating the social business mission came in the form of stickers saying ‘talk to me about. . .’ It was suggested that we fill in the blank and stick them on our backs so that like-minded people could approach us: ‘Ahh, you are also interested in combining social business and elderly care? Let’s have a chat.’ The organizing team was easily recognizable in the event, because many of them wore shawls produced by a social business start-up in the field of fashion which was also introduced on stage as a pioneering case. Wearing the shawls signalled that professional advocates of social business, like their role model, had implemented the concept in multiple dimensions of professional and private life, incorporating it so thoroughly that they apparently even dressed in a social business way. Reflecting this principle that social business should pervade the most fundamental realms of life, we had no choice but to sip fair-trade coffee, drink organic lemonade made with baobab fruits, and eat the exclusively vegetarian food served for lunch. The cloth bags we had been given at the entrance were hand-sewn by female prisoners. Food and beverages were provided by social projects. Whatever we consumed, looked at, touched,

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or listened to carried, in one way or another, the notion of social business. Even the air contained the smell of freshly brewed fair-trade coffee. The organizers asked us to produce ‘output’ in the form of ‘social business ideas’ during the event and prepared us to implement a stop-thinkingand-do-it formula for success. We were provided with few facts and figures around the issue we had chosen; the workshop’s major tools were diverse forms of brainstorming methods, by which we brought to the fore what was already in us: the experiences we had gathered and spontaneous thoughts which evolved in the moment of co-working. The moderators wanted us to get rid of all our doubts and scepticism, and instead be positively motivated to start here and now together with the collective. ‘Do it with joy’ is the seventh of Yunus’s golden rules of social business presented to us that morning in his own handwriting. As expressed by the quote ‘social business is exactly what it was in me’, there was apparently nothing unnatural about this approach; we just had to dig it out from our innermost selves, following an authentic voice that we all seemed to share. The moderator emphasized that we had this ‘potential’ in us – it simply needed revelation and activation. Several of the measures created common ground between us, a colourful audience composed of people representing fields as diverse as finance, philanthropy, international development, arts, academia, social work, and municipal administration. We all had previous knowledge of Muhammad Yunus and his concept of social business and if some had not, his contin­ uous visual appearance (photos, his speech, his book in the entry hall) and discursive presence (speeches, informal talks, the presentation of his ‘seven principles of social business’, the YYs) ensured that we would be familiar with his contribution by the end of the day. The seven principles guided our individual social business designs and we were given sheets and figures with empty spaces to be filled in with convincing answers: Social mission? Financial sustainability? Target group? Scalability? The concept and task were also easy for everyone to grasp, thanks to the clear and simple material, the orientation towards ‘doing something’ and the fundamental precept of brainstorming: there are no bad ideas. At the end of the day we felt comfortable and some of us were ready to present our newly developed business approaches on stage. Since we had been asked to develop an idea for a ‘real’ social business, we felt a need to present it as if it were real. My group had opted for an education gym to ‘tackle’ the issue of integrating migrants into our Western society. The presentation was a theatrical performance, with two persons ‘playing’ the founding social entrepreneur and the gym visitor who, after physical exercise, eagerly engaged in grammar lessons. Coffee-break conversations and chats over lunch were largely positive

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and I was overwhelmed by the degree to which social business seemed to fascinate and inspire people from very different professional groups: academics, managers, entrepreneurs, development experts, and political actors. Yet in situations more distant from the events in time and space, the people I spoke with tended to produce more varied and multifaceted reflections. In an interview study I conducted with social entrepreneurs, one interview partner referred to social business events this way: ‘I am happy to see that awareness is raised. However, experiencing Yunus live at conferences is almost a bit religious and Jesus-like [. . .] like a saviour somehow’. This was not the only response attributing ‘something spiritual’ to Yunus’ public presence. During the course of this study such descriptions even culminated in reports and comments using quite explicit religious metaphors to describe the movement. I noticed a similar reaction even inside the organizers’ office when one staff member showed me a photograph distributed by a social business network on Facebook: ‘That’s unfortunate’, he said. Visible in the photo was Yunus sitting in a panel discussion. The aspect that disturbed him was a halo of light around Yunus’s head. Another photo taken from a different perspective showed a lamp in the background, invisible in the first picture, which had created the halo. Explaining why he thought this photo ‘unfortunate’, the staff member said, ‘We don’t want to create a “Church Yunus” as some critics might argue. That is really not our aim.’ He pointed to another photo: Yunus on a stage, raising his arms, in a gesture similar to one a priest might make. Looking at the photo, he raised his eyebrows and said he is puzzled by the fact that other organizations in the field distribute such images. As they had reacted to the priest pose and the halo picture, which had been distributed by other actors, the organizers also engaged anew with their own presentations. A huge Yunus face made of post-it notes was later critically questioned, in the context of their possibly being labelled as something like a Yunus fan club. The team worked instead to design colourful, aesthetically outstanding, and creative performances. But they still feared, from time to time, that some of the emergent ideas were too creative and could overstimulate the public or that the artefacts were so kitschy they might lead to misunderstanding and laughter. An illustration of this is another field situation in which an organizational member became upset about a picture showing an Indian woman next to a cow: the cow had obviously been cleaned and plastic waste removed. That was too obviously an effort to create a perfect image.

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THE PERFORMATIVITY OF SOCIAL BUSINESS EVENTS How can we approach social business events from a poststructuralist perspective interested in modes of performativity, bodily subjection and resistance? How do these abstract terms relate to the lived experience of being a participant? In order to bridge between Butler’s ‘grand’ theorizing and the subjective, ethnographically produced story, in this section I discuss a range of performative effects. In the course of the day, participants developed a momentary sense of self, or an identificatory positioning in relation to a discourse that presented itself as already in existence: the concept of social business. In other words, audience members encountered social business as a ready-made and neatly packaged ethical tool and approached it through a pre-designed process of learning-about-it to do-it-yourself. Because the seven principles were presented as a given to be ‘implemented’, they gained further authority, almost law-like status, as an apparently objective body of rules to be followed and applied. Grameen Bank and the other social business case studies presented on stage served as markers of evidence. A prototypical social entrepreneurial identity was played out through the presence of Yunus as a role model in the final stage of subject formation and an accessible source of identification. Ideally connected to this mode of learning was the envisioning of social business as a body of knowledge that naturally resembles participants’ deepest aspirations, moral ideals and hopes – as something which is already ‘in us’. This effect was achieved, for instance, by invoking emotional states (do it with joy!), by encouraging modes of brainstorming fundamentally interested in our thoughts, and by provoking a sense of personal and physical immediacy (‘in your own neighbourhood’). For Butler, power evolves from this complex and collective interplay, or acts of mutual recognition between discourse and subjectivity. As a ‘construction that conceals its own genesis’ (Butler, 1999, p. 178), the discourse unfolds its subjectifying power by provoking engagement with social business as a natural given or preconfigured fate. What was presented as the simple application and implementation of a guideline actually brought the concept into being as a realizable utopia and as a superior way of approaching, structuring and changing the social world. The video was productive in creating a sense of past, by linking to people who had already gone through the same learnings, and a sense of future, by predicting the process of becoming a social entrepreneur. The complexity of reference was endless, since the people presented in the video equally referred to future becoming and notions of origin and those present as observers and learners finally advanced to presenters and

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teachers at the end of the day. The event(s) thus rhythmically echoed social business as an approach, as a hope, as an attitude, while at the same time turning it into tangible reality through anticipation and repetition. The brainstorming methods gained status as neutral techniques that would elicit a natural capacity slumbering in all of us, thus blurring polit­ ical interests behind the technique itself. What remained hidden were the ways in which creative methods of brainstorming provoked pre-structured spontaneous reactions in a particular politicized way. For example, the method motivated us to think managerially about problems first and solutions second, and to prioritize narrow interventions and ‘doing’ over intellectual criticism of societal conditions. It supported the process of translating abstract ‘social problems’ into a compilation of post-it notes, which hinted that everything that is perceived as messy and complex can be rightfully expressed in a more simple and plain mode without doing injustice to the ‘problem’ itself. The performative space developed into an effective ground for cross-reference on the very basis of our identificatory practices, pre-shaped by the limited possibilities of moving, thinking and acting in this space. Yet what imposed itself on participants was not the overarching power of discourse, but a process of finding ‘tacit, collective agreement’ to perform, produce and sustain a distinct ‘cultural fiction’ (Butler, 1988, p. 522). This fiction built ground in an identificatory configuration of entrepreneurial becoming and a vision of a better world achieved through acts of aligning market-oriented business activity with the pursuit of a social mission. Another mode for creating new subjectivities was the use of bodily experiences; participants not only consumed spectacles like travel in outer space, but were also involved in much more subtle corporeal ways. Many elements in the deeply aestheticized event contributed to producing an embodied regime of meaning; these included the colours, the stylistic mélange with a rusty industrial flair, the smell of fair-trade coffee, and the ways bodies were ‘dressed’ with stickers from social businesses and individually sewn cloth bags. This regime again perpetuated the social business message by immersing participants in their physical surroundings in sensual, emotional and affective ways. The event was a holistic, multisensual project demonstrating that social business demands a new sense of self, including changes in cultural habits of eating, drinking and dressing. The morning speeches and the personal addresses further reinforced the idea that the process of change the participants would undergo was essentially a personal and deeply transformative one. The collective vision of an endless capacity to manage all sorts of societal deficits grew into a utopian moment that underwrote the idea that the world can be governed holistically through social business. Picturesquely

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underlining this moment were the earth images and the performative promotion of Yunus to an almost superhuman global leader. Through the concept’s simplistic, positive appeal and the ‘staged’ activity of designing a business within a workshop, difficult global problems like war and poverty lost some of their power to overwhelm and silence. The effect of engaging bodily in the workshops was that ‘fighting social problems’ evolved as a realistic and grounded project; even the most risky and adventurous social business seemed manageable and its effects predictable. The on-the-spot experience of applying Yunus’s script in order to translate severe problems into entrepreneurial opportunities signalled that everyone could actually do it. This new experience of seeing social ills as manageable and trying out creative social engineering encouraged the apprentices to feel they had now taken their first steps towards becoming ‘real’ social entrepreneurs. Yet the learning process involved more than learning a particular set of competencies. It demanded that they create a social business mindset, or become a particular kind of person: a social entrepreneur. Butler (1997b) notes that mastering a set of skills does not consist of simply accepting them; one must embody the rules in rituals of action. In this respect, the do-ityourself production of a social business idea during the event provided a highly effective mode that created moments of discursive identification. Having examined, in a Butlerian sense, how performativity simultan­ eously produces discourse and subjectivities and the ways in which this process is grounded in bodily engagement, one question still remains unclear: how does the discourse open itself to reinterpretation? Following Butler, this opportunity essentially evolves from the repetitive quality of discourse and its capacity for citation. A repetition, for Butler, is never just a repetition, but may turn out to be a kind of ‘misappropriation’ and resignification that provides space for subversion and change. To analyse repetition will require a more procedural perspective on the events and their organizing; my example here is the theme of an increasingly ‘spiritualized’ collective presentation of Yunus and the team’s reflections on it. The photographer who had distributed the halo image had visually quoted a social business event but also intervened artistically, no matter whether the halo was an unintentional effect or resulted from an angle selected on purpose. Social business discourse’s Other, in the form of religious submissiveness and belief, had awkwardly re-entered the discourse that was intended to exclude it. Before these situations emerged, the team was enthusiastic, though admittedly not that reflective, in its focus on how to present social business in an aesthetically charming way, but now they had entered a dialogue about these performances and took over the role of outside observers. What is remarkable about these little incidents is that through the act of excessively repeating and visualizing the social business message,

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the performative quality of this discourse itself had become apparent. Paradoxically, elaborated practices of routinizing, normalizing, repeating and fixating the social business concept had provoked unforeseen disruptive reinterpretations of this discourse. The event organizers began to think about adapting the performance in ways that would prevent the emergence of religious fervour, thus reacting to a misappropriation of a discourse they promoted and represented. Their discussions even went beyond addressing the glorification of Yunus, as they began to critically scrutinize other types of performances such as the cow photo. These critical moments had created subtle twists in the production of discourse, opening up possibilities for negotiating from various discursive positions about the contents and shape of the social business movement.

CONCLUSION What this interpretative analysis of social business events implies is that in the dialogue between social entrepreneurship discourse and social entrepreneurial subjects neither one precedes the other; both co-emerge without a primary referent. The discourse depends on proactive and bodily practice and participation in order to evolve, but again this very practice is pre-configured by the discursive arrangement. It is this simultaneity that drives my analytical quest to understand how social entrepreneurial ideals evolve and become lived realities. The empirical embracing of performative acts, which I suggested at the beginning, implies a shift in attention towards two elements: the processes of ‘becoming’ – investigating how people actually begin to identify themselves with an emergent professional community – and the practice itself, studying how these shifts are achieved through bodily engagement. This retreat from the analytical lens of a discourse/subject divide towards an account of the more relational aspects of social entrepreneurship’s evolution provokes new sets of questions. For example, the person-centred language and format of field-configuring events suggest that social entrepreneurship, or social business, signifies more than a ‘concept’ or ‘approach’ that is technically ‘applied’. Instead here we see social entrepreneurship evolve as a social technique or process targeted at neatly tying professional activity to a person’s identity. Social entrepreneurship, then, is not just what one does in terms of occupation (applying a concept); in fact that occupation becomes central in defining who one is as a social person. This tendency probably also finds expression in competitions that assess not only the social entrepreneurial idea and its viability, but also the apparent ‘authenticity’ or honesty of the entrepreneur.

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Furthermore, the ethnography at hand also draws attention to performative modes at play elsewhere in the field, ranging in location from the centres of power – funding institutions, umbrella organizations and multinationals subscribing to the social entrepreneurship agenda – to activities taking place at the margins of society, and the compelling interconnections between the two. As the evolution of spiritual connotations implies, powerful institutions cannot fully control for the complex ways in which their attempts are understood and translated into entrepreneurial activ­ ities. This insight makes it all the more interesting to study what actually happens to projects once they have confirmed themselves as meaningful acts of social entrepreneurship and enter the contradictory social worlds of disadvantaged people. Or, to look at this the other way around, how does participating in a social entrepreneurship competition or receiving a grant change the social realities of people who were active in the field long before the label of social entrepreneur became popular? These are the kinds of procedural aspects that demand a shift in perspective away from institutional analyses, typically conducted through case studies, towards an embracing of relations between grand agendas and embedded action that often involve diverse sets of activities in different local, national and international realms. The merits of engaging with practice lie in carving out various forms of bodily and practical defiance that do not necessarily enter the realm of purposeful and openly uttered resistance. Beyond these disruptions, bringing ‘acts’ into focus eventually allows us to think of social entrepreneurship in more positive terms, by rendering visible some of its emancipatory effects, rather than precluding these through an overarching focus on institutionalized power.

NOTES 1. Note that ‘social business’ is understood here as a subtype under the wider umbrella term ‘social entrepreneurship’. This is an ‘emic’ perspective in the sense that actors in the field themselves framed it that way, as a ‘special’ (and more sophisticated) version of social entrepreneurship. 2. I participated in four events – two large-scale multiday conferences in both 2010 and 2011 with about 500 participants, and two smaller workshops in 2011 – and co-organized another two (in late 2011 and early 2012). I also helped to prepare a number of other events that I could not attend personally (e.g. business school trainings for students). During the events, I took notes, collected advertising materials, participated in the workshop sessions and wrote in my field diary in the evenings. From January to April 2012 I worked as a part-time volunteer with the organization conducting the events, joining them for two to three work days per week. The organization agreed to my research engagement and anonymous publication. All organizational members were informed that I was conducting ethnographic research.

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Douglas and S. Grant (eds), Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: Concepts in Context, Prahran: Tilde Publishing and Distribution, pp. 55–72. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2010), ‘The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship’, Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 4 (1), 85–108. Dey, Pascal and Simon Teasdale (2013), ‘Social enterprise and dis/identification’, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 35 (2), 248–70. Fabian, Johannes (2000), Time and the Work of Anthropology: Critical Essays, Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association. Ford, Jackie and Nancy Harding (2008), ‘Fear and loathing in Harrogate, or a study of a conference’, Organization, 15 (2), 233–50. Foucault, Michel (2005), The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, London: Macmillan. Froggett, Lynn and Prue Chamberlayne (2004), ‘Narratives of social enterprise from biography to practice and policy critique’, Qualitative Social Work, 3 (1), 61–77. Granados, Maria L., Vlatka Hlupic, Elayne Coakes and Souad Mohamed (2011), ‘Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship research and theory: A bibliometric analysis from 1991 to 2010’, Social Enterprise Journal, 7 (3), 198–218. Hacking, Ian (2007), ‘Making up people’, in Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar (eds), Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, Durham, NC, USA and London, UK: Duke University Press, pp. 150–63. Harding, Nancy (2003), Social Construction of Management: Texts and Identities, New York: Routledge. Hodgson, Damian (2005), ‘“Putting on a professional performance”: Performativity, subversion and project management’, Organization, 12 (1), 51–68. Jagger, Gill (2008), Judith Butler: Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative, London, UK and New York, USA: Routledge. Land, Chris and Scott Taylor (2014), ‘The good old days yet to come: Postalgic times for the new spirit of capitalism’, Management & Organizational History, 9 (2), 202–19. Loxley, James (2007), Performativity, New York: Routledge. Mason, Chris (2012), ‘Up for grabs: A critical discourse analysis of social entrepreneurship discourse in the United Kingdom’, Social Enterprise Journal, 8 (2), 123–40. Mauksch, Stefanie (2012), ‘Beyond managerial rationality: Exploring social ­enterprise in Germany’, Social Enterprise Journal, 8 (2), 156–70. Parkinson, Caroline and Carole Howorth (2008), ‘The language of social entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 20 (3), 285–309. Shaw, Eleanor and Sara Carter (2007), ‘Social entrepreneurship: Theoretical antecedents and empirical analysis of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes’, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 14 (3), 418–34. Steyaert, Chris, Laurent Marti and Christoph Michels (2012), ‘Multiplicity and reflexivity in organizational research: Towards a performative approach to the visual’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 7 (1), 34–53. Strong, Thomas (2013), ‘Butler, Judith’, in Jon R. McGee and Richard L. Warms (eds), Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, London: Sage, pp. 96–9.

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9. Of course, trust is not the whole story: narratives of dancing with a critical friend in social enterprise– public sector collaborations Pam Seanor THE STORY OF TRUST This chapter critically considers the role that trust plays in social enterprise research by exploring opposing attitudes about trust and control. To do so it introduces the analogy of dance as a sense-making device for reflecting on the relations between social enterprises and support workers. Analogies are commonly used as references to organizations and/or context and to better understand and to enact relationships (Cornelissen et al., 2005; Knowles and Moon, 2006; Morgan, 1989). The dance analogy came to me as I listened to a man tell a story about trust. An academic, presenting a paper at a research conference, used the analogy of dance to express how trust is (or is not) played out between those in the public sector and those in the third sector,1 particularly social enterprises. His story suggested that the dance has two elements. First, social enterprises dance together because they trust one another. In explaining his analogy, the man suggested that what underpins mutual trust is that social enterprises hold similar values; he presented this relationship as if it were a fact. He also spoke of a second element: that social enterprises did not dance – and were unable to dance – with their public sector counterparts. Thus, his story of trust was about those potential partners dancing together or, more precisely, trying to dance together, which proves to be complicated as the two sectors apparently dance so differently. The ana­ logy of dance holds two opposing perspectives on trust: on the one hand, trust exists between actors in social enterprises, a particular organizational form in the third sector, and, on the other, we see a relationship of separ­ ation, seemingly irreconcilable in nature, between those in the third sector and the public sector. 159

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I sense that his dance analogy might offer an overly static and simplified understanding of the relationship between social enterprises and the public sector; thus I borrow my title from Steyaert (2007), to posit that trust is not the whole story. For instance, I told the man’s story of trust between social enterprises on two separate occasions with two practitioners, and both said ‘that’s not true’. And when I repeated what the academic had maintained about the two sectors not dancing together, again both said, somewhat counter-intuitively, ‘that’s not true either’, suggesting something different at play, that is, that some dance together and some do not. As Brandsen and Pestoff (2007, p. 2) noted in this regard, ‘much of the discussion on’ the role of trust ‘is motivated at least as much by ideology as by fact.’ They explain, ‘we still lack a comprehensive empirical understanding of what happens when the third sector is drawn into public service provision.’ Fittingly, my interest was piqued by the story of trust told, perhaps, as a parable, a moral story, conveyed by the dance analogy. In this chapter, I seek to critically examine, and ‘complexify’, understandings of relations and collaborations between social enterprises and the public sector. I also examine how practitioners from my fieldwork spoke of being a ‘critical friend’ in considering a disjuncture between experiences and how they described their role in discussing tensions. This appeared to be in contrast to the way the term ‘critical friend’ has been used in several other arenas, including local government overviews of service delivery and partnership practices. The notion of ‘critical friend’ speaks of the role as proactive engagement in a relationship in which each challenges and supports the other, which requires trust. For the purpose of this chapter, practitioners’ views do not appear to relate to the ‘ideal’ critical friend, which Costa and Kallick (1993, p. 50) define as those who: ‘[. . .] provide such feedback to an individual or a group. A critical friend is a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person’s work as a friend.’ Accordingly, I focus on methods we can use to question assumptions and interpret how practitioners (re)negotiate their complex relationships with those in the public sector, as well as others in the third sector to cope with daily dilemmas. The chapter thus focuses on the more fluid movements and multifaceted interactions between social enterprises and public authorities, with an eye toward revealing that social enterprises comprise a multitude of sometimes conflicting narratives about trust and distrust. As such, my inclination is an affirmative critical approach of exploring practices and situations that offer possibilities while at the same time working within given constraints and ways of thinking. To this end, I first outline the narrative approach that informs my analysis of narratives of trust. Then, I sequentially discuss the grand,

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counter and little narratives of trust as produced respectively by academic discourses and social enterprise and public sector practitioners. I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of my chapter, and in particular on the potential of more stories of nuanced constructions of trust and the limitations of alternative imaginings.

APPROACH TO NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Analysing Grand, Counter and Little Narratives My investigation of narratives of trust and distrust is informed by a critical narrative approach. This approach implies an understanding of trust as a socially constructed phenomenon (Welter and Smallbone, 2006) and as linked to ‘collective sense-making and interpretation’ (Welter, 2012, p. 204). Narratives thus do not present facts since ‘the truth of a story lies not in its accuracy but in its meaning’ (Gabriel, 2000, p. 135). Based on this reasoning, I intend to examine and juxtapose three types of narratives of trust and control, following the thread of Dey and Steyaert’s (2010) argument on narratives. First, the ‘grand narrative’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2010) reduces the complexity of social enterprise to a single story, and thus disregards the idea that the term and its practice is heterogeneous as well as contextual. Analysts study the grand narrative of trust and distrust in relation to academic renditions of collaborations between social enterprises and the public sector (Mair et al., 2012; Montgomery et al., 2012; Pestoff and Bransden, 2010). As will become clear later on, the grand narrative fits neatly with the dance analogy; it is seen to guide and direct cultural routines between those in social enterprises, albeit at the same time reducing the possibilities that people in the sectors will act differently. So conceived, the grand narrative indicates how stories can ‘serve as a tool for achieving hegemony’ by favouring ‘one story at the expense of others’ (Näslund and Pemer, 2012, p. 90). Second, counter-narratives critique the academic grand narrative and in doing so hold it in tension – like the two partners in a dance. Below, I study counter-narratives by closely examining critically inclined researchers who express a concern that trust-based relationships in the third sector are increasingly replaced by relationships marked by control. Counter-narratives create sensitivity about issues pertaining to distrust and mistrust, which are usually absent in the grand narrative (Saunders et al., 2014). Third, little narratives, which form the substantive focus of this chapter,

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are the stories told in everyday practice (Berglund and Wigren, 2012; Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Hjorth and Steyaert, 2004). I will focus on the everyday stories of social enterprise practitioners and those working for public sector support agencies. Little narratives, like counter-narratives, tend to critique the taken-for-granted assumptions expressed by the grand narrative. Unlike the counter-narrative, however, little narratives offer the potential to explore ambiguous and paradoxical views by giving voice to marginalized views (Dey and Steyaert, 2010). Hence, shedding light on little narratives encourages debate around the ‘paradoxes, contradictions and complexities of daily practice’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 39). By investigating and juxtaposing these different narratives of collabor­ ation between the two sectors to develop the theme of transgression, I aim to explore how dominant stories and associated attempts at resistance play out in a dialectic of trust and control. In view of that, this is the question I address in this chapter: might the grand narrative dominate and thus fix the meaning of social enterprise (Näslund and Pemer, 2012)? Or conversely: to what extent does the notion of little narratives transgress grand narrative, thus creating conditions that allow us to imagine alternative understandings of trust? Before presenting the fieldwork, a few words of those involved and the context are in order. Social Enterprise in the North of England This chapter is from an empirical study (Seanor, 2011) set within the time and context of government policies during the New Labour era in England, and changes to public service delivery. During the time of my fieldwork (2005–2007), social enterprises became an increasingly import­ ant means for delivering public services (Bransden and Pestoff, 2007). The social enterprise practitioners who participated in my investigation were all engaged in delivering public sector contracts and had been supported by public sector agencies. All were existing organizations that had been operating for several years; one social enterprise participant talked of being around for ‘a long, long time, you know, 20 odd years.’ The practice of ‘fieldworking’ included interaction with paid public sector staff who had experience of and responsibility for managing projects, or for devising policy or programmes of work related to different areas of social enterprise; the representatives of these agencies were affected by more than one agenda (for example public services, community cohesion, health), which partly overlap but also contradict one another. As such, each experienced changes and needed to make sense of these changes in order to continue to operate. In total, I interviewed 43 practitioners, an almost equal number of support workers representing public sector

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a­ gencies and workers in social enterprises in the north of England. The intention was not to set up a duality between the two groups, but to understand how each group made sense of ‘controversies’ and relations between the two groups (Latour, 2005, p. 133). A further note being, during the fieldworking practitioners spoke of the relations between those in the differing sectors as having been ‘nurtured’. Many spoke of their friendships and collaborative projects, as above, for some for over twenty years. Over time, some who had worked in the public sector moved to work in social enterprise; some working in social enterprise had moved to work in the local authority. Two had met working and lived together, one continued to work in the public sector and the other in the social enterprise sector. For the purpose of the dance analogy, at the beginning, these relations were not so separate. I listened to the practitioners’ narratives in two contexts. First, a few of the everyday stories emerged during public network events. In part, this was serendipity; the events enabled me to hear what was said between the two groups in public. Second, I used interviews to invite participants to reflect on and explain their experiences and behaviours and the meaning they attributed to these. Interviews lasted approximately 1.5 hours and were taped and transcribed in full. The interviews began with this question: ‘From earlier conversations, some have suggested that good relationships help them to do their work. What do you think?’ I took this question from Oakes et al. (1998), who framed it in their empirical study. This opening almost immediately proved problematic, as it seemed to spark clichés like ‘trust is everything’, or ‘a social enterprise is about trust’ or people would speak of the need for ‘good and trusting relations’ in collaborative work. The initial narratives of practitioners appeared to echo the rhetoric of trusting relations. These responses made me aware that I might have chosen questions (perhaps unquestioningly) from the literature that tend to ignore participants’ own sense making. In further interviews, I shifted my approach to one more like a discussion, where the participants mostly led the conversation and I became the follower in order to explore these dynamics. Another aspect to highlight is that I was interviewing fellow practitioners whom I knew and had worked with for a number of years. On a positive note, knowing the participants allowed me to draw on experiences beyond our relatively brief interviews. However, this is not to suggest a privileged view of everyday narration. Indeed, Gabriel (2000) warned of the danger that lies in narratives echoing the researcher’s own agendas. Thus, in what follows I am careful about how I tell participants’ stories of their plans and of how these were negotiated, or not, and of where they were subversive, or not, in collaborative relations. My purpose in examining their stories

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using the notion of little narratives is also to take a sideways glance at the possible means of creating alternative meanings by being attentive to the inconsistencies, contradictions and ambiguities in everyday narratives. A second point to note here is that I promised to keep the practitioners’ identities confidential, as some from the public sector said that they would not tell the ‘truth’ if their names were to be made public. As a note, those from social enterprises were willing to have their names stated. Finally, given that this is a study of trust, of course I am not suggesting that these relations naturally facilitated trust. Certainly, I was very respectful as I asked these practitioners to tell their stories. As I listened and heard the nuances of their stories, I recognized the risk that in relating their stories publicly I might not only reveal their identities but might also inadvertently place their livelihoods and reputations at stake.

THE GRAND NARRATIVE: STORYTELLING OF COLLABORATION AND STORIES OF TRUST The literature on social enterprise has mostly moved to collective and co-produced accounts, the focus of attention being how practitioners in social enterprises work collaboratively with other actors in the public sector. The basic logic underpinning these approaches is that collaboration will increase public trust in goods and services, generating legitimacy and creating social value (Mair et al., 2012; Montgomery et al., 2012; Pestoff and Bransden, 2010). In England, where collaborations between social enterprises and public sector agencies have a long history, an interest in trust has come to prominence in the context of ‘contractualization’ where public services are outsourced to third sector organizations as part of the post-New Public Management deal (Chew and Lyon, 2012). This latter point relates to the new wave of public ‘managerialism’ through which governments seek to improve service delivery through third-party provision. Curtis et al. (2010) suggest that ‘trust is key’ in obtaining contractual relationships. In particular, their research indicates that it is crucial for the public sector partner to trust the social entrepreneur before the latter demonstrates credibility in the form of an actual track record. Two points to note: first, they focus on the social entrepreneurs, and second, these individuals are new to the process, rather than in existing organizations (both social enterprise and public sector) as in this study. Thus, my fieldwork relates more to how trust is commonly constructed as evolving from interactions between different parties over time (Castaldo et al., 2010; Faulkner, 2000; Sako, 1992). Crucially, however, these relations of trust are not assumed to be ‘sequential’, with one step leading to the next. Nor

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are they the places where trust in the grand narrative is framed as a means to a particular end, which implies that trust is instrumental, having no inherent value of itself. As an example, ideas are seen to pass more easily in trusting relationships than within relationships with little or no trust (Ashleigh and Meyer, 2012). Similarly, Perrini (2006) highlighted that in social enterprises a key to spreading innovative ideas is linking ‘trust’ with ‘sharing information’. Social enterprises are generally seen as having trusting relations built upon their ethical nature and shared collective values (SBS, 2005); this also reflects the grand narrative of trust that collaborators hold shared values (Lane, 1998) and literally ‘think like the other’ (Faulkner, 2000, p. 343). This thread of the grand narrative draws primarily upon assumptions of ‘universality of trust constructs’ (Edwards, 2004), and upon ideas of social enterprises as unequivocally ‘doing good’ (Austin et al., 2006; Mair et al., 2012). By logical extension, the grand narrative eschews all those aspects of trust, which might be difficult, contradictory and non-linear, hence complex.

THE COUNTER-NARRATIVE: STORIES OF THE CONTROL–RESISTANCE DIALECTIC Scholars critiquing the grand narrative of collaboration have argued that relationships between the public sector and the third sector, which were grounded in long-term relations based upon trust, are increasingly being replaced by short-term, contract-based relations (Stone and CutcherGershenfeld, 2002). A common thread of the counter-narrative is that over the last three decades, public service policies and programmes in England have been in flux and a site of highly politicized and evocative arguments. Further, it has been suggested that the logic of ‘managerialism’, which forms the foundational rationale of many government policy documents, has dominated the debate over public service modernization, with service delivery issues becoming the ‘symbols and sites’ of this contestation over the way policies are enacted (O’Reilly and Reid, 2011, p. 1079). Such critical renditions appear to set up tensions; those who are not seen as embracing government changes through ‘managerialism’ are perceived as resistant or troublesome because they seek alternative solutions (Hudson, 2009; Saunders and McClellan, 2014). This story aligns with the argument of some theorists that the emphasis in government policy is largely about creating a ‘market of producers’, rather than building ‘relational assets’ and trust that connect and develop collaboration (Schwabenland, 2006). What one is bound to see here is that the counter-narrative tends

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to depict social enterprises as ‘subservient’ to the public sector (Reid and Griffith, 2006). Kim et al. (2009) suggest that when performance targets are stipulated in public sector procurement policies, those who are more vulnerable must depend more upon relationships than their more powerful counterparts. This is evident, for instance, in how the public sector has shifted to the ‘market discourse’ of the modernization agenda which, according to the counter-narrative, compromises the democratic, social and ethical values of those in social enterprise (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004). From this stance, the counter-narrative contends that processes of control and power essentially replace trust in these collaborative relations (Nicholls and Cho, 2006). Complementing the above discussion, such relations are grounded in a narrative of differing types of trust (Lyon et al., 2012; Sydow, 1998). For instance, what Lane (1998) calls ‘calculative’ trust is based upon a perceived benefit being greater than acting alone; much like the work of Curtis and his colleagues, such calculations are particularly important in the start-up phase of working relations (Faulkner, 2000). For my purposes, I look more towards Welter and Smallbone (2006, p. 473) who advocated for entrepreneurial research that ‘starts from a critical perspective with regard to the role of trust rather than assuming that trust is necessarily an inherently positive influence’. Having reviewed the trust literature, I see it as relating to the counternarrative in holding that one or the other, either trust or distrust, exists (Saunders et al., 2014). Some writers like Kramer and Carnevale (2003) framed this divide as a virtuous cycle of trust leading to more trust, others as a vicious cycle (Sydow, 1998) leading to a breakdown of trust. As such, trust and control are primarily framed in the literature as inversely related. That is, when you take away trust to negotiate interaction, formal controls such as rules and regulations are enacted through formal contracts. Though the relationship of trust and control is complex, it appears more commonly framed as a duality comprising two diametrically opposed phenomena. Welter (2012, p. 20; citing Möllering, 2005, p. 283) says the duality ‘entails that trust and control each assume the existence of the other, refer to each other and create each other, but remain irreducible to each other.’ Writers positing this duality view imply that more trust relates to less control and vice versa. On the other hand, Faulkner (2000) suggested that appropriate levels of control might compensate for lack of trust and can ‘assist’ in these collaborative relationships realizing their goals. Other critical researchers, such as Reed (2001) and Bijlsma-Frankema and Costa (2005), argued that the two are ‘parallel constructs’. From this vantage point, control is seen to either replace or complement trust (Blumberg et al., 2012). However, Welter (2012) emphasizes that the duality ‘depends upon context’.

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To extend this thinking to the context of social enterprise in England, theorists frame interactions of trusting relations by pointing out that a given organization conforms to the lead organization (and more specific­ ally to its policies, contracts, rules and also informal interactions) in order to offer operational gains. Considine and Lewis (2003) argued that in mixed economies of public and third sector service provision, managerial targets replaced relationships based upon traditional command and control rules. This connects back to the point made by Chew and Lyon (2012) about the renewed interest in trust in these relations. The logics of this viewpoint continue to be seen particularly where trust is conceived of as a ‘commodity’ developed through notions of ‘co-operative interdependence that would lead to favourable outcomes’ (Ashleigh and Meyer, 2012, p. 138). This raises the question: ‘favourable’ for whom? Considine and Lewis (2003) implied that these new working relations are intended to achieve common goals. The dance analogy I introduced at the beginning of the chapter seems to indicate how the counter-narrative delineates relations between public sector and social enterprise. It offers a type of historical narrative depicting the above relations between the third and public sectors, along with the long-held views of power actors (in this instance, governmental public sector agencies and actors) and objects of control (here of the third sector and social enterprise). How and when trust is constructed in these relations raises an intriguing question, as those from the public sector seem to determine how relations are narrated. As discussed above, timing and context are key in understanding what occurs in these relationships (Gabriel, 2000; Johannisson, 2011). It appears we are again in the process of shifting from one period to another. The ‘managerialism’ narrative has seemingly been eclipsed by the world of ‘austerity’ and ‘government cutbacks to the public sector’, which has been accompanied by moving public service delivery to social enterprises, as well as to the third and private sectors. This raises intricate questions about what will happen for future collaborations between third sector and public sector organizations. Thus, though these practitioners’ stories are told in the context of England, they have relevance beyond this particular geographical location as such narratives are shifting elsewhere. There remain legitimate concerns that the relationship is based upon power asymmetry in contractual relations. But we should bear in mind that the dance analogy, by positing that those in social enterprises are either victims or resisters opposed to those in the public sector, narrates a situation of apparently insurmountable dualism, as stark as light and shadow, black or white. What I wonder is if we can use little narratives as a way to cross (perhaps smudge) one space

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where past stories are reconciled with present ones, and begin to enter another relationship, where stories are of imagined alternative possibilities.

LITTLE NARRATIVES: EVERYDAY STORIES OF PRACTITIONERS The practitioners I interviewed, in both the third sector and public sector agencies, seemed fully immersed in the process of both making and breaking the relations in the counter-narrative of trust and control described in the academic literature. Social enterprise practitioners variously spoke of trust and the need to nurture relationships within the third sector and emphasized the notion of trust in collaborations. While these stories chiefly appeared to reflect the grand narrative, closer inspection revealed that practitioners connected trust to the ability to be seen as ‘credible’ and ‘competent’ by public sector workers, suggesting they sought to conform, or as one commented, ‘perhaps to be seen as such’. There was also talk of mistrust in the stories from social enterprises as well as some public sector support workers; for example, one support worker perceived trust ‘as a clever marketing tool’ that some social enterprises used to ‘gain an advantage in competing with less than trustworthy organisations’. The following stories are not of this or of that; they are neither complicit with one thing (the grand narrative) nor another (the counter-narrative), but are rather a mixture of this and that. In what follows, I present four vignettes, not simply to recount events but to show how practitioners interweave and juxtapose stories of trust and interactions to show differing positions within the dance. I also include their stories about ‘critical friends’ and alternative imaginings, some of which might lead to change. Stories of the ‘Critical Friend’ I begin with the little narrative about the ‘critical friend’. Notably, participants in social enterprises, as well as those in the public sector, as observed above often identified as friends outside of work, used this term in their working relations, but meant different things by it. In discussing trust, a commissioner’s story emphasizes the paradoxical relationship between social enterprises and public sector organizations. As she described it, the ‘bedrock’ for public sector support was to act in a ‘critical friendship’ between the public sector and social enterprises. At the same time, however, she spoke of a ‘tension’ in the role of overseeing contracting, as this role also involved ensuring that ‘social enterprises would survive in order to deliver the public services’. Moreover, reflecting on longer-term

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relationships, she commented that she and her colleagues saw ‘failure’ in relations with social enterprises, which could adversely affect interactions and legal contracts. The critical friendship she spoke of alludes to how social enterprises might, or might not, be able to offer public service provision; in her view, this required the public sector to work to ensure that the social enterprises they contracted with continued to operate. The commissioner’s narrative offers a glimpse into how institutional control mechanisms of trust are enacted in order to ensure that collaborative efforts succeed (Faulkner, 2000). By implication, ‘critical friendship’ suggests the possibility of relating control and trust in largely beneficial, if always vulnerable, ways; this is a logic opposed to both the grand and the counter-narrative. The second story of a ‘critical friend’ emerged when a social enterprise practitioner spoke of the benefits and potential problems in having more than one funding stream. The practitioner spoke of the ‘critical friend’ role as changing: Cause we can’t necessarily criticise if all of our money is coming from three or four contractors [. . .] Hence, the need to generate our own funds through entrepreneurial activities. And not many people talk about that role of groups who are in the position where they might criticise public services. In attempting to support the people who they are working with, it just seems that everyone says, well, you just need to get a contract with Social Services or Young Peoples’ Services to deliver, but you might be in a position one day where you say we’re criticising their policies in some way. Researcher:  Which seems [to be] a tension? It did. And people don’t talk about it, and the term ‘critical friend’ came up about three or four years ago now, and it was used by a guy who was looking at how the voluntary sector linked to Children’s Trust (the Children’s Trust was a government initiative to form local partnerships which bring together the organisations responsible for services for children, young people and families in a shared commitment to improving children’s lives) development within local authorities, and he came from somewhere down south, but it was a really good phrase because we need to be independent, we need to be supported but we need to be open to being critical when we need to be and represent other people, other small players.

This little narrative of a ‘critical friend’ deals with the tension between stepping outside of the contractual relationship to maintain the role of advocate for others and at the same time being paid to deliver public services. Another social enterprise practitioner, though, said it was in ‘his interest’ to promote issues in the local social enterprise movement, as he said it would ‘be good’ for his organization. Such talk of being an advocate indicates the complexity in the conscious action of impression management. Put differently, the term ‘impression management’ implies

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that someone enacted the trust tactically, with the purpose of creating an advantageous situation for that particular social enterprise. To return to the commissioner, she too was aware that certain social enterprise representatives acted tactically by publicly adopting the role of advocates for the third sector to help them secure service contracts with the government. Holding in mind these ideas of the ‘critical friend’, I now turn to the idea of vulnerability and contractual relations mentioned above. Stories of Vulnerability The second little narrative shares a commonality with the counternarrative as various social enterprise practitioners suggested that the use of contracts had reduced their trust in the public sector. Conversely, and at the same time, few of the interviewees from social enterprises said they worked on formal contracts (or grants) to deliver public sector services and many spoke of ‘verbal agreements’, which they said meant they had informal arrangements in place and were not working to grants, service level agreements or contracts. Practitioners repeatedly used the term ‘vulnerable’. In part, this vulnerability of informal agreements resonates with the point made by Kim et al. (2009): that less powerful actors become particularly dependent on the demands stipulated by public sector procurement policies. On the other hand, the interviewees conceded that a certain amount of trust was required as the social enterprise–public sector relationship was in transition, with neither grants nor contractual practices in place. Some social enterprise practitioners sought to address this vulnerability by calling for the security offered by longer-term contractual agreements. This situation contradicts the counter-narrative of contracts necessarily reducing trust. As Sako (1992) pointed out, long-term contracts can actually increase trust, but in her study what actually lowered trust was not the contract itself but the underlying ‘adversarial relations’. Numerous practitioners in my investigation – from both social enterprises and public sector agencies – echoed this point. They spoke of the need to separate support from advice, arguing for separating the control aspect (especially, formal contracts) from trusting relations. However, Sako apparently neglected to consider the different kinds of relationships that social enterprises have with different public sector agencies. All but one of the social enterprises I spoke with dealt with several different public sector departments and agencies. Social enterprise practitioners said different departments within the local authority treated them differently. For instance, one department asked for a brief description of a project ‘on the back of a fag packet’ whilst another service ‘may

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say go away and fill in this 40-page form’. One practitioner recounted an experience where ‘once contracted, the service purchaser changed their mind about what they wanted’. Numerous support workers acknowledged the need for the local authority to be ‘consistent in interactions with local organisations seeking to contract services’ and be ‘more transparent, to make practices more understandable and to be fairer’. Still, a procurement officer speaking at a networking event said social enterprises that sought to tender for public sector services should be open about difficulties in delivering a service contract. Further, he said, he did not see any tensions in doing so and such difficulties would not be held against them in future contractual negotiations. But another support worker who had attended that event, when interviewed in private, asked, ‘would it be wise, or foolhardy’ for social enterprises to share confidences with support advisors? The interviewee reflected on the officer’s advice given at the network meeting, saying the public sector holds both resources of information and/or money through the formal contract. As such, in private, he queried the public statement of the need to be entirely trusting with the public sector. As with the critical friend ideas above, numerous practitioners highlighted this complexity in relations as problematic and said the public sector seemed more focused on creating procedures and structures than on acknowledging working relationships that would produce change. Stories of Trust, Calculative Trust and Mistrust in Sharing Information The third little narrative begins with a fragment of a story told by a support worker: Although there is competition in the sector, people still get on and share information. One week they tender against one another and the next they are joint working. What does get around is when people don’t share information. People don’t work with organisations that don’t share information.

This interview passage, and particularly the last sentence, echoes the grand narrative as it alludes to a normative belief in shared values within the social enterprise sector – an experience told as fact, where even in competition, trust was implicit. At first glance, it supports Perrini’s (2006) grand narrative according to which trust enables the spreading of innovation and ‘holds together’ the social enterprise movement (also see Austin et al., 2006). Though the above story hints at the grand narrative, Perrini’s thesis ultimately misses the fact that practitioners’ stories circulate spreading the word not to work with others that fail to share information. The following stories also suggest something other than social enterprise

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and public sector participants simply embracing the grand narrative, without thereby voicing the counter-narrative. For instance, one social enterprise practitioner described how sharing information with others helped those others get to know about their project, and how discussions with those others helped them improve their initial idea and offer a better project. He cautioned, though, that there are different ‘levels of trust’ related to sharing information. This lesson initially appears to align with the notion of ‘calculative trust’ in the literature (Lane, 1998). Yet he immediately contradicts the trust literature and said from his experience, it would be ‘ridiculous’ to share everything, thus offering a paradoxical view on trust and sharing information. And yet, several other social enterprise practitioners spoke about their reservations on sharing ideas as they experienced others ‘nicking’ their ideas to put forward as their own in funding bids. Another social enterprise practitioner gave an example of such ‘negative expectations’: And it was just the mistrust really, because when you’ve got competitive bidding rounds, you’re in competition really for the ever-decreasing amounts of money.

These views of trust and sharing information differed from the story of the support worker above as well as that of Perrini (2006) in the literature. In the latter group of social enterprise practitioners’ stories, mistrust might have been a useful – even sane – tactic, especially as they said they competed against other social enterprises as well as against larger organizations including public sector agencies that were not always trusted. It is worth noting that those representatives of public sector agencies who were listening to and supporting the ideas of social enterprises were at the same time bidding for the same funds against those enterprises. One social enterprise practitioner talked about finding one of their ideas in a public sector bid. This little narrative in part reflects the argument posed by Sydow (1998) that mistrust is not bad, nor trust entirely good. Instead, trust and mistrust complement one another based upon different antecedents. However, unlike Sydow’s premise that trust can reduce risk, the little narrative appeared to resonate more with the point by Johannisson (2011, p. 140) that trust is related to the ‘creation and exploitation of opportunities that an ambiguous/equivocal environment invites’. Looking at how these various practitioners spoke of trust offers a more nuanced imagery than the simple divide between trust and mistrust. It is also more similar to the idea about a ‘critical friend’ above. What we see here are glimpses that this little narrative tends to encompass certain aspects of the counter-narrative of trust while at the same time adopting an affirmative evaluation of trusting working relations.

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Stories of Rhetoric that Alternative Possibilities ‘Move From’ This fourth aspect of the ‘critical friend’ relations appeared in a query from a commissioner of a local service programme: Do we trust the local authority to be relatively open and transparent about the way that it wants to go about securing services? Or, do we see a future where the local authority protects its own, and leaves very small opportunities for others, whether private and voluntary sector, to actually take part? Now the rhetoric here locally is encouraging, but the practice isn’t at the moment. So it’s a matter of saying how long do we have to give them before the practice catches up with their rhetoric? They’re not there yet. But they are saying the right things.

Clearly this practitioner perceived the public sector rhetoric as encouraging, but in practice, the interviewee’s experiences differed. His story resonated with what others, from both support agencies and social enterprises, were saying: that the state of trust and the experience of control were part of their everyday experiences. This little narrative appears to reflect what Berglund and Wigren (2012, p. 11) note: that the assumptions underpinning the grand narrative of trust are of interest as this is the stance which alternative possibilities are to ‘move from’. Although the above four little narratives were presented separately, they actually form interwoven stories, and together reveal a complex story of trust. Social enterprise participants and public sector relations were, perhaps unsurprisingly, framed in terms of asymmetrical power relations. Practitioners representing the local authority repeatedly said that local social enterprises were not ‘contract-ready’ and that they, the local authority, needed to keep and deliver public services ‘in-house’. This aspect adds nuance to that of the ‘critical friend’ relations discussed before. Social enterprise practitioners acknowledged this situation; one said it was a ‘patronizing view’ while another said the public sector was being ‘protective of their budgets’. Even so, social enterprise practitioners repeatedly said they sought to be ‘equal partners’ with those in the public sector. Many said it was the ‘quality of dialogue’ between the two sectors that supported those advocating the potential for change and that this aspect came down to individual friendly relationships between those in social enterprises and those in the public sector. This phrase – ‘quality of dialogue’ – begins to capture negotiations in which actors might use stories as the elemental means for creating different combinations of control and trust; this dynamic essentially transcends the dualistic view of control and trust outlined earlier. Moreover, they were hopeful about the possibilities of future actions, though at the same time they acknowledged

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being ­vulnerable. It is this aspect which Nicholson and Anderson (2005) highlight: that storytelling links the past experience with future hopes.

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: TRANSGRESSIONS AND IMAGININGS OF ALTERNATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF TRUST The chapter began with the story of trust in the form of an analogy of dance between social enterprises and the public sector. The trust in that story was based on shared values and/or routines experienced over time based on an ideological view of social enterprise that social enterprise is based upon trust. But the lived nature of dance reveals various moments of transgressions, differences and power; in contrast to both the grand and counter-narrative, the analogy of dancing, like the little narrative, is not free of tensions and contradictions. These practitioners’ stories indicated a dialectic dynamic, which suggests that trust is never too far removed from control and power. Interestingly, those in the third sector did not show outright opposition to public sector organizations. This is noteworthy in so far as the social enterprise counter-narrative might overstate the power of one (public sector) and the resistance of the other (social enterprise). Because these relationships are so interdependent, the analogy of the ‘critical friend’ is of particular interest. The data evoked the emergence of a ‘critical friend’, which framed the need to stand outside of the situation in an advocacy role, and simultaneously experience tensions over receiving the funding to provide services. This finding differed not only from extant literature, which conceives of ‘critical friend’ as a trusted person giving advice to improve ‘co-created’ public service provision (Bransden and Pestoff, 2007), but also from the way the role of ‘critical friend’ was seen from the public sector, where people were tasked with supporting social enterprises whose earlier failures they could see clearly. As the empirical findings clearly showed, social enterprise practitioners remain people of agency who are able to move between these tension-ridden relationships with the public sector. Social enterprise participants’ little narratives appeared to transgress patterns of trust-control in that they spoke of being hopeful and open to new possibilities of future relations with those in the public sector, while at the same time keeping a critical eye focused on existing relations of power. The little narratives fit with accepting vulnerability yet still holding ‘positive expectations’ of others (Kim et al., 2009). Probably one of the clearest messages emanating from the four little narratives is that rather than one story of trust, differing notions of trust co-existed at the same time, and often within a single story. Further,

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people saw contracts not solely as control mechanisms, and the relations between social enterprise practitioners and public sector officials appeared complex: practitioners enacted trust but sometimes were also shaped by it. Still, I must note what one support worker said: ‘you trust your family, your lover and some friends; everything else is for contracts’. Thus, some stories that did not reflect trust in interactions between social enterprises and the public sector agencies echoed an argument that trust and calculation are separable (Möllering, 2014). This is not to return to the either/or logic of trust and control, but does highlight the need to be sensitive to what people assume in these relations. The little narratives intermingle elements of the grand and the counternarratives and thereby reveal the scope for alternative interactions. As such, the above vignettes confirm that existing academic narratives, whether grand or counter, are only partly able to grasp the vulnerability, fluidity and future imaginings of trust. The major contribution of the chapter has been to illuminate how practitioner stories offer glimpses of impression management in collaborations between the public and third sectors and insights into political aspects of interactions, in particular subverting power relations and trust. Hence, one of the merits of attending to little narratives is that we gain a better understanding of how local everyday talk offers a space of transgression where resistance happens not through direct opposition but in the way that essentialist, apparently stable and dualistic concepts are deconstructed. In Foucauldian terms, little narratives suggest ‘a shift from the metaphor of resistance as opposition (e.g. defence, guarding, protecting), to one which highlights movement (e.g. traversing, crossing, permeating)’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2012, p. 104). In highlighting movement, I also want to query the underlying logics of such stories; the dance analogy that opened the chapter was told in the context of historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs and rules (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999). Thus, the analogy appears as a constructed binary of trust and control, with perhaps a sense of looking back to a time when relations were particularly romanticized and stereotypical concerning trust; that is, trust used to exist back before contracts and now it does not. However, the findings highlight how those in the two sectors have danced with and around each other for some time. Indeed, there were situations and celebrations where they, and I, literally danced with one another. There are of course limitations to my approach. After presenting an earlier version of this chapter at a conference, three people came up and offered what they felt to be limitations. Two felt I should have suggested an ideal dance type; one suggested a social dance, as a better analogy

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conveying these relations. The third simply said the dance analogy made no sense in speaking of trust. In alluding to the dance analogy, and linking this analogy to little narratives, I take my cue from Sweeney (2015, p. 27), misquoting the famous phrase attributed to anarchist feminist Emma Goldman: ‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.’ Like Sweeney, I too seek to disrupt structures that seek to constrain. This ana­ logy illustrates how the little narratives might be embodied negotiations and are able to transgress the dance analogy given above, which constructs a discrete boundary separating social enterprises from the public sector – where they cannot dance with one another. To use the dance analogy is to pay attention to everyday processes, which can both enhance and/or inhibit the qualities of a relationship. To dance with others is to sense this. The little narratives also compel us to reframe the analogy of the dance, and of specific enactments, in which the follower is a person ‘led by’ the other. Of course dance partners differ and some will lead their partner, expecting them to follow a sequence of steps. And yet, as Steyaert (2012, p. 160 writing of Serres) says, a dance ‘is based on steps that open a space’. Indeed, the little narratives suggest that the follower (that is, the social enterprise practitioner) is not necessarily passive or controlled. Thrift (1997, p. 149) too warns us ‘[b]ut, in part, to state that dance can be used to subvert power or to combat it is to sorely miss the point’. Rather, he sees dance as ‘transformative practice’ a means of departing from moral codes and ‘the grounds configuring an alternative way of being that eludes the grasp of power’ (Thrift, 1997, p. 150; citing Radley, 1995, p. 9). Evocatively, Davis (2015, p. 12) says this of the dance: The embrace provides a liminal space – a place which is outside everyday life, caught between the old (which has not been totally abandoned) and the new (which is anticipated but not yet realised). This space can feel extremely uncomfortable or perfectly at home, desperately unhappy or ecstatically joyful.

Thus, I welcome a dance analogy; what the initial dance analogy missed was the sensate nature of dance: it is a state of transgression, of desire and playfulness, and of differing rhythms; the ambiguities are in the gestures and the traces of the steps. If we were to extend the dance analogy in light of this notion of ‘opening space’, ‘eluding the grasp of power’ and seeing ‘liminal space’ between old and new, it might let us raise awareness about different ways of conceiving relations and co-creating collaborations between social enterprise and the public sector. On the other hand, we need to recall Gabriel’s (2000) warning and not be tempted to impose the little narrative as an alternative story. To end by posing a final question: is it too much to wonder what new stories and actions practitioners might imagine, talk about and enact

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with others? Here the analogy of dance applies to the little narratives in the practitioner stories, which appeared to be about the relationship of the lead partner in the dance, but are also about the willingness of the other to follow, and to resist, and to pause. In the practitioner stories, the little narrative appeared to be about how they moved and swayed within processes of change as well as moments of stillness. This too might be a romantic notion; if nothing else, as part of a critical research agenda, it feels important to experiment with methodologies that allow us to (re)consider how these tensions are enacted. By recognizing that trust is not the whole story, and querying the assumptions of both the grand and the counter-narratives, we begin to see dance as the ability to open spaces for exploring contradictions, tensions and hopeful possibilities.

NOTE 1. The term ‘third sector’ has been used in categorizing and discerning organizations from the other two sectors in the economy (for example private and public). It has been described as comprising a range of organizations; in England it comprises diverse organ­ izations often engaged in public sector interactions. In England, the term ‘third sector’ has changed over time; for instance, it has been called the voluntary sector, voluntary and community sector, and more recently civil society. For more details see Alcock and Kendall (2011) who discuss the changing nature and tensions in these relations occurring over time.

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Johannisson, Bengt (2011), ‘Towards a practice theory of entrepreneuring’, Small Business Economics, 36, 135–50. Kim, Peter H., Kurt T. Dirks and Cecily D. Cooper (2009), ‘The repair of trust: A dynamic bilateral perspective and multilevel conceptualization’, Academy of Management Review, 34 (3), 401–22. Knowles, Murray and Rosamund Moon (2006), Introducing Metaphor, Abingdon: Routledge. Kramer, Roderick M. and Peter J. Carnevale (2003), ‘Trust and intergroup negotiation’, in Rupert Brown and Sam Gaertner (eds), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intergroup Processes, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 431–50. Lane, Christel (1998), ‘Introduction: Theories and issues in the study of trust’, in Christel Lane and Reinhardt Bachmann (eds), Trust Within and Between Organisations: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–30. Latour, Bruno (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lyon, Fergus, Guildo Möllering and Mark N.K. Saunders (2012), ‘Introduction: The variety of methods for the multi-faceted phenomenon of trust’, in Fergus Lyon, Guildo Möllering and Mark N.K. Saunders (eds), Handbook of Research Methods on Trust, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1–15. Mair, Johanna, Julie Battilana and Julian Cardenas (2012), ‘Organizing for society: A typology of social entrepreneuring models’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111 (3), 353–73. Möllering, Guido (2005), ‘The Trust/Control duality. An integrative perspective on positive expectations of others’, International Sociology, 20 (3), 283–305. Möllering, Guido (2014), ‘Trust, calculativeness, and relationships: A special issue 20 years after Williamson’s warning’, Journal of Trust Research, 4 (1), 1–21. Montgomery, A. Wren, Peter A. Dacin and M. Tina Dacin (2012), ‘Collective social entrepreneurship: Collaboratively shaping social good’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111 (3), 375–88. Morgan, Gareth (1989), Creative Organization Theory, London: Sage. Näslund, Lovisa and Frida Pemer (2012), ‘The appropriated language: Dominant stories as a source of organizational inertia’, Human Relations, 65 (1), 89–110. Nicholls, Alex and Albert Hyunbae Cho (2006), ‘Social entrepreneurship: The structuration of a field’, in Alex Nicholls (ed.), Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 99–118. Nicholson, Louise and Alistair R. Anderson (2005), ‘News and nuances of the entrepreneurial myth and metaphor: Linguistic games in entrepreneurial sensemaking and sense-giving’, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 29 (2), 153–72. Oakes, Leslie S., Barbara Townley and David J. Cooper (1998), ‘Business planning as pedagogy: Language and control in a changing institutional field’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 43, 257–92. O’Reilly, Dermot and Mike Reid (2011), ‘The grit in the oyster: Professionalism, managerialism and leaderism as discourses in the UK public service modernization’, Organization Studies, 32 (8), 1079–101. Perrini, Francesco (2006), The New Social Entrepreneurship: What Awaits Social Entrepreneurial Ventures?, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

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Pestoff, Victor and Taco Brandsen (2010), Public governance and the third sector: Opportunities for coproduction and innovation?, in Stephen P. Osborne (ed.), The New Public Governance? Emerging Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Public Governance, London: Routledge, pp. 223–36. Radley, Alan (1995), ‘The elusory body and social constructionist theory’, Body and Society, 1, 3–24. Reed, Michael I. (2001), ‘Organization, trust and control: A realist analysis’, Organization Studies, 22, 201–28. Reid, Kristen and Jon Griffith (2006), ‘Social enterprise mythology: Critiquing some assumptions’, Social Enterprise Journal, 2 (1), 1–10. Sako, Mari (1992), Prices, Quality and Trust: Buyer Supplier Relationships in Britain and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saunders, Mark N.K., Graham Dietz and Adrian Thornhill (2014), ‘Trust and distrust: Polar opposites, or independent but co-existing?’, Human Relations, 67 (6), 639–65. Saunders, Matthew L. and John G. McClellan (2014), ‘Being business-like while pursuing a social mission: Acknowledging the inherent tension in US non-profit organizing’, Organization, 21 (1), 68–89. SBS (2005), GHK Review of the Social Enterprise Strategy: Summary of Findings, London: Small Business Service. Schwabenland, Christina (2006), Stories, Visions and Values in Voluntary Organisations, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Seanor, Pam (2011), Social Enterprise Networks: An Unfolding Model for Interpreting & Drawing Different Views, University of Huddersfield, available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/10604/. Steyaert, Chris (2007), ‘Entrepreneuring as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 19 (6), 453–77. Steyaert, Chris (2012), ‘Making the multiple: Theorizing processes of entrepreneurship and organisation’, in Daniel Hjorth (ed.), Handbook on Organisational Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 151–68. Stone, Melissa M. and Susan Cutcher-Gershenfeld (2002), ‘Challenges of measuring performance in nonprofit organizations’, in Patrice Flynn and Virginia A. Hodgkinson (eds),  Measuring the Impact of the Nonprofit Sector, New York: Plenum Publishers, pp. 33–57. Sweeney, Fionnghuala (2015), ‘“Beautiful, radiant things”: Aesthetics, experience and feminist practice’, Feminist Theory, 16 (1), 27–30. Sydow, Jörg (1998), ‘Understanding the constitution of interorganizational trust’, in Christel Lane and Reinhardt Bachmann (eds), Trust Within and Between Organisations: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 31–63. Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio (1999), ‘Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990’, American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 801–44. Thrift, Nigel (1997), ‘The still point: Resistance, expressive embodiment and dance’, in Steve Pile and Michael Keith (eds), Geographies of Resistance, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 124–51. Welter, Frederike (2012), ‘All you need is trust? A critical review of the trust

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10. Social entrepreneurship: performative enactments of compassion Karin Berglund The film on the social entrepreneurs’ endeavours to rescue orphans ends, leaving everyone in the room with the imprint of a group of people smiling against the backdrop of a sunset. The short three-minute film combines the hard struggles and joy of everyday life with the infinite beauty of the African landscape, where the red dust trembles in the aftermath of the day’s heat. The young blonde Swedish woman stands out in the crowd of African children who have gathered around her. The audience are moved to tears. Someone sobs intensely and loudly. Not an eye is dry and few attempt to conceal their state of mind. Some even use a sleeve to wipe a damp cheek. In the film we followed her meetings with orphans, how she played with them, hugged them, taught them new things. How she cooked for them and read bedtime stories before they went to sleep. We also observed how she led a construction project that resulted in a new home for these children. Before showing the film she told us earnestly that she had experienced both the best and the worst in her pursuits to contribute to both social and personal change. She talked movingly about her exposure to both positive and negative experiences. On the one hand, her work with social entrepreneurship exposed her to abject poverty, filth, hunger, thirst, heat and disease. On the other, she witnessed, and experienced, hugs, happiness, warmth, tenderness and love. She recalled the meetings with those whose eyes had lost the light but slowly started to come alive, to sparkle and shine with the enjoyment of life, as the moments that captured both the worst and the best. Seeing a child’s eyes light up, she muses, ‘doesn’t that make everything worthwhile?’ The audience nods silently. I have chosen to start my comment on discursive and performative enactments in social entrepreneurship (research) with this episode, which unfolded at a conference on entrepreneurial learning, because it illustrates the emotional responses of both the social entrepreneur and of the audience. I have found emotional responses, and in particular compassion, to be 182

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very prominent in social entrepreneurship undertakings, although they are rarely mentioned. The elision of compassion as an object of reflection may be because it seems trivial, or simply too obvious to require a comment. However, compassion in social entrepreneurship is anything but trivial, as the example of this social entrepreneur, let’s call her Kate, and her audience’s emotional responses, testify. After Kate’s performance, the audience, consisting largely of school teachers, volunteered to contribute to her project to improve life for homeless children in the African village. Whilst some wanted to donate money, others asked if they could provide useful contacts or invited Kate to come and talk to their pupils to give them an idea of how they could create a meaningful life. Emotions in general, and compassion in particular, thus appear to guide social entrepreneurs in the practices and processes of social entrepreneuring, and also to attract and enthuse the audience to partake in the social mission. Compassion has also been recognized in entrepreneurship research as motivating entrepreneurs to organize collective responses to alleviate human suffering (Miller et al., 2012; Shepherd, 2015). This suggests that the compassionately affected entrepreneur is ‘other-oriented’. The question I will circle around in this comment is what these emotionally loaded responses do to those involved in social entrepreneurship. But, also, what effects do emotions have on discourses of social entrepreneurship? Although this is a short comment, which does not leave much space for onto-epistemological elaborations, I would like to clarify that I view emotional expressions as social and cultural practices (for example Hochschild, 1983[2012]; Fineman, 2000), through which both subjects and objects are shaped and take shape (Ahmed, 2014). Further, the last century has seen a trend to extract emotions ‘from the realm of inner life and put them at the center of selfhood and sociability’ (Illouz, 2007, p. 36). The expansion of ‘emotional talk’ may not imply that people are neither more nor less emotional today than they were a century ago. Rather, viewing contemporary humans as more emotional may work as a smoke screen against how languages of emotions suspend entanglements in social relationships (Illouz, 2007, p. 38). Expressions of feeling also allow for emotions to become objectified and exploited in the name of the market. Sometimes emotional responses are described as visceral moments for the social entrepreneur who decides to make a decisive decision (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). At other times emotions unfold as dilemmas for the social entrepreneur to make decisions about balancing the different requirements imposed on a social enterprise (Berglund and Schwartz, 2013). Emotions are performative to social entrepreneurship in the sense that they affect an individual or organizations to perform. Affect can here be defined as an increase in the power of acting (Deleuze, 2007) and

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performance as the actions taken to produce a worth or quality ‘within a field of judgment’ (Ball, 2003, p. 216). In my research on a number of social and entrepreneurial initiatives during the last decade, and in my teaching of the subject, I have been struck by the extent to which compassion aligns with social entrepreneurship (for example Berglund, 2013; 2016; Berglund et al., 2017). In my experience, compassion is not only ornamental to stories of social entrepreneurship, but insinuates itself in mundane interactions. It has an effect on people, and is thus effective for social entrepreneurship discourses to prosper and multiply. The two chapters of this book part on Social Entrepreneurship and its Enactments offer a case in point. Whilst Pam Seanor highlights the performances of establishing a dance between trust, sometimes mistrust, and control between representatives of social enterprises and officials in the public sector, Stefanie Mauksch investigates the way in which social entrepreneurship events are set up to make participants in the events experience their interests in pursuing social entrepreneurial endeavours. Although the contexts of the two chapters differ, and compassion is never explicitly mentioned in either of them, the aspiration of evoking this emotional state among potential social entrepreneurs (Mauksch), and the need to overcome the lack of it among public sector employees (Seanor) aid my reconnaissance of compassion. In Seanor’s investigation of trust, she in fact finds mistrust, and a lack of shared joy, to be stressed in the narrative of social entrepreneurship. Although she uses the metaphor of dance, implicitly stressing desire and playfulness, her empirical investigation of stories told in everyday practices reveals the opposite. However, when one of the officials interviewed ponders the notion of collaborative work, he remembers his experiences to more emotional relationships and of the implications of putting up barriers, as control and mistrust. This passage shows a reflection on the indolence the lack of emotional relationships might result in, and how the opposite (compassion) made it possible to collaborate creatively to establish a platform where more of that stuff could be done. In Mauksch’s chapter the would-be social entrepreneurs are told to ‘do it with joy’, which is also stressed as one of Muhammad Yunus’ principles for successfully engaging in social business. By taking part in social entrepreneurship events aimed at fostering and recruiting social entrepreneurs, Mauksch points to how, together with other participants, she watched a video where ‘people of different genders, ages and cultural backgrounds expressed their feelings and expectations around social business’ (Chapter 8, this volume). Social entrepreneurship thus includes all and sundry in the mission to grow more awareness of what each and every one can achieve. Mauksch finds that these events consist of attempts to reach for the ‘participant’s deepest

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aspirations, moral ideals and hopes’ (Chapter 8, this volume) as being a potential that already resides within us through becoming aware of (and having compassion for) not only other people’s situations, but also for our common world. She gives an example: watching another video that took participants inside a NASA shuttle, ‘saluting the earth with a social business perspective in mind’ (Chapter 8, this volume). So, whilst Seanor points to the problems of pursuing social entrepreneurship in a public sector context, where compassion appears to be missing, Mauksch shows how compassion is expressed to compel people to engage in entrepreneurial life. Now, moving back to the conference with Kate and the teachers, we are at the end of the day and what remains is a panel discussion. Before long, two of the three panellists seem to be largely in agreement that entrepreneurship can, in principle, solve any problems and situations imaginable. Their discussion is interrupted by Kate, who points out that Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction is the best she has ever heard and challenges their exaltation of what entrepreneurship might bring about. She declares that the creation of one thing always comes at the expense of another. The spell is suddenly broken and the audience begin to shift uncomfortably on their benches. As the moderator on this occasion, I felt compelled to intervene and I remember asking the audience whether entrepreneurship could, in fact, be such a supreme remedy. When the discussion resumed they agreed that entrepreneurship may very well destroy something, but that this destruction is necessary in order for something better to flourish. The modernist tale of endless progression was restored and all doubts were waved away, whereby the space for potential critique shrank drastically. Kate’s question is, however, relevant and certainly commands some reflection. If we hold on to Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction we can ask three questions: what is created in social entrepreneurship? What is destroyed? And, with the topic of this comment in mind, how is compassion involved in this? I will answer these questions, but not through relating to entrepreneurship as the Schumpeterian history of economic development. Instead, I will use post-Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and the entrepreneurial self to analyse entrepreneurship as a liberal invention that has guided and shaped Western society. In this way, entrepreneurship is related to as a productive force through which ‘freedom’, ‘social’ and ‘economy’ can be linked in novel ways (Foucault, 1978[1991]). This power is productive in the sense that it opens up for entrepreneurship to take new routes and shapes, precisely through offering alternative entrepreneurial opportunities through self-reflection, selfmaking and self-regulation. Returning to the three questions above, the answer would be that what is created are new forms of entrepreneurship, among them social

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e­ntrepreneurship. These forms take shape through the criticisms that have been directed against conventional entrepreneurship during the last decades, in which it has been accused of having too strong a focus on profit and management, being too occupied in promoting a Western and gendered heroic figure, and also too ignorant of the so-called ‘wicked problems’ that are unleashed in contemporary times (Dorado and Ventresca, 2013). With Schumpeter’s terminology and with a post-Foucauldian lens we can understand social entrepreneurship as a process through which ‘conventional’ entrepreneurship is criticized for its shortcomings, and where new alternative forms of social entrepreneurship emerge. With this transformation a more moral entrepreneurial self unfolds. Creative destruction no longer only concerns itself with the reproduction of products and services, but also with the reproduction of a more socially oriented enterprising self. In comparison to the Patrick Bateman-type entrepreneur in American Psycho, who is driven by profit and obsessed with profit, the entrepreneurial self that unfolds through social entrepreneurship thrives on compassion. Critical thinkers have pointed to how capitalism is concerned with the social reproduction of an enterprising self (Lemke, 2001; Rose, 1999) and that critique is immanent to capitalist production (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). Social entrepreneurship directs critique towards both the market and government, and presents itself as a solution. In this process, responsibility for finding the solution is shifted from government to individual social entrepreneurs who must show how they can solve this on market terms (Berglund and Skoglund, 2016). When the market is no longer external to the state, but part of our ability to live well, critique is no longer freestanding to capitalism. When entrepreneurship no longer only represents itself as the capitalist version, but has transformed into social forms of providing welfare and well-being, this turns new entrepreneurial undertakings into both a critique of, as well as an answer to, the problems and shortcomings found in already existing versions of entrepreneurship. This proliferation of ‘new’ social and more ethical entrepreneurship discourses, and the moral self that follows, I suggest is triggered by criticism and nourished by compassion. Rather than destabilizing capitalism, social entrepreneurship may only change the ‘face’ of it by making it appear more ‘flexible’ and ‘caring’ (Vrasti, 2012). However sincerely compassion is expressed and enacted in situ, compassion could also work to make social entrepreneurship appear more caring. Expressions of compassion also objectify the social entrepreneur and her or his undertakings for the other to be exploited in the name of the market (see Illouz, 2007). Through this transformation a more moral social entrepreneurial self takes shape, one that thrives on compassion as s/he seeks to alleviate suffering for the other, but also one

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that no longer expects government to protect her, but is aligned with the expectations of entrepreneurial life to take full responsibility for herself and for others (Berglund and Skoglund, 2016). In this transformation the logic of economic calculation and rationality do not disappear. Instead they become thwarted and extended through social entrepreneurship. The economic rationale has proved helpful for neoliberal governmentality to produce an entrepreneurial self who is mobilized by freedom and fostered to take responsibility and take part in the advancement of capitalism. This social entrepreneurial self becomes equipped not only with adaptability, flexibility and resilience, but also with compassionate aptitudes of care, sympathy, enjoyment, kindness, sacrifice and generosity. Compassion does not stand in the way of social entrepreneurship, but paves the way for a more moral entrepreneurship to emerge and gain a foothold in the present. To sum up, in social entrepreneurship discourse we become governed through compassion. Compassion is conducive to social entrepreneurship and becomes performative to entrepreneurial action. Although social entrepreneurship not only involves the ‘win–win’ situations emphasized in the success stories, but also lose–lose situations, social entrepreneurs endure in their compassion for making the world a better place (Berglund and Schwartz, 2013). Even though this implies unpaid or underpaid work, and sacrificing their personal relationships with (and compassion for) family and friends, they hold on to their social business in the pursuit to make life better for someone else (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010). When the teachers at the conference were invited to reflect upon the danger of the proliferation of entrepreneurship, they chose to hold on to it as a solution that could engage their pupils and help them to become better teachers. When equipped with compassion, question marks appear to turn into exclamation marks, which make efforts for critical reflection troublesome.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara (2014), The Cultural Politics of Emotion, London: Routledge. Ball, Stephen J. (2003), ‘The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity’, Journal of Education Policy, 18 (2), 215–28. Berglund, Karin (2013), ‘Fighting against all odds: Entrepreneurship education as employability training’, Ephemera, 13 (4), 717–35. Berglund, Karin (2016), ‘E viral Essay – Entrepreneurship goes viral: The invention of deviant enterprising selves’, M@n@gement, 18 (5), 357–71. Berglund, Karin and Birgitta Schwartz (2013), ‘Holding on to the anomaly of social entrepreneurship dilemmas in starting up and running a fair-trade enterprise’, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 4 (3), 237–55.

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Berglund, Karin and Annika Skoglund (2016), ‘Social entrepreneurship: To defend society from itself’, in Alain Fayolle and Philippe Riot (eds), Rethinking Entrepreneurship: Debating Research Orientations, New York: Routledge, pp. 57–77. Berglund, Karin, Monica Lindgren and Johann Packendorff (2017), ‘Responsibilising the next generation: Fostering the enterprising self through de-mobilising gender’, Organization, DOI: 1350508417697379. Boltanski, Luc and Ève Chiapello (2005), The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso. Deleuze, Gilles (2007), Lectures by Gilles Deleuze: On Spinoza, accessed at http:// deleuzelectures.blogspot.se/2007/02/on-spinoza.html. Dempsey, Sarah E. and Matthew L. Sanders (2010), ‘Meaningful work? Nonprofit marketization and work/life imbalance in popular autobiographies of social entrepreneurship’, Organization, 17 (4), 437–59. Dorado, Silvia and Marc J. Ventresca (2013), ‘Crescive entrepreneurship in complex social problems: Institutional conditions for entrepreneurial engagement’, Journal of Business Venturing, 28 (1), 69–82. Fineman, Stephen (ed.) (2000), Emotion in Organizations, London: Sage. Foucault, Michel (1978[1991]), ‘Governmentality’, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect – Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures and Interviews with Michel Foucault, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 87–104. Hochschild, Arlie R. (1983 [2012]), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Illouz, Eva (2007), Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Malden, MA: Polity. Lemke, Thomas (2001), ‘The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality’, Economy and Society, 30 (2), 190–207. Miller, Toyah L., Matthew G. Grimes, Jeffrey S. McMullen and Timothy J. Vogus (2012), ‘Venturing for others with heart and head: How compassion encourages social entrepreneurship’, Academy of Management Review, 37 (4), 616–40. Rose, Nicholas (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shepherd, Dean A. (2015), ‘Party on! A call for entrepreneurship research that is more interactive, activity based, cognitively hot, compassionate, and prosocial’, Journal of Business Venturing, 30 (4), 489–507. Vrasti, Wanda (2012), ‘How to use affective competencies in late capitalism’, accessed at https://www.bisa.ac.uk/index.php?option5com_bisa&task5downlo​ ad_paper&no_html51&passed_paper_id529.

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PART IV

Social entrepreneurship, participation and democracy

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11. Deliberative democracy in social entrepreneurship: a discourse ethics approach to participative processes of social change Trish Ruebottom ‘If you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not changing the status quo.’ Seth Godin (‘The tribes we lead’, www.ted.com, February 2009)

INTRODUCTION Social entrepreneurship seeks to challenge the status quo based in an alternative vision of capitalism as a support for social objectives (­ Ridley-Duff, 2008). Social entrepreneurship can be broadly defined as a means of exploiting opportunities to create social value (Dees, 2001; Seelos and Mair, 2005); it is a ‘process involving the innovative use and combin­ ation of resources to pursue opportunities to catalyze social change and/ or address social needs’ (Mair and Marti, 2006, p. 37; see also Perrini et  al., 2010), challenging assumptions of traditional economic and business development (Dart, 2004; Leadbeater, 1997). I use the term ‘social enterprise’ to denote an organization implementing social entrepreneurial activities. These social enterprises aim to improve livelihoods, increase access to the market, and improve the lives of those excluded from the system. But given the complexity and ambiguity of social change and the resistance these organizations often face, how can social entrepreneurship know that the changes they implement are just? This chapter takes a critical look at the economic, cultural and political dimensions of social entrepreneurship, particularly those organizations involved in development work, and suggests a way forward that can navigate the ethical risks of each dimension. In doing so, I answer calls for a more critical approach to social entrepreneurship research (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Harris et al., 2009; Mason, 2012) to contrast the ‘wave of euphoria and optimism that is driving current theoretical development in 191

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the field of social enterprise and entrepreneurship’ (Bull, 2008, p. 272). I address concerns that ‘research presupposes an unrealistic homogeneity of social interests’ (Anderson and Dees, 2006; Nicholls, 2006, p. 106) and ‘an individualized, messianistic script that incorporates a model of harmon­ ious social change’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2010, p. 87). Drawing on Habermas (1987, 1990), and related work in cosmopolitanism (for example Benhabib, 2006; Kock, 2009; Nussbaum, 2002; Spivak, 2002), I problematize the idea of creating social change, and view norms and meanings as socially constructed and relational, requiring public deliberation based on a communicative rationality that sets aside strategic and instrumental positions in order to reach understanding. While participation (Cornelius and Wallace, 2010; Di Domenico et al., 2009; Mena et al., 2010) and understanding of the local context (Shaw and Carter, 2007; Tapsell and Woods, 2010) are often emphasized as key aspects of successful social enterprise, particularly in the European context (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010), many organizations do not have formal processes to facilitate implementation (Tracey et al., 2005). Additionally, for development work more broadly, participation has been argued to be the ‘new tyranny’ (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). It has been found that, despite the rhetoric within the current models of participatory development, ‘the actual ways in which development projects are designed and implemented constrain genuine deliberations through which poorer and more disadvantaged people could have taken greater control of their lives’ (Ojha et al., 2005, p. 479). I argue that processes of democratic deliberation based on a discourse ethics approach to self-determination are a way to mitigate the inherent risks of social change and allow for a deeper form of participation. As Habermas articulates, ‘in modern, pluralistic societies, social norms can derive their validity only from the reason and will of those whose decisions and interactions are supposed to be bound by them’ (Habermas et al., 1998, pp. vii–1). I suggest three processes at the heart of Habermas’ discourse ethics: political and communicative education; reflexivity; and facilitation of the ideal speech situation. Both education and reflexivity are necessary pre-processes for creating an ideal speech situation. The ideal speech situation itself then requires understanding-focused dialogue that aims to achieve opinion- and will-formation, where there is engagement with the ‘other’ and room for dissent. Without the pre-processes of reflexivity about the organization’s values, and communicative and political education to allow informed involvement, participation may not be productive. Additionally, deliberation for the sake of understanding, as opposed to strategic persuasion, allows appreciation of the other’s position and open re-consideration of the organization’s own position. While the

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process is focused on building consensus, I draw on Kock’s (2009) concept of dissensus-oriented dialogue as an additional element important for true participation. I argue that it is these variables together that build agency and allow for self-determination within the system of change generated by social entrepreneurship. Together, political and communicative education, reflexivity and facilitation of the ideal speech situation will create a more open and expanded viewpoint, where the organization’s values are not assumed or imposed on those they seek to help, with an approach that emphasizes self-determination and participation as moral equals.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: SUPPORT AND OPPOSITION Social entrepreneurship works within the current systems to remove barriers that have led to exploitation and exclusion, focusing on both institutional structure and human agency. These organizations create social innovations and change to existing global, national and local socio-economic systems (Chell et al., 2010). They often engage in social change through experimentation, building and expanding institutional infrastructure and working across multiple institutional logics (Marti and Mair, 2009). In the development field, this includes organizations such as Honey Care Africa, a social enterprise that introduced high quality commercial beekeeping to subsistence farmers in rural Kenya based on new technology, developing the Kenyan honey brand and allowing fair market access to those who had previously been excluded (Maurice, 2004; Wheeler et al., 2005); and Plan Puebla, which improved agriculture productivity in Mexico through a small-farm oriented cooperative and new agricultural technologies (Alvord et al., 2004). Organizations such as BRAC (formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) have worked with women living in poverty in rural areas, excluded from participation in many aspects of society because of traditional and religious practices, where kinship norms and religious inheritance laws obligate a person to sell property to family (Mair and Marti, 2009). Sekem, an Egyptian social enterprise that produces organic products and natural medicines for the international market created the necessary supply chain, contract rights, economic infrastructure and technology, but also introduced fair industry norms in terms of human rights, labor rights, pesticide use, fair trade, and created medical and educational centers to support economic development in the desert areas of Egypt (Seelos and Mair, 2007). Underlying each of these social enterprises is the belief that with access to the value chain, fair

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standards, education and health care, people are better able to participate in the market in the manner they choose, as equal agents. Grameen Bank changed the banking industry to make it accessible to the poor who didn’t have the necessary collateral or credit histories to access traditional sources of credit, based on a belief that ‘the poor are not poor because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labour’ (Yunus, 1999, p. 141). In other words, it was a system deficiency that the Grameen Bank sought to change, thereby creating a more economically just system. In taking sides with the under-privileged and marginalized groups and emphasizing human rights, social entrepreneurship is often touted as heroic in the international community (Anderson and Dees, 2006; Robinson, 2006). But at the local level, their goals and activities are often contested (for example Alvord et al., 2004; Mair and Marti, 2009; Nicholls, 2005; Sharir and Lerner, 2006). Even enterprises that are now recognized as incredibly successful faced initial resistance. Grameen Bank was opposed by the banking sector and the government, from the community in which they worked, religious leaders, moneylenders, husbands of the participants and even from the women they were trying to serve (Yunus, 1999). BRAC also faced huge opposition to their integrated schools and enterprise opportunities for women; extreme opposition came from the community and its leaders, with participants and employees being assaulted in the streets and schools set on fire (Mair and Marti, 2009; Marti and Mair, 2009). Nicholls (2006) discusses the specific difficulties faced by social entrepreneurship with a change agenda, including ‘clear tensions in the disruptive patterns of much social entrepreneurship [. . .] that is a function of how social entrepreneurs challenge existing, dysfunctional social welfare delivery structures’ (p. 116). This is because social benefit is not as straightforward a construct as it appears. The assumption of agreement about what is socially beneficial ignores the inevitable conflicts of interest involved in defining social benefit (Cho, 2006).

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP’S VALUES The Economic Dimension The dominant discourse in social entrepreneurship pushes a business model for social change (Bull, 2008). Social entrepreneurship emerged from several convergent institutional factors:

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Deliberative democracy in social entrepreneurship ­195 the decline of state involvement in the planned provision of services in society; and conceptualisation of the ‘market’ (Mulgan, 2006); the focus of a culture that emphasises self-reliance and personal responsibility and the rise of entrepreneurship more generally (Scase and Goffee, 1980; Kuratko, 2005); and changes in funding opportunities within the community, voluntary and non-profit (social) sectors – specifically the move from grant giving to contract/ competitive tendering and the devolution, deregulation and privatisation of welfare states globally (Pearce, 2003; Goerke, 2003). (Bull, 2008, p. 269)

It connects to the ‘neoconservative, pro-business, and pro-market polit­ ical and ideological values that have become central in many nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’ (Dart, 2004, p. 411). The moral danger in this neoliberal agenda is threefold. First, it offers one view of how the world should be organized, presenting its subjective ideals as objective and unavoidable (Calhoun, 2003b). In relying on entrepreneurial vision and non-democratic business approaches for determining the best way forward, social entrepreneurship risks imposing its own means and objectives (Cho, 2006). Second, it promotes the capitalist values of rationality, universality and progress (Pollock et al., 2000), freemarket individualism (Calhoun, 2003a), productivity and individual rights (Spivak, 2002) over all other rights and values, such as those of community and care (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). And third, the social impact of the neoliberal economic structure is ambiguous at best. Despite the promise of globalization and economic liberalization, the global economic order is seen in large part to be responsible for ‘the perpetuation and aggravation of poverty’ (Forst, 2001; Pogge, 2001, p. 15). And the social benefit attainable even from socially-focused market-based development approaches has been questioned: ‘market-led development will not necessarily expand opportunity, as the ideology of the “free market” would have it; rather it may deepen existing injustice and inequality’ (Rankin, 2004, p. 1). The activities of social entrepreneurship also work to legitimate the lack of public services provided by governments and the institution-level policies of the international financial institutions and trade organizations that are largely responsible for the current inequalities around the world. For example, many social enterprises such as the Nicaraguan fair trade coffee cooperative, CAFENICA, have acknowledged their growing role in public services, such as training and even financing of public works (Pirotte et al., 2006). But providing alternative mechanisms for working within the system negates the imperative for large-scale economic and political change that would reassign social responsibilities, such as schools, health care and public services, to the government. Instead, this further entrenches the neoliberal system responsible for creating the problem. We must therefore acknowledge and question the economic values that

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social enterprises are embedding while working in local communities, as well as the processes in which they are embedded. The existing system, which social entrepreneurship aims to make accessible to disadvantaged groups, contains powerful and undemocratic principles (Held, 1995); simply creating access to the market or economic opportunities without significant change in systems and structures does not, in itself, ensure justice. For example, when connecting landless dairy farmers to the market (for example CARE, 2007), enterprises are unavoidably integrating economic logics into communities that did not previously operate in this way (Mair and Marti, 2007). This in itself is not necessarily negative. The difficulty comes in assuming that it is good and imposing this model at the expense of existing institutional logics and social mechanisms. The Cultural Dimension The internationalization of social entrepreneurship, particularly through replication and scaling up, makes it particularly vulnerable to a cultural criticism of its values, as it works across borders and cultural divides, within and across very different social, political and economic structures, with goals of changing these structures. The origin of many organizations lies in the so-called developed world, while the work is carried out in the developing countries. Financial and/or human resources are often imported. Because of the power and economic inequities across this divide, social entrepreneurship runs the risk of perpetuating a victimization of the people they are serving. The recent focus on replication of successful programs (for example Dees et al., 2004; Perrini et al., 2010) means that even programs that began locally in partnership with the communities they serve are now being implemented in very different locations with little variation or room for local particularities. Despite participation, replication is inherently a top-down mechanism for growth. In seeing contexts that lack neoliberal economic logics and institutions as simply ‘institutional voids’ (see Mair and Marti, 2009 for discussion of the complex institutional arrangements actually found in these contexts), social entrepreneurship ignores the multiple other logics at play, and risks degrading and essentializing what is actually a complex system of social organization required for survival (Calhoun, 2003b). Assuming that neoliberal, individualist values are necessary, prioritizes the mainstream global values at the expense of local and communitarian cultural existence (for some excellent exceptions see Peredo and Chrisman, 2006; Tapsell and Woods, 2010; Tracey et al., 2005). This risks committing symbolic violence, a tacit form of social domination that conceals the underlying power relations (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). While community members may

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not hold economic capital, they may depend on other forms of capital that have survived through conflict, drought or famine, such as social or political capital that is built into the fabric and culture of the community. In treating all situations of poverty and market exclusion as sites for replication, there is a risk of generalizing the particular – assuming that all ‘developing worlds’ are the same, characterized simply by their lack of income opportunities and supporting systems. Enwezar (2006) cautions against essentializing, specifically in terms of our views of Africa, but applicable globally, and Parekh (1999) advises that ‘moral beliefs and practices cannot be detached from the wider way of life and abstractly judged and graded’ (p. 133). Any institutional field is also an arena of multiple perspectives and interpretations of norms and values (Benhabib, 2002). While there is a dominant set of practices and norms that created and continue to maintain the status quo, individuals may also hold very different beliefs. Those who are disadvantaged by the existing institutional arrangements are particularly likely to hold opposing or complex, mixed viewpoints that may not be shared publicly. This makes understanding of the local situation even more difficult. In fact, ‘cultural diversity involves necessary and deep differences in understanding of the good, or human rights, which make the imposition of one vision of the good problematic’ (Calhoun, 2003a, p. 540). The Political Dimension The politics of social entrepreneurship has recently been called into question (for example Cho, 2006; Dey and Steyaert, 2010). The political dimension addresses issues of power and influence within the processes of social entrepreneurship. Specifically, how is authority and power generated and sustained within the social enterprise and within its sphere of influence? To what extent do social enterprises embed democratic processes into their decision-making? Processes that involve participants in decision-making challenge the core roots of injustice within the economic system (Held, 1995) and allow people to act as agents in their own lives (Hodgson, 2012). Particularly in the context of social change, there is greater need for negotiation and public deliberation than a market context typically allows (Cho, 2006). Concerns have been raised about the ethics of operations within social enterprises, particularly related to political issues of participation, power and authority (Jacobs, 2006; Cornelius et al., 2008; Dey and Steyaert, 2010). Indeed, when Cornelius and Wallace (2010) examined the practices of cross-sector partnerships to assess the degree of social justice, three of the four measures of justice concerned community participation processes:

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participation in governance, agenda-setting, and in communication more broadly, as well as the creation of economic, social and public goods. And as this very clearly articulates, it is participation in the decision-making processes that is required to create a just system. Stakeholder participation has been touted as a key factor of social entrepreneurship (Di Domenico et al., 2010), yet for many organizations the rhetoric of participation is about opportunities for employment in entry-level positions or as a supplier in an industry as an alternative to charity. This participation in the economic system is a potentially valuable outcome. But participation within organizational processes is often based on token input. Having stakeholders at the table is frequently deemed sufficient for fair processes (Hildyard et al., 2001), but if issues of implicit power are then ignored, the voices of those at the table may still not be heard (Cleaver, 2001). Also, ‘possession of authority to define the problem [. . .] and plan the solution’ often remains with the organization (Ojha et al., 2005, p. 491). If participants are not involved in defining the situation and the decision-making processes of the organization, in the decisions that affect them, then they are still merely recipients and not agents, an ethos and outcome that was previously questioned in the non-profit sector (for example Stirrat and Henkel, 1997). Such exclusion from decision-making processes brings the morality of social entrepreneurship into question.

A WAY FORWARD: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP The values of social entrepreneurship have the potential for changing economic structures that are creating huge injustices in the world. But there is also the potential for further entrenchment of an unjust system, as market mechanisms usurp the capacity for agency and become takenfor-granted around the world. How can social enterprises work to improve conditions around the world, without falling into the economic, cultural and political traps inherent in social change? If moral understandings, even those of altruistic social entrepreneurs, are shaped by cultural norms, individual interests and psychology (Singer, 2002), then the only just route to social change is through mutual construction and shared participation based on open communication (Habermas, 1987). No single organization or person can impose a solution on another. Embedding the (economic) activities of social entrepreneurship within a deliberative political system ensures decisions are based on a more equal distribution of power (Singer, 2002). Such a democratic form of organization increases agency and self-determination (Held, 1995; Nussbaum, 2006; Hodgson, 2012). These

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processes must be embedded in the decision-making and routines of the organization through an ongoing communicative process, which Benhabib (2006) terms ‘democratic iterations’. Discourse ethics is an inter-subjective moral theory based on dialogue at the core of a deliberative political system (Habermas, 1990). There are two principles at the root of discourse ethics: the principle of universalization and the principle of discourse. The principle of universalization sets forth the condition that ‘(a)ll affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation)’ (Habermas, 1990, p. 65; emphasis in original). This implies taking the role of all others and being able to accept the consequences of the actions based on this perspectivetaking. The principle of discourse states that ‘(o)nly those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse’ (Habermas, 1990, p. 66). Such a principle ‘withdraws from universal human rights or from the concrete ethical life of a specific community into the rules of discourse and forms of argumentation that derive their normative content from the validity-basis of action oriented to reaching understanding and ultimately from the structure of linguistic communication’ (Habermas et al., 1998, p. 246; Habermas, 1996). This discourse ethics is then a procedural form of ethical decision-making (Habermas et al., 1998). At the root of the model is participation in deliberation over decisionmaking that has the potential to challenge current injustices in the economic system (Held, 1995; Hodgson, 2012). Drawing on Habermas (1987, 1990), as well as related work in the field of cosmopolitanism (for example Benhabib, 2006; Kock, 2009; Nussbaum, 2002; Spivak, 2002), I propose three processes that can help ensure that social entrepreneurship implements just social change: (1) political and communicative education; (2) reflexivity; and (3) facilitation of the ideal speech situation. Facilitation of the ideal speech situation involves understanding-focused dialogue that aims to achieve will-formation, engagement with the ‘other’, and room for dissent. Together, these factors allow people decision-making rights in determining their own social and economic structures, participating as moral equals. Political and Communicative Education Deliberative democracy depends on an ‘enlightened political socialization’ (Habermas et al., 1998, p. 252), such that people are fully able to participate in argumentation. While social enterprises often provide training to build

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technical skills related to the work opportunity, that is only one part of the required education. Explicit in the call for political socialization is the need for education beyond this technical skill-building. The role of education in Habermas’ deliberative democracy is not to build expert knowledge so that technical rationality can be used in argumentation; instead, education should seek to instill communicative reason, such that participants understand how to deliberate effectively, as a mutual learning process (Habermas, 1987). For those living in extreme poverty, education is crucial in creating a level playing field where people are able to voice their opinions and provide informed consent in the structures and processes that affect them (Freire, 1970; 1973). This involves understanding of the communicative processes of deliberation, as well as political education about rights, responsibilities and implications of decisions (Spivak, 2002). As an example, the village organizations of BRAC used weekly meetings to provide education that would allow all affected parties to voice their perspective and participate in the decisions that impact them. These meetings include staff, participants and anyone from the community, and seek to ‘raise awareness on many social, legal and personal issues affecting the everyday lives of poor women’ (BRAC, 2014). Similarly, through education with borrowers, Grameen Bank sutured an individual rights perspective into what some have identified as largely responsibility-based communities (Spivak, 2002) in order to strengthen their voice. Reflexivity The suturing in the microfinance education is partly a factor of the reflexivity the social enterprise was able to achieve. Taking a reflexive stance towards the organization’s own values involves distancing from taken-for-granted assumptions and taking the perspective of the other that then fosters a more conscious approach (Kögler, 2005). Reflexivity about our own self and engagement with the other creates an ethical centering, based on three stages of increasing reflexiveness: an outward turn, characterized by a willingness to encounter different ways of doing and thinking that prompt a radical decentring of familiar or proximate cultural and ethical horizons; a moment of in-betweenness, whereby one negotiates and attempts to make different socio-cultural worldviews intelligible to oneself; and an outward turn, marked by an expanded viewpoint through which to denaturalize and radically put into question the doxa of one’s own socio-cultural worldviews and practices. (Kurasawa, 2011, p. 282)

Social enterprises have to be willing to question their own values and to see themselves through the eyes of the other in order to ground their

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activities in a just approach. By maintaining flexibility and commitment to learn, organizations can de-naturalize that which is taken as natural (Beck, 2006) and approach each situation with an understanding of the subjective nature of the social good that is being implemented and the values that are at stake. This is particularly relevant for the neoliberal economic principles that underpin much social entrepreneurship. Just as the moral principles within the community were socially constructed by particular interests and have led to a certain distributions of power, so too are the principles of the social enterprise, and neither one possesses unquestionable moral value. This will ultimately lead to an approach that is better able to navigate the moral implications of social change, making conscious decisions about the values that lie beneath the entrepreneurial activities and beneath the surface of the community within which the social enterprise works. Facilitation of the Ideal Speech Situation Once the pre-processes of political and communicative education and reflexivity are in place, the stage is set to attempt to create the ‘ideal speech situation’ (Habermas, 1976). According to Habermas, this ideal speech situation is based on equal rights to discourse, absence of role privileges, freedom from coercion and constraint. Equal rights to discourse means that all actors have the right to start and continue the conversation; absence of role privileges requires rejecting the status of professionals and technical experts; and freedom from coercion and constraint implies being open to alternative outcomes. I argue that these can be obtained through understanding-focused dialogue, engagement with the other, and the opportunity for dissent. While the goal of Habermas’ ideal speech situation is consensus, I draw on Kock’s (2009) work to emphasize space for dissent in order to address concerns about the reproduction of existing power within communicative processes (for example Flyvberg, 1998). Understanding-focused dialogue Dialogue focused on understanding is based on a commitment to building shared understanding of norms and values, where participants are engaged in argumentation that will lead to opinion- and will-formation (Habermas, 1996). This stance explicitly avoids strategic argument, where participants enter the dialogue with preconceived ideas of norms, values and preferred outcomes. Preconceived norms and values can be found in the assumed superiority of the technical knowledge of social enterprise staff and the use of ‘objective criteria’ developed by experts, which inhibits deliberation (Ojha et al., 2005). These assumptions can be held by the staff of the social enterprise or by the participants, but in both cases, the assumptions will

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prevent the absence of role privileges and impede participation in deliber­ ation. It is here that the pre-processes of education and reflexivity can help support the development of understanding-focused dialogue. In an understanding-focused dialogue, both speakers and listeners have obligations to the other participants. Speakers are obligated to justify validity claims when asked to do so by other actors, and listeners are obligated to acknowledge the possible validity of the claims (Habermas, 1996). Validity claims can be justified in three different ways: cognitive, moral and aesthetic. Cognitive validity aims to establish the truth of the statement; moral validity aims to establish the rightness of the statement; and aesthetic aims to establish the sincerity of the statement (Habermas, 1990). ‘In the case of claims to truth or rightness, the speaker can redeem his [claims] discursively, that is, by adducing reasons; in the case of claims to [sincerity] he does so through consistent behavior’ (Habermas, 1990, p. 59). Again using BRAC as an example, the weekly meetings that provided education were also a forum for discussion when facing resistance to their employment initiatives for women (Mair and Marti, 2009). At these meetings the social enterprise was able to hear the logic used by community members in debating the moral validity of the activity – Muslim religious norms that restrict women’s participation – and they could explain the alternative moral logic underlying their perspective – Muslim values of helping the poor – in order to create norm alignment that would recast the activity in new light. In another example, Arzu, a social enterprise selling Afghani rugs woven by poor women, ensures an open dialogue that makes room for continuous co-creation of the business model between enterprise staff and weavers (Mena et al., 2010). It is this openness to change in the very business model of the social enterprise that allows for meaningful participation in decisions. Engagement with the ‘other’ We are ‘bound by solidarity to the other’ (Habermas et al., 1998, p. 10). The ‘other’ is an important concept in issues of globalization and the spread of neoliberal economic models (for example Benhabib, 2002; Nussbaum, 2002). The other can be someone from another country, from a different culture, or it can be someone in a different social position within the same community. True engagement with the other allows for a more complete understanding of the social complexity of the local context. It stresses that someone in the same community can experience the world in a very different way. Working within each local context requires full consideration of the complexity of its social, political and economic arrangements, the heterogeneity of beliefs, and the positive that is mixed with the negative.

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While work in social entrepreneurship also calls similar attention to the importance of understanding the local context (Shaw and Carter, 2007; Tapsell and Woods, 2010; Vurro et al., 2010), engagement with the other requires a further openness to the subjective experience of the local context. It is not just an understanding of the systems and ways of life – it is about our always incomplete understanding of the experience of another human being, and our tendency to generalize based on a single point of difference. In writing specifically about the singular view of Africa that is often portrayed, Enwezar (2006, p. 11) cautions that ‘(a)n ethical commitment [. . .] requires the recognition of the complexity of each situation, seeing and writing about what is at hand in any given context as part of a larger world and not merely as a series of disjointed, fragmentary narratives.’ Understanding difference implies comparison with the self, not to change the life of the other, but with the perspective to change ourselves, and simultaneously to preserve both the other and ourselves. As an example, the founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, first immersed himself in the poor communities outside of the university gates where he worked, knowing that he did not understand their lives; and still decades later, when new Grameen managers begin, they must first spend two weeks in a community talking with borrowers, learning about their lives and about the Bank, always with the perspective of improving the branch in which they will later be working (Yunus, 1999). This is in contrast to many new employee training programs in all types of organizations, which emphasize learning the ways of the firm, in order to unquestioningly implement the predetermined strategy. In another example, Kiva represents a different form of engagement with the other. In their online microcredit model, the lenders donate through the social enterprise directly to the borrowers via the internet, reading about the business venture and the capital needs; these lenders are directly repaid by the borrowers into their online Kiva account and are then able to re-invest in another enterprise (Kiva, 2013). In both of these situations, engagement with the other at an individual level fosters learning and understanding, based on an openness to the other, their way of life, and a respect for their individual agency. Dissent While the concept of organization aims for stabilization and conflict resolution, it has been argued that effective democracy calls for organization as a disruptive process of contestation (Honig, 1993). Democratic processes within organizations can function as a necessary source of interrogation of assumptions and taken-for-granted practices, a type of argumentation that Kock (2009) refers to as ‘dissensus-oriented discourse’. Dissent and the

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constant possibility of contestation with only temporary consensus around those ideas that can be justified and defended (Parekh, 1999; Forst, 2001) includes ‘argument, contestation, revision, and rejection’ (Benhabib, 2006, p. 49) and an equal right to introduce points of view, question, criticize, and challenge rules (Benhabib, 2002). Such an emphasis on dissensus is not to challenge the goal of consensus entirely (which is Kock’s intention). I argue instead for an ex ante introduction of dissenting voices before any possibility of consensus, and an ex post anticipation of emerging contestation that renders consensus non-binding. The ex ante introduction of dissent ensures that a space is created that expects conflicting viewpoints and allows marginalized voices to be heard. The ex post anticipation of dissent acknowledges that as events unfold, new challenges and critiques can and should emerge. Consensus-based argumentation has been criticized for overestimating the potential for rationality to overcome issues of power (for example Flyvberg, 1998). Adding an expectation of dissensus into the argumentation process aims to address this issue by creating an arena where difference is emphasized. Within the field of social entrepreneurship, there have been calls for dissensus and counter-discourse (Harris et al., 2009; Dey and Steyaert, 2010) to de-center the power of dominant stakeholders within discourses of participation that overshadows consensus-building (Kothari, 2001). In practice, a mild version of dissent can be seen in an urban community regeneration project in Los Angeles. In this project, Sandoval (2010) found one of the keys to success was ‘iterative renegotiations’ that included the community and advocates (Cornelius and Wallace, 2010, p. 78). The opportunity to reassess and open previously agreed-upon contracts at critical stages throughout the initiative ensured that a balance of social, economic and political value was created for the community. An openness to dissent places any organization in the uncomfortable situation where the processes are open to criticism and the outcomes are unknown. However, such openness creates the opportunity for real dialogue that fosters selfdetermination and agency.

CONCLUSIONS This chapter presents a view of the social goals within social entrepreneurship as a problematic ideal that requires careful consideration in order to ensure an ethical and just approach. Because the neoliberal ideology that underpins globalization is so entrenched in all areas of life, including the area of poverty alleviation, it can easily be assumed to be the ideal model, or in fact the only model, where its absence can be viewed as an

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institutional void (see Mair and Marti, 2009; Mair et al., 2012). In order to not commit the symbolic violence associated with the imposition of one set of values over another and the continued suffering that results from failed attempts at poverty alleviation, it is suggested here that social enterprise, particularly those in the development field, should integrate processes at the root of Habermasian deliberative democracy. A discourse ethics approach to deliberative democracy allows people meaningful participation in the decisions that impact their lives. The pre-processes of political and communicative education and reflexivity create a context that allows for deliberation. Then, facilitation of the ideal speech situation, including understanding-focused dialogue, engagement with the other and space for dissent can ensure a process of fair argumentation. These factors provide the structure for debate that encompasses a ‘pluralist universalism’ (Kurasawa, 2011), mediating the universal with the particular (Benhabib, 2006) in a way that builds agency and ownership and does not impose one version of the social good. It is acknowledged that these processes bring new challenges to organizations already facing significant challenges. By implementing these processes, scarce resources will need to be dedicated to deliberative process and the social enterprise’s vision may need to change and grow as determined by the communities. I do not underestimate the challenges of such an approach. But I would argue that these processes are a necessary component of any just social change. The values of empowerment and self-determination require that people themselves must justify the social structures that govern their lives (Forst, 2001). If social entrepreneurship is to build on the best of its values, it must actively engage in deep understanding and implementation of democratic processes.

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12. Social entrepreneurship and democracy Angela M. Eikenberry INTRODUCTION The market pervades more and more facets of our lives (Sandel, 2012). Lifestyles are created around brands and logos (Klein, 2002), the poor are considered a market niche (Prahalad, 2006) and consumerism is recognized as a key form of political and civic action (Beck, 2005; King, 2006), in an environment where public spaces have either disappeared or been ‘made safe for shopping’ (Ferrell, 2001). Even the philanthropic impulse is increasingly marketized (Hawkins, 2012; King, 2006; Nickel and Eikenberry, 2009; 2013). In sum, there is a pervasive ‘ideology that views all aspects of human society as a kind of market’ (Zimmerman and Dart, 1998, p. 16) and belief that ‘evermore of the social and environmental costs of a market approach can be met through the extension of that very metaphor’ (Humphries and Grant, 2005, p. 41). According to Simpson and Cheney (2007), we can think about such marketization ‘as a framework of market-oriented principles, values, practices and vocabularies; as a process of penetration of essentially market-type relationships into arenas not previously deemed part of the market; or as a universal discourse that permeates everyday discourses but goes largely unquestioned’ (p. 191). The push toward marketization corresponds with a drive to reduce the size of government-associated social welfare structures and with the assumption that political and economic life is a matter of individual freedom, responsibility and initiative (Dean, 2013; Foucault, 1991). Consequently, a free-market society and a minimal state are key objectives achieved through the extension of the market to more and more areas of life while the state is stripped of perceived excessive involvement in the economy and provision of opportunities (Peters, 1996). One result is that the aim of governance policy increasingly in the US, the UK and around the world has been to cut back, deregulate, privatize or contract out services in the hopes of boosting economic growth and corporate profits; putting emphasis on nongovernment and market-based solutions to social 210

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problems (Hasenfeld and Garrow, 2012). This shift from government to ‘governance’ has been described in various ways: the hollow state (Milward and Provan, 2000; Rhodes, 1994), shadow state (Wolch, 1990), contract state (Boston, 1995), voluntary state (Nickel and Eikenberry, 2007), submerged state (Mettler, 2011), third party government (Salamon, 1987), government by proxy (Kettl, 1988), or network governance (Sørensen and Torfing, 2005). The result is that much of the work once done within the purview of government – such as direct service delivery of social welfare services – is no longer done or increasingly provided outside of government by nongovernmental organizations. Concurrently, marketization has been growing in rhetoric and practice in the nonprofit, charitable, or social benefit sector. There has been an increasing reliance on commercial activities for funding, partnerships with businesses through such means as cause-related marketing and social enterprise (Eikenberry, 2009b). The focus in this chapter is on social enterprise and the question considered is: can social enterprise bring about democracy, especially within the context of a governance environment? Democracy is referred to here not only as participatory and deliberative (internal democracy), but also concerned with democratic or substantive outcomes (external democracy). To address this question, the rest of the chapter is organized as follows: first, trends toward governance and the growth of social enterprise are described. Next, the critiques of the growth of social enterprise, especially in relation to its implications for democracy are reviewed. This is followed by a summary of arguments for democratizing social enterprise in response to these critiques. Finally, these arguments and the democratic potential of social enterprise are assessed. The conclusion reached is that while social enterprise may have the potential to enhance internal democracy, it is limited in contributing to external democracy, especially within a governance environment.

THE SHIFT TO GOVERNANCE AND GROWTH OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISE The framework, process and discourse of marketization today are increasingly dominated by the core principles of global neoliberalism and its pervasive faith in the market and business-based approaches and solutions (Dart, 2004b; Schram et al., 2015). With the perceived dearth of alternative economic models ‘neoliberal economics has become the prevailing position for much of the world’ (Simpson and Cheney, 2007, p. 192). Thus, the past several decades have witnessed the transformation of political systems: from hierarchically organized, unitary systems of government and

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state-centered action, to more horizontally-organized and relatively fragmented systems of governance (Pierre, 2000; Sørensen, 2002; 2012), where individuals are expected to take responsibility for their own welfare (even while living in a social system in which one seems to have more and more choice but less and less control over (Nickel and Eikenberry, 2007)). The move to governance is part of a larger policy agenda that has advocated for lower taxes, fewer social welfare subsidies and more private, voluntary approaches to addressing social problems. In this context, political leaders have looked to nongovernmental institutions for the means to ‘replace’ public social programs (Hacker, 2002; Henriksen et al., 2012). This movement has been happening in the US for some time. George H.W. Bush’s ‘thousand points of light’, Bill Clinton’s ‘charitable choice amendment’, George W. Bush’s ‘faith-based initiative’ (and calls for philanthropic disaster relief in response to the Asian Tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), and Barack Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships have all been manifestations of this drive to link voluntary action to the agenda of rolling back the state. In the UK, the Conservatives’ ‘Big Society’ program and successful re-election campaign in 2015 included various proposals to put voluntarism at the center of addressing social problems (Conservative Party, 2015; Daly, 2012; see also Mason and Moran, Chapter 5, this volume). Social enterprise has clearly been linked to government downsizing and governance efforts in the UK and elsewhere. As Teasdale, Lyon and Owen note: ‘the concept was eagerly taken on board by a Labour government, ideologically committed to a third way beyond state socialism and free market capitalism’ (Chapter 2, this volume); see also Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). The UK is seen today as having the most developed institutional support for social enterprise in the world (Nicholls, 2010), with the UK government claiming an exponential growth in the number of social enterprises, although it is not clear whether this number represents real growth or merely a loosening of the definition of social enterprise (Teasdale et al., Chapter 2, this volume). Cook et al. (2003) make a similar argument in the case of Australia and Eikenberry (2009b) suggests that cutbacks and changes in the nature of government support in the US, especially for basic services to the poor, have put pressure on nonprofit organizations to take on market-like approaches such as social enterprise. The result has been a growing body of ‘how-to’ books, events and experts helping and encouraging organization leaders around the world to implement social enterprise practices, paired with an increasing number of academic publications devoted to the topic. Underlying these has been a normative ideology that values market-based solutions and business-like models, pervasive in the thinking and management among nonprofit and

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voluntary organizations. These organizations are increasingly adopting the language of business, including emphasizing efficiency, the customer and profit (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004; Sandberg, 2013; 2016). Social enterprise is seen as a tool to ‘shape up’ the inadequacies and ‘flabbiness’ of nonprofits (Dey, 2006; Dey and Steyaert, 2010). Board members and funders, some of whom call themselves venture philanthropists or philanthrocapitalists, urge nonprofits to be more entrepreneurial and self-supporting (Foster and Bradach, 2005). There has been in general an acceptance of social enterprise’s legitimacy and ability to do what business, government or traditional nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations on their own have not been able to do (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Hervieux et al., 2010). In particular, social entrepreneurs around the world have been held up as the ‘new heroes’ who will ‘change the world’ through ‘the power of new ideas’ (Bornstein, 2007). Stories of these individuals and their accomplishments have proliferated. They are almost always about inspiration and success, perhaps with some mention of failures along the way and are almost always held up as examples of the positive benefits of an entrepreneurial spirit (Dempsey and Sanders, 2010; Nicholls, 2010). Despite these claims, there is no clear consensus on the definition of social entrepreneurship or enterprise, and its meaning and practice appear to vary by place and perspective. In its broadest sense, social enterprise involves the use of market-based strategies to achieve social goals (Kerlin, 2009). Austin et al. (2006) define social entrepreneurship ‘as innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, business, or government sectors’ (p. 2). Social entrepreneurs in the US nonprofit sector, according to Dees et al. (2001), are nonprofit executives who pay attention to market forces without losing sight of their organizations’ underlying missions and seek to use the language and skills of the business world to advance the material well-being of their members/clients. Alvord et al. (2004) contend ‘that social entrepreneurship can be regarded as a capacity for social innovation, particularly innovations that redistribute power and wealth to create a social economy’ (Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2013, p. 6). In the US, social enterprises frequently appear as stand-alone businesses created to earn income for a parent nonprofit organization (Seedco, 2007). In the UK, social enterprise stems from experiments in new forms of public–private structures (Lundqvist and Williams Middleton, 2010). There also seem to be competing discourses within social enterprise and entrepreneurship between those who practice it and those who set policy and fund it (Dey and Teasdale, 2013; Froggett and Chamberlayn, 2004; Hervieux et al., 2010; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008; Teasdale, 2012b). Parkinson and Howorth (2008), for example, found among the discourses of practicing social entrepreneurs in the UK a preoccupation

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with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. As they note: ‘these findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence’ (p. 285). Others have also found that the people and organizations with the most influence on the paradigmatic development of the field (funders, policymakers and so on) have a particular discourse that promotes market-based initiatives as a legitimate means of funding a social mission (Hervieux et al., 2010) and support business model ideal-types led by the ‘hero’ social entrepreneur (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Nicholls, 2010; Nicholls and Cho, 2006). As Dey and Steyaert (2010, p.86) note, this dominant discourse is chiefly buttressed by what Lyotard has come to call performativity (rationalism, utility, progress and individualism).

CRITIQUES OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISE Scholars have worried about the market’s colonization of everyday life for some time. Writing in 1964, Herbert Marcuse warned that the false needs created in the existing system of production and consumption of advanced capitalist industrial society have led to a ‘one-dimensional’ universe of thought and behavior that represses individual critical thought and discourse. Scholars suggest that the ideology of the market ‘promotes consumer identities over citizen identities’ (Purcell, 2008, p. 26) and in the case of social enterprise it instills the ‘entrepreneur-as-consumer’ as a category devoid of citizenship (Hjorth, 2009). This is problematic for democracy because consumers are self-interested individuals making private, cost-calculated choices to meet their material needs and desires in the marketplace as opposed to citizens who share in the authority, responsibility and dignity of public life (Hjorth, 2009). That is, in a marketdominated environment, individuals are ‘content to become primarily consumers of goods, services, political administration, and spectacle [. . .] dedicating themselves more to passive consumption and private concerns than to issues of the common good and democratic participation’ (Kellner, n.d., para. 11–18). Furthermore, market ideology erodes social ties other than purely economic ones and/or converts social relationships into instrumental ones by substituting competition for voluntary cooperation, favoring materialistic or hedonistic values (Maitland in Bull et al., 2010, pp. 253–4). This is because a market ideology is essentially anti-social and based on self-interest rather than disinterest or the public good (Anderson, 1990).

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Sandel (2012) describes the corrosive tendency of the market: ‘putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them’ (p. 9). Marketization also de-politicizes the public realm through economic and managerial discourses, framing policy as value neutral and ‘what we can afford’, rather than what we need or want, considering that which can be economically valorized and counted and expelling that which cannot (Clarke, 2004; Curtis, 2008). It serves to collapse the distance between the market and the negative impacts the market has on human well-being (Nickel and Eikenberry, 2009), thereby stabilizing current oppressive power relations and limiting utopian visions of what might be (Nickel, 2012). For these reasons, market ideology and approaches allow for deep inequalities in wealth and political participation (Purcell, 2008; Dey and Steyaert, 2012); it sharpens ‘the sting of inequality by making money matter more’ (Sandel, 2012, p. 9). Over the past several years, scholars have increasingly paid attention to the problematic effects of marketization on nonprofit, charitable and social benefit organizations. Regarding social enterprise, there are certainly examples of successful – in both the social and economic senses – social enterprises (Alvord et al., 2004; Edwards, 2008), but they are relatively few and tend to be more complex than they are purported. For instance, research by the Bridgespan Group found in a study of nonprofits that had received funding for an earned-income venture in 2000 or 2001 that the large majority were unprofitable and of those that claimed to be profitable, half did not fully account for indirect costs (Foster and Bradach, 2005). Foster and Bradach conclude: ‘despite the hype, earned income accounts for only a small share of funding in most nonprofit domains and few of the ventures that have been launched actually make money [. . .] commercial ventures can distract nonprofits’ managers from their core social missions and, in some cases, even subvert those missions.’ (p. 94). A detailed case study of a social enterprise in the US by the Seedco Policy Center – Community Childcare Assistance, which closed in 2003 after failing to secure the contracts it needed to operate successfully – also concluded that ‘nonprofits driven to meet a “double bottom” line for customers and clients have far more typically led to frustration and failure, drawing attention and resources away from the organization’s core work’ (pp. 1–2). There has been some attention paid to the potentially problematic democratic effects of social enterprise. Eikenberry and Kluver (2004) suggest social enterprise can negatively affect the democratic contributions that nonprofit organizations might make to civil society (see Table 12.1). For example, social enterprise activities may serve to emphasize profit

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Table 12.1 Social entrepreneurship’s impact on nonprofit contributions to civil society Nonprofit contributions to civil society Value guardian

Service and advocacy

Social capital builder

● Profit

● Eliminate

● No

motives overshadow or shift mission ● Inherent differences in purpose ● Public interest not considered

unprofitable services ● Only enter into profitable markets ● No longer challenge status quo

need to rely on stakeholders ● Focus on revenue generation & bottomline instead of social capital ● Corporate executives replace community representatives

Source:  Eikenberry and Kluver (2004).

at the expense of a nonprofit organization’s mission because social ­entrepreneurial organizations may only enter into or continue activities that are profitable, regardless of whether or not these activities are essential to the mission of the organization or needed by the community. Indeed, case studies have shown how commercial ventures and a business-like approach can cause a tension with the organizations’ missions (Cooney, 2006; Dart, 2004a; Garrow and Hasenfeld, 2014; Teasdale, 2012a). Alexander et al. (1999) found in their study of social service nonprofit organizations that market-oriented organizations had shifted their focus from public goods such as research, teaching, advocacy and serving the poor, to meeting individual client demand. In addition, when nonprofit organizations rely on commercial revenue and entrepreneurial strategies, there is less or no need to build networks among constituencies, thereby discouraging civic participation (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004). The dominant social enterprise discourse also tends to emphasize the individual champion, driving an independent organization, rather than a focus on collective action (Lundqvist and Williams Middleton, 2010). That is, there is a ‘tension between an emphasis on the individual in entrepreneurship and the collective basis of social enterprises’ (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008, p. 286). Edwards (2008) describes this as the tension ‘between lionizing charismatic individuals [. . .] and developing broad based capacities and opportunities for social and political engagement that might make “everyone a change-maker” and force through structural or systemic change’ (p. 19).

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Social entrepreneurship and democracy ­217 [This] imagery of the ‘promise’ transmitted by the messiah-like figure of the social entrepreneur makes people believe that they have something to rely on; that is, they can remain passive and let the do-gooders clean up the mess. This messianistic vision of social entrepreneurship evokes the impression of redemption without any need for participation, activism, engagement, obligation, austerity and work. (Dey and Steyaert, 2010, p. 92)

Community is sidelined discursively and complex values and meanings behind the social are ignored. Thus, social enterprise introduces a de-politicized image of social change in which democratic values such as equality, social justice and the effects of power inequalities, emancipation and self-determination rarely figure (Curtis, 2008; Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Grenier, 2009; Nicholls, 2010; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Edwards (2008) points out that social enterprise ‘may well end up addressing symptoms rather than root causes’ (p. 20) because of its focus on the most entrepreneurial way to address a social problem rather than addressing why the problem exists to begin with. Grenier (2009) found in her analysis of social entrepreneurship in the UK that even though social enterprise scholars claim community and democratic renewal, voluntary sector professionalization and welfare reform, social entrepreneurship did not result in the radical transformation of sectors or society as claimed.

DEMOCRATIZING SOCIAL ENTERPRISE? The response to these critiques by social enterprise scholars seems to have largely been to call for rejuvenating the ‘sociality’ or relational ethic of social entrepreneurship (Bull et al., 2010; Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Hjorth, 2009; Humphries and Grant, 2005; Steyaert and Hjorth, 2006). Dey and Steyaert (2010), for example, while showing the problematic nature of the ‘grand narrative’ conveyed in mainstream social entrepreneurship, still believe in the transformational possibilities of social enterprise. They describe alternative forms of ‘little’ narratives for social entrepreneurship that ‘can re-narrate social entrepreneurship as a form of social inventiveness, and then point out its minor politics through the idea of “messianism without a messiah”’ (p. 96) by ‘re-imagining the social in social entrepreneurship’ (p. 97). Similarly, Hjorth (2009) wants to re-establish ‘the social as a force different from the economic rather than encompassed by it [. . .] Entrepreneurship is then re-conceptualized as a sociality creating force, belonging to society and not primarily to business’ (p. 221). He re-conceptualizes this as ‘public’ entrepreneurship; an entrepreneurship belonging to society and not simply the economy (p. 227). Ridley-Duff and Bull (2013) also propose a ‘communitarian pluralist

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approach’ to constituting social enterprise. To define this communitarian pluralist approach, they draw on Driver and Martell (1997) to review the premises of communitarian philosophy: (a) people are primarily social beings rather than isolated individuals; (b) ‘community’ is ‘good’ because systems of collective provision secure individual well-being; and (c) goodness and virtue are products of discourse in the community. They further note: A pluralist form of communitarianism does not make community membership conditional on obedience to fixed social norms. As such it is more socially liberal, less normative and adopts a socio-economic perspective that is preferable for human values to be regulated by democratic institutions than by central religious or political ‘authorities.’ (p. 2; emphasis in original)

Their idea of democracy is in line with the participatory and deliberative democracy described by Aristotle, Rousseau, Mill, Habermas and others. It is important because it can create a governance structure that is more responsive to the public interest, increases trust and accountability between citizens and government officials, and perhaps most importantly, it ‘has value in its own right. Because it draws on and develops the highest human capacities’ (Stivers, 1990, p. 87). Aristotle believed that it is only through the exercise of citizen participation that individuals become fully human. Similarly, Rousseau discussed the positive psychological effects that participation had on individuals. Like Rousseau, Mill saw that participation forced the individual to ‘widen his [sic] horizons and to take the public interest into account’ (Pateman, 1970, p. 30). Pateman (1970) believed participation, especially in the workplace, is ‘integral to the process of personal growth and self-empowerment’ (Bachrach and Botwinick, 1992, p. 10). Ridley-Duff and Bull (2013) show a rich history of communitarian pluralisms in the consumer- and worker-owned cooperative antecedents to the current social enterprise sector. These antecedent institutions were ‘created to reconcile competing individuals and groups on the presumption that members have equal rights and status’ (p. 5). They suggest integrating cooperative practices and social entrepreneurship through the FairShares Model, primarily based on joint and co-ownership principles presumably leading to a more egalitarian organizational culture. They note this is consistent with others’ ideas on the advancement of ‘associative entrepreneurship’ (Scott Cato et al., 2008) and ‘associative democracy’ that combine democratic and market-based approaches to governing bodies (Smith and Teasdale, 2012). Thus, in this sense, social enterprise may have a great deal of potential to enhance participatory and internal democracy.

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Indeed, given the emphasis social enterprise practitioners already put on local issues and collective action (Parkinson and Howorth, 2008) and the work of consumer- and worker-owned cooperatives, many social entrepreneurs may already be implementing such a communitarian pluralist perspective. As Parkinson and Howorth (2008) note, ‘it appears that political engagement and collective action still have currency to those operating on the ground and that democratic structures may be equally as prominent as the focus on social activity’ (p. 305). Teasdale (2010) found in several case studies that social enterprises can help to build participation, social interaction, political engagement and bonding social capital and sometimes help individuals escape exclusion altogether. The work to be done then may be to raise this participatory (internal democracy) discourse to a higher level to influence public policy and funders. Bertotti et al. (2012) also found in a case study of a social enterprise café that it built ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital while also addressing ‘downside’ social capital; however, the role of the social enterprise in building ‘linking’ social capital was minor. What seems to be missing in the discussion of social enterprises’ democratic potential is the degree to which social enterprise can enhance democratic outcomes or substantive democracy. A substantive view of democracy envisions a more egalitarian society in which: citizens of all backgrounds could take part on equal footing in the democratic process, with reasonable hope that public dialogue on issues of importance would yield a society that curbs excess wealth, redistributing some part of it to ordinary citizens in the form of improved education, health care, and other social benefits. (Box, 2004, p. 27)

This notion of democracy is closely related to the ‘full democracy’ described by Adams et al. (1990): Full democratic rule (a) ensures that all adults have a genuine opportunity to participate in public discussions of issues that affect the conditions of their lives and to exercise decisive judgment about public actions that may affect those conditions, and (b) achieves outcomes that are consistent with choices the people collectively make about the public conditions of their lives. (pp. 228–9)

It is especially relevant to consider democratic outcomes today as disparities in wealth and life opportunities persist, and in some cases grow, around the world. Social enterprise has been promoted as the solution to problems brought about by such things as persistent unemployment (Cook et al., 2003) and poverty (Dey and Steyaert, 2010), yet, ‘the growing gap between rich and poor within and among countries, and the devastation

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of the natural environment have been attributed to the predominance of economic development through a free market metaphor by thinkers from all but the most conservative positions on the political spectrum’ (Humphries and Grant, 2005, p. 41). By published accounts, we know little about the impact of social enterprise in this regard (Peattie and Morley, 2008). Alvord et al. (2004), in their examination of seven case studies of the ‘most successful’ social enterprises (they do not seem to define what most successful means beyond that they were perceived to be successful) show that some social enterprises do build social movements to deal with powerful actors and shape activities of decision makers and some transform economic circumstances and increase the voice of marginalized groups. Four of the cases they examined – Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Grameen Bank, Self-Employment Women’s Association and Highlander Research and Education Center – were characterized as high reach and high transformational impact (p. 280). Alternatively, Teasdale (2010) notes that largely, the literature ‘suggests that social enterprise has a marginal impact on exclusion as measured in terms of service delivery, employment and economic development’ (p. 95). At times social enterprise may even run counter to more positive social and economic outcomes. For example, Dey and Steyaert (2010) note: Contrary to the immaculate representation of microcredit in (Western) public discourse, these narrations indicate how the programs (whether run by profit or nonprofit organizations or cooperatives) have had detrimental effects. For instance, microcredit has destroyed some established social relations by repla­ cing traditional modes of exchange and bonds of solidarity with more formalized and conditional exchange relations (Bateman, 2007). Moreover, because microcredit often provides loans exclusively to women, it has come to foster domestic violence as a result of shaking up male-biased cultural hierarchies (Schuler et al., 1998). There is also evidence that microcredit might lead the poor into chronic poverty if they must take a loan from one financial institution or money lender to repay their debts to another, leading to a vicious circle of debt (Narasaiah, 2007). Most alarmingly, there are reports of people, mainly women, who have turned to suicide because they could not repay their loans (Padmanabhan, 2002). (pp. 94–5)

Even Gregory Dees (2001), a vocal advocate of social enterprise, acknow­ ledges the inadequacy of the market metaphor for social equity: markets do not do a good job of valuing social improvements, public goods and harms, and benefits for people who cannot afford to pay. These elements are often essential to social entrepreneurship [. . .] it is much harder to determine whether a social entrepreneur is creating sufficient social value to justify the resources used in creating that value. (p. 3, cited in Humphries and Grant, 2005, p. 42)

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While it appears that a good deal of progress has been made in critically examining social enterprises’ grand narrative(s) of ‘a messianistic script of harmonious social change’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2010, p. 85), managerialism and performativity as noted above, it seems the orientation to social enterprise as a legitimate response to societies’ big and collective social problems remains. With few exceptions, social enterprise scholars seem to rather change the orientation of social enterprise to emphasize its sociality or relational ethic, rather than interrogate its overarching usefulness to create better democratic outcomes or question the legitimacy of the governance environment.

GOVERNANCE, SOCIAL ENTERPRISE AND DEMOCRATIC OUTCOMES The US, UK and other countries have been expanding the neo-liberal governance (contract/hollow) state for the past 30 years or more. The result is that in all but perhaps the most ardent of welfare regimes, the state has been written off as inadequate and the inevitability of the need for nongovernmental action to address societal problems governs. It is a seemingly pragmatic frame that largely accepts micro, individualized (and often voluntary) approaches to social change as all that remains left to address society-wide and collective issues. It accepts as inevitable that we must ‘tweak around the edges’ and work outside of government to create change, rather than work within larger collective and government mechanisms to do so. There has been some discussion of the impact of this shift to governance on democracy. Scholars have shown that a shift to governance can provide individuals with greater opportunity to participate in the policy-making process (including previously marginalized individuals), build social and political capital, and build civic and self-governance skills (Bogason and Musso, 2006; De Rynck and Voets, 2006; Fung and Wright, 2003; Leach, 2006; Musso et al., 2006; O’Toole, 1997; Sørensen, 2002; Sørensen and Torfing, 2003). For example, Baiocchi (2003) shows that governance provided the poor people of Porto Alegre more opportunity to influence the budgetary process, and consequently, to enjoy enhanced social equity by receiving better public goods and services. However, several of these scholars and others show that governance can exacerbate rather than alleviate unequal democratic outcomes. O’Toole and Meier (2004) found in a comprehensive study of the public education system (more than 500 school districts) in Texas in the US, that although governance networks improved educational performance in

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school ­districts, most improvements originated from privileged students, rather than marginalized ones. They conclude that network participants have different levels of influence and network managers tend to respond to stronger and more politically powerful participants. In addition, while Sørensen and Torfing (2003) show governance can enhance political capital, they also show governance networks are dominated by elites who already have a good deal of political capital before joining a network. Governance can limit publicity and transparency of the policy process, weaken the ability of elected representatives to control political processes and outcomes and threaten the public good because they bring particularistic interests to the fore (Sørensen and Torfing, 2005). Nickel (2007) and Catlaw (2007) argue network governance is ontologically no different from constitutional liberalism and its basis in individualism, modernity and exclusion. Nickel (2007) in particular writes that network governance does little to consider the most marginalized publics’ experience in the world because it is ‘merely another conception of “how to run the same system”’ that has long ignored the marginalized and taken for granted the permanence of current social structures (p. 199) and ‘allows for the existence of inhumane conditions’ (p. 204). Governance is indicative of the ‘voluntary state’: ‘a state that views the market as its only responsibility and labels all other responsibility “personal,” thereby leaving the voluntary and discretionary redistribution of individual wealth as the only means to achieve social welfare’ (Nickel and Eikenberry, 2007, p. 536). Social enterprise exists because of this governance ideology. As Cook et al. (2003) note, the social enterprise movement is consistent with the desire to break from rights-based welfare provision, shifting responsibility from government to the individual. In turn, social enterprise enables the expansion of the governance/contract state. It compels a ‘government is not the answer to our problems’ creed; that we must find ways to work outside of or in parallel to, government (but often with government’s help) to address social problems. In practice, social enterprise has expanded in idea and practice because the state in late capitalism intervenes directly in the economy (Agger, 1998). Indeed, the majority of social enterprises rely heavily on grant income and/or service-level contracts with the government (Amin et al., 2002; Teasdale, 2012a). Thus, we choose to support social enterprises (or third party contractors) as opposed to addressing problems head on through direct government support. The result is that governance appears stateless because it operates indir­ ectly (Mettler, 2011) but is not without cost (Nixon, 2011; Schick, 1998). Social enterprise has become a new governor of social policy, seen not just as legitimate, but often as THE best and in some cases, only, response to social problems. In this context, ‘nongovernmental actors govern through

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the pursuit of profit’, redistributed by individuals outside of the realm of the state (Nickel and Eikenberry, 2010, p. 270). It provides a depoliticized role in governance that allows social enterprise to govern while stabilizing the system – the neoliberal state and global capitalism – that created many of the problems social enterprises are attempting to address. Such social policy ought to be contested. When power is everywhere and nowhere, where responsibility is difficult to place and accountability is difficult to ensure, we end up stuck in a world steeped in inequality and deepening financial, health and environmental crises. Social enterprise is largely claimed to address areas where government and the market fail; but government and the market fail because of a lack of will to create the change needed to bring about better democratic outcomes. Social enterprise practitioners have agency (Dey and Teasdale, 2013; Parkinson and Howorth, 2008), but they operate within the governance frame, not outside of it. Even though we might encourage social enterprises to be democratic internally, this does not necessarily lead to democracy externally (Eikenberry, 2009a). Social enterprise alone, or democratizing it, cannot on its own create the kind of world and social outcomes we would like to see, that is, a world with greater social and economic equality, where our basic needs are met and where we all have the opportunity to develop our lives richly and fully (Addams, 1902).

CONCLUSION This chapter has attempted to address the question: can social enterprise bring about democracy, especially within the context of a governance environment? It refers here to democracy that is not only participatory and deliberative (internal democracy), but also concerned with democratic or substantive outcomes (external democracy). To address this question, the chapter described trends toward governance and the growth of social enterprise, critiques of social enterprise and scholars’ ideas for democratizing social enterprise in response to these critiques. It concluded that while social enterprise within a governance context may have the potential to enhance internal democracy, it is limited in contributing to external democracy. What will more likely bring desired changes to social outcomes is not just an individualized or voluntary approach to social change, but more collective and state mechanisms that ensure greater social and economic equality.

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13. Social entrepreneurship, democracy and political participation Denise M. Horn SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DEMOCRACY Social entrepreneurship, in the simplest of terms, is the practice of applying business solutions to social problems. Social entrepreneurship represents the logical outcome of neoliberalism’s emphasis upon privatization, particularly in the provision of social goods. In the age of the Washington Consensus and IMF structural adjustment programs, governments shed their responsibility for fulfilling social needs, such as education, poverty alleviation and health care. This created a ‘shadow state’, where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other non-state organizations became the de facto provider of social services in the age of post-welfarism. Women’s inclusion in social, political and economic spheres became the responsibility of NGOs, even as they are often controlled by states and funders’ demands (Horn, 2010; Helms, 2014). At the same time, many states have become increasingly wary of the power of NGOs (particularly human rights groups) and have enacted stricter controls, if not outright bans.1 The chapters by Ruebottom (Chapter 11, this volume) and Eikenberry (Chapter 12, this volume) examine the relationship between social entrepreneurship, civil society and democratization. While Ruebottom and Eikenberry link social entrepreneurship to deliberative democracy, as I do (Horn, 2013), I offer that social entrepreneurship may lead to increased political empowerment only if human capabilities are fostered and states are willing to support these efforts. Social entrepreneurship should be considered as an ethical and normative pursuit, one in which governments have a stake. In that moral space opened up by social entrepreneurs, individuals may be empowered as citizens – the kinds of citizens that strengthen democracies by deliberating their needs, demanding their rights, and participating to their fullest. The consumer-citizen who merely receives the conventional neoliberal wisdom is not empowered to disagree with neoliberal orthodoxy but rather only to maintain it. Too often, however, scholars 230

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and practitioners tend to take for granted that social entrepreneurship will naturally lead to empowerment. Thus an intervention is also necessary: we must reinterpret the logic of ‘empowerment’ that underlies most development schemes and its relationship to democratization. To focus on the democratic possibilities of social entrepreneurship, scholars explore the relationship between neoliberal capitalist systems, democratic possibilities, and the question of inclusion. Given the process of state shedding of responsibilities, and the state’s simultaneous re­assertion of control over the public sphere, can social entrepreneurship encourage deeper democracy/democratization? Do the practices of social entrepreneurs leave space for participation and deliberation – and is it even appropriate to expect them to? Is this space inclusive and does it address particular needs of communities – as well as individuals? On the other hand, we have to ask if this is even possible under a system of neoliberalism, which espouses less government, less regulation and a reliance on the logic of the markets. When individuals come to rely on non-state actors for the provision of public goods, why would they turn to the state – and what is the role of the state, beyond narrow definitions of security? Ruebottom and Eikenberry discuss the consequences on the overreliance of states upon social entrepreneurs to fulfill the roles once played by states. Both authors seek to understand the conditions under which social entrepreneurship might enhance or lead to greater democracy. But what appears to be (and has been promoted as) a turn from top-down government programs to innovation and creativity in solving the problems of poverty and social exclusion, is tangled in the demands of neoliberal capitalist markets. Eikenberry points to the need to democratize the concept of ‘social entrepreneurship’ while Ruebottom explores the ethics of social entrepreneurship vis-à-vis democratic practice. Both come to similar conclusions: social entrepreneurship, in its current expressions, represents the worst aspects of neoliberalism in that it encourages the atomization of society even as it enforces generalized approaches; it creates consumers rather than citizens; and it deflates actual democracy. A response to these negative evaluations may be found in the ‘re-imagining of social entrepreneurship’ and a move to participative and deliberative democracy.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND TOP-DOWN SOLUTIONS Social entrepreneurs seek to find solutions to the world’s most intractable problems through a process of experimentation and implementation. The best social entrepreneurs will spend months assessing community needs,

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finding appropriate and culturally responsible solutions, and will spend considerable resources evaluating the impact of those projects. Sadly, many social entrepreneurs, with the best of intentions, have not done so. Millions have been thrown at projects that appear to be the perfect solution only to result in abject failure, unintended consequences, or to find that the project rests upon unexamined assumptions about the poor and poor communities (Easterly, 2006; Banerjee and Duflo, 2011).2 Part of the issue lies in the ways in which success in one community is assumed to translate to success in others. As projects are scaled, an increasing amount of hierarchy and abstraction becomes necessary, and local needs are less relevant. Ruebottom notes that social entrepreneurship, and its emphasis on scalability and replicability as measures of success, becomes the top-down structure social entrepreneurship was assumed to replace. Further, she notes that social entrepreneurship masks important differences among development communities, thus disrupting real possibilities for communicative action and participation: ‘In treating all situations of poverty and market exclusion as sites for replication, there is a risk of generalizing the particular – assuming that all “developing worlds” are the same, characterized simply by their lack of income opportunities and supporting systems’ (Chapter 11, this volume). Nancy Fraser (2013) points to a related issue: as states turned to NGOs and social entrepreneurs to provide social goods, grassroots movements in the developing world became depoliticized while their agendas became dominated by the goals of first-world funders (p. 221; also see Helms, 2014).

FROM CITIZENS AND CONSUMERS The paradox of social entrepreneurship is that the reliance on neoliberal methods – that is, a reliance on the market to resolve social issues – ignores that the very cause of those issues is neoliberalism itself. For example, microcredit schemes were long touted as a solution for endemic poverty, particularly among women. But the emphasis upon market ideology, as Eikenberry notes (Chapter 12, this volume), ‘erodes social ties other than purely economic ones and/or converts social relationships into instrumental ones by substituting competition for voluntary cooperation, favoring materialistic or hedonistic values’. A move from communal values to individualistic, consumerist values belies the importance of those ties, particularly in negotiating gender relations. Indeed, the move to microcredit in many development schemes has resulted in an increase in domestic violence and a re-entrenchment of women’s ‘triple burden’ – the burden of paid work, unpaid housework and childcare (for example Funk and

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Mueller, 1993). Further, microcredit has trapped thousands of the world’s poor in debt cycles, rather than providing debt graduation, in much the same way that IMF structural adjustment programs trapped developing states (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Eikenberry, Chapter 12, this volume; Goetz and Gupta, 1995; Horn, 2013; Karim, 2011). The privatization of social goods relies on a notion of ‘micro-responsibility’, where individuals are seen as the provider of their own goods (Horn, 2013). Where and how they seek to achieve those goods is dependent on a number of factors: the number of local providers (NGOs, community groups, social entrepreneurs), the effectiveness of these services, and the normative acceptance of such service provision, particularly by the state. The language of social entrepreneurship places ‘empowerment’ as the central variable to measure success, although measuring empowerment is difficult and varies across time and place. At the heart of the matter is whether or not personal empowerment translates to political empowerment, and how this impacts an individual’s relationship with the state. Social entrepreneurship can be an effective tool in increasing democratic participation and growth, but only inasmuch as there is a focus on increasing capabilities and creating a relationship with the state itself. This relationship cannot and should not be foreclosed by an over-reliance on outside providers of social goods; social entrepreneurship cannot be seen as a replacement for the state, but rather a partner in its efforts.

CAPABILITIES AND DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY Ruebottom concludes that social entrepreneurship’s emancipatory potential is found in a turn to deliberative democracy. I have found this to be the logical outcome as well, not solely through the Habermasian public sphere, but through an emphasis on the potential to enhance capabilities, as theorized by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (Crocker, 2008; Horn, 2013). On this view, capabilities – the ability to maintain human well-being through the freedoms that one values3 – are demonstrated by meaningful democratic participation. According to Sen (1993, p. 53), [t]he ends and means of development call for placing the perspective of freedom at the center of the state. The people have to be seen, in this perspective, as being actively involved – given the opportunity – in shaping their own destiny, and not just as passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs.

When development focuses on capabilities, deliberative democracy becomes possible. For Crocker, this is, in itself, an ethical practice:

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The alternative that I favor [. . .] endorses the development of an understanding of a minimally adequate or sufficient level of human agency and well being [. . .] that combines, on the one hand, a neo-Kantian commitment to autonomy and human dignity, critical dialogue and public deliberations with, on the other hand, neo-Aristotelian beliefs in the importance of physical health and social participation. (2008, p. 46; emphasis in original)

For example, a group of women given small micro loans may improve their economic situation incrementally, but if they are also able to improve their health, have access to education and a broader worldview, they are capable of making informed decisions that will improve their well-being and that of their children. Further, the conditions for deliberative democracy laid out by James Fishkin (2011) are founded on the premise that citizens will have access to accurate and relevant information, different positions will be considered based on evidence, a diversity of opinions is considered, there is a conscientious effort to weigh the arguments, and views are weighed according to the strength of the evidence presented, not on the influence of the advocates. On this view, ‘lay persons’ must participate in deliberations, but this is only possible if the conditions of freedom and capabilities are met (Crocker, 2008; Habermas, 1990; Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1993). Can these conditions be met under a neoliberal market system? Aside from the Human Development approach adopted by the development community (based upon Sen and Nussbaum’s work, among others), the basic principles of neoliberalism must be interrogated, beyond simply applying social entrepreneurship as a stopgap measure. States cannot remove themselves from the process of providing, encouraging and maintaining individual well-being, nor should individuals simply wait for states or non-state actors to provide social goods. But this cannot happen in a system where citizens are only valued as consumers, and where economic disparity is accepted as a logical outcome of differences of individuals’ effort and merit. Further, empowerment in this economic logic is based upon individual responsibility to maximize one’s own human capital in order to maintain the very means of empowerment. Thus, social actors remain trapped within economic structures that make political empowerment difficult, if not impossible. A truly democratic system – and one that would lead to greater development – must also allow for contentious politics that includes ­ demands for social and economic rights. The post Cold-War system, as Fraser (2013) notes, has encouraged a split between ‘recognition’ (civil and political rights) and ‘redistribution’ (social and economic rights) – privileging recognition over redistribution. ‘After all’, she writes, ‘this capitalism would much prefer to confront claims for recognition over

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claims for ­redistribution, as it builds a new regime of accumulation on the cornerstone of women’s waged labor and seeks to disembed markets from democratic political regulation in order to operate all the more freely on a global scale’ (Fraser, 2013, p. 223). Social entrepreneurship focuses on economic ‘rights’, but those rights do not include the right to demand more from the state, only the right to participate as a producer/employer/ consumer within the current neoliberal system. Thus, economic rights must be placed at the center of politics while also situated within a broader framework of universal human rights. This requires, as Sen and Nussbaum suggest, an ethics of development that centers human well-being as its core mission. Economic rights cannot be demanded by a depoliticized populace – therefore any move to empower citizens cannot rest solely on marketized solutions. Instead, as the chapters by Eikenberry and Ruebottom illustrate, a move toward deliberative democracy allows for the gap between recognition and redistribution to be re-bridged, and perhaps allows for a more meaningful path to empowerment.

NOTES 1. For instance: Russian attacks on Western NGOs; Pakistan’s threats to shutter Save the Children; Thailand’s controls of Western NGO; and the response to for-profit MFIs in India (on the Thailand and Indian cases, see Horn, 2013). 2. Examples abound, but among the most well-known would be the failings of Playpump International, the market distortions caused by Tom’s Shoes, or the unintended uses of the laptops distributed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC). 3. While Sen does not indicate, specifically, what these capabilities are (given that the value one places on capabilities is individually determined; he refers to them as ‘substantive freedoms’ which are ‘combined capabilities’), Nussbaum employs a list of ten ‘central capabilities’: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation, including choosing one’s social groups and living with dignity despite any affiliation; being able to live with other species and the world of nature; play; and control over one’s environment, including being able to participate in political life, and to enjoy property and property rights (Nussbaum, 2011, pp. 33–4). See Horn (2013) for a further discussion of capabilities, agency and democratic development.

REFERENCES Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo (2011), Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, New York: Public Affairs. Crocker, David A. (2008), Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2010), ‘The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship’, Journal of Enterprising Communities, 4 (1), 85–110.

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Easterly, William (2006), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and so Little Good, New York: Penguin Books. Fishkin, James S. (2011), When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Nancy (2013), Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, London: Verso. Funk, Nanette and Magda Mueller (eds) (1993), Gender Politics and PostCommunism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, London: Routledge. Goetz, Anne Marie and Rina S. Gupta (1995), ‘Who takes the credit? Gender, power and control over loan use in rural credit programmes in Bangladesh’, World Development, 24 (1), 45–63. Habermas, Jurgen (1990), ‘Discourse ethics: Notes on a program of philosophical justification’, in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 43–115. Helms, Elissa (2014), ‘The movementization of NGOs? Women’s organizing in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina’, in Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal (eds), Theorizing NGOS: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 21–49. Horn, Denise M. (2010), Women, Civil Society, and the Geopolitics of Democratization, London: Routledge. Horn, Denise M. (2013), Democratic Governance and Social Entrepreneurship: Civic Participation and the Future of Democracy, London: Routledge. Karim, Lamia (2011), Microfinance and its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Nussbaum, Martha (2011), Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sen, Amartya (1993), ‘Capability and well-being’, in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds), The Quality of Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 30–53.

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PART V

Social entrepreneurship, relationality and the possible

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14. Expanding the realm of the possible: field theory and a relational framing of social entrepreneurship Victor J. Friedman, Israel Sykes and Markus Strauch INTRODUCTION In the first decade of the twenty-first century, social entrepreneurship came to be defined in terms of a ‘double’ or ‘triple bottom line’ (financial, social, environmental/sustainability) that would enable people to make a profit while doing good for society (Dacanay, 2004; Nicholls, 2006; Slaper and Hall, 2011). The very idea of a bottom line, however, reflects an economic framing of social entrepreneurship that focuses on ‘market’ and ‘enterprise’ as the key to solving social and ecological problems (Humphries and Grant, 2005; Steyaert and Hjorth, 2006). The economic framing, which emphasizes management and measurement, has increasingly forced the ‘social’ to defend itself in terms of efficiency and controllability (Hjorth, 2013). It limits people to the roles of ‘consumer/enterpriser/competitor’ (Hjorth, 2013, p. 47) and shapes relationships accordingly. Thus, social entrepreneurship becomes seen as simply another way of acting in a market society, while the managerial discourse and its underpinning norm of competitiveness weaken the social values it claims to champion (Dey and Steyaert, 2010; Humphries and Grant, 2005; Parkinson and Howarth, 2008). Social entrepreneurship, however, can be framed as a widely distributed, prosaic process of everyday interaction through which citizens co-construct the societies in which they take part (Steyaert and Katz, 2004; Johannisson and Olaison, 2007). Duhl (2000), for example, focused on the transformation of values, relationships and social forms. He framed social entrepreneurship in terms of expanding and improving the physical and social environments and community resources that enable people to mutually support each other and develop to their maximum potential. Humphries and Grant (2005, p. 44) argued for an inclusive ‘relational ethic’ 239

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of social entrepreneurship that focuses on the quality of relations that people form with each other and with the physical environment. Goldstein et al. (2009) maintained that complex relational patterns among a broad range of social agents open opportunities for a greater variety of roles that people, as social entrepreneurs or simply citizens, can play in developing society. Hjorth (2013) suggested using the term ‘public entrepreneurship’ rather than ‘social entrepreneurship’ in order to break with the economic discourse and to strengthen the social capacity of society. He argued that ‘intensifying the relational’ (p. 40) would lead to a public entrepreneurship as a ‘creative force [. . .] in the context of building societies with greater possibilities for living for citizens’ (p. 47). The relational framing summoned in this contribution views all entrepreneurial processes as involving the co-construction of realities in ways that have both social and economic (as well as political and environmental) implications (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). A relational framing of social entrepreneurship implies that the unit of analysis should be the social relations through which entrepreneurial activities take place, rather than individual social entrepreneurs or their ventures (Steyaert and Katz, 2004). This framing shifts the focus from the creation of value, as measurable output, to the ongoing process of creating new social worlds, realities that are far more complex and difficult to grasp. Thus, understanding and developing this relational framing calls for robust theoretical constructs with which to represent and understand these complex processes of social construction (Goldstein et al., 2009). In this chapter we propose that the required theoretical constructs already exist in the literature on ‘field theory’. Field theory was central to the social psychology of Kurt Lewin (1936; 1948; 1951) and provided one of the foundations of early organizational theory and organizational development. Subsequently, however, it ceased being used as a systematic tool for building organizational theory and guiding practice (Martin, 2003). In sociology, on the other hand, Pierre Bourdieu used field theory as a basis for his ‘reflexive sociology’ (Bourdieu, 1985; 1989; 1993; 1998; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) and, in recent years, there has been a revival of interest in social space and field theory in sociology (Martin, 2003; Fligstein and McAdam, 2012) as well as human geography (Werlen, 2009). A ‘relational’ framing of social entrepreneurship builds on this body of literature; it views social entrepreneurship as a relational process that can potentially reconfigure social spaces, thereby expanding the realm of the possible. This chapter begins with a theoretical introduction to social space and field theory as a conceptual framework for analysing the construction of fields. It then uses this framework to analyse a case study of Beit Issie

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Shapiro, an organization that played an important role in transforming the field of services for children with developmental disabilities and their families in Israel (Stuchiner et al., 2011). As will be seen, the focus of this case is not on the particular organization, entrepreneur or innovation, but rather on the way in which a field as a whole was reconfigured through social entrepreneurship.

SOCIAL SPACE AND FIELD THEORY Both Lewin and Bourdieu grounded their field theory on the work of Ernst Cassirer, a leading German philosopher best known for his ‘philosophy of symbolic forms’ (Cassirer, 1944; 1957). In these works Cassirer argued that myth, religion, language, art, history and science are not simply the products of diverse human societies and cultures but rather the ‘forms’ of social consciousness and constitutive of society itself. These symbolic forms are linked and unified in a linear and hierarchical fashion, advancing from myth to science, through the enduring tension between ‘identification and discrimination’ in which ‘man [. . .] submits to the rules of society but has an active share in bringing about, and an active power to change, the forms of social life’ (Cassirer, 1944, p. 223). Thus, while Cassirer placed great emphasis on the role of culture, society and tradition in shaping and stabilizing human consciousness and behaviour, he also maintained that innovation originated in the mind and imagination of individuals. He was not arguing for the autonomous individual as the prime mover of cultural development but rather as a part of a set of relations that linked the internal world with the external world. Cassirer’s philosophy (1923[1953]; 1944; 1957) was based on a critical distinction between a ‘substantialist’ and a ‘relational’ logic of reality. Substantialism holds that reality is composed of concrete, independent things that can be observed through our senses. Relationalism on the other hand holds that reality is best grasped as an ordering of perceived elements through a mental process of construction that gives them intelligibility and meaning. Relational concepts are fundamentally ‘rules’ that connect the different elements of experience and determine their behaviour. They originate in the mind but find their expression in the order they bring to the various elements of perception (Cassirer, 1923, p. 17). Cassirer (1923) also demonstrated how, in the natural sciences, relational thinking gradually replaced substantialist thinking, paving the way for many great advances of knowledge. What made these advances possible was the use of the concept of geometric space as an abstract way of representing physical relations.

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Space is not a physical concept, but rather a mental creation that can be used to think relationally about making order from any given set of elements. Both Lewin and Bourdieu adopted this idea of space as an essential construct for theorizing about the social world. What makes social space such a useful construct is that it focuses neither on the individual nor the collective as the unit of analysis but rather on the processes through which individuals, in interaction with others, construct their shared worlds (Friedman, 2011). It enables us to trace how thinking and action at the individual level shape, and are shaped by, collective action and what come to be seen as social structures. Social space forms out of links created when we enact our thinking and feeling and elicit responses from other(s), which then shape our thinking, feeling and action. If interaction is temporary or fleeting, then a social space is unlikely to form. However, when interactions are sustained over time and become patterned, they take on a particular configuration that differentiates them from other patterned interactions. Differentiation is a mental act that leads to the creation of a space or a ‘field’ that has an existence outside, but not wholly independent of, the individuals that constitute it. Fields can involve as few as two people or an entire society. Groups and organizations are fields but so are less formal configurations such as the ‘medical profession’ or even ‘the market’. Lewin and Bourdieu borrowed the concept of field from physics as a way of accounting for causality in social space. By the twentieth century, physics increasingly faced problems it could not solve through Newtonian mechanics, which attributed causality to the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or to displacement from each other (Cassirer, 1961). The main difficulty inheres in explaining how certain bodies seemed to influence other bodies without direct contact (for example electromagnetism). The turning point was the Faraday–Maxwell concept of the electromagnetic ‘field’ in which causality is attributed to the influence of this field on the elements that constitute it. Thus, fields can be understood as spaces that not only link different elements into a kind of network, but also exert force on and shape the behaviour of its constituents. It is in this sense that the field, as a whole, is greater than the sum of its parts. At the same time, a field, and its power, is continually recreated or enacted by its constituents and never exists as an independent entity. Field theory provided Lewin and Bourdieu with an explanatory framework for understanding the seemingly invisible influence of social structures on individuals and on each other (Martin, 2003). What makes social space and field such useful constructs is that they focus on the circular, reflexive processes through which individuals, in interaction with others, continually construct and reconstruct their shared worlds (Friedman,

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2011). Fields are both phenomenal (that is, in people’s minds) and structural (‘out there’), linking the internal world of people with the external social world through an ongoing shaping process. It is this nature of fields which Lewin tried to capture through the idea of the ‘life space’ (1936, p. 12), and Bourdieu through the concept of ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 81). Field theory obviates the distinction between agency and structure, seeing them as integrated and analysable by the same set of constructs. For this reason, both Lewin and Bourdieu believed that field theory provided a general theory that could dissolve strict disciplinary distinctions among the social sciences. The field concept has found its way into the social entrepreneurship literature primarily through neo-institutional theory, which uses ‘field’ to describe how ordered realms of activity emerge and are maintained (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott and Meyer, 1983). Institutions are the means of structuring fields, providing rules to guide action and systems of meaning that enable actors to make sense of the actions of others. Neoinstitutional theory offers an important perspective on social entrepreneurship as a field aimed at changing existing institutions and generating new ones. However, it has focused primarily on how fields are maintained rather than how they are changed (Fligstein, 2009). Furthermore, it lacks a theory of power that looks, and questions, who benefits from the institutionalized order and who does not (ibid.). Neo-institutional theorists acknowledge the importance of institutional entrepreneurs (for example DiMaggio, 1988), but offer little to explain how they overcome the power of established institutions and generate innovation. The approach to fields proposed here attempts to bridge the gap between an overly deterministic view that portrays actors as ‘propagators of shared meanings and followers of scripts’ (Fligstein, 2009, p. 241) and an overly individualistic view that focuses on heroic actors as the engines of change. Building on Cassirer’s (1923, 1944) concept of space and cultural development, we see fields as linking the internal thinking, feeling and action of individuals with external structures of meaning in a process of mutual shaping. However, individuals can think outside of any given field and envision alternative realities. By enacting this thinking in interactions with others, they step out of an incumbent field, and open new spaces, or ‘strategic action fields’ (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012) that challenge the incumbent field. Our understanding of the field construct is consistent with Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012, p. 8) description of ‘social life as dominated by a complex web of strategic action fields’, but with one critical difference. We would say that social life is a complex web of strategic action fields. This distinction is important because the statement ‘social life as dominated

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by fields’ implicitly treats ‘social life’ and ‘fields’ in a substantialist way, as if they were separate entities or variables, with the latter influencing the former. All spaces are fields, though with varying degrees of organization, complexity and force. We suggest that all social life can only be understood as a complex web of fields, some stronger and some weaker, through which action takes place. Fligstein and McAdam (2012) offer a very useful framework for analysing ‘strategic action fields’, distinguishing between four categories of shared understandings. We propose a similar framework consisting of the following components: (1) the individual and collective actors or agents who constitute the field; (2) the modes of relationships among these actors, (for example hierarchical or egalitarian, competitive or cooperative, dependent or independent); (3) the shared meanings that signify what is going on in the field and make it intelligible; and (4) the ‘rules of the game’ that govern action within it. In the following sections, we will introduce the case study and use this framework to analyse strategic action that produced field change (Friedman, 2011; Friedman and Sykes, 2014).

A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE The main purpose of this chapter is theoretical and not to report on original research. It utilizes a book written about Beit Issie Shapiro, a non-profit organization in Israel that acts to change the quality of the lives of people with developmental disabilities and their families, by developing educational-therapeutic services, furthering social change, promoting awareness in the community, research, development, and training (Stuchiner et al., 2011). The book is an anthology edited by the founder of Beit Issie together with two other people, including one of the co-authors of this chapter. It includes chapters written by both practitioners who developed particular services and by researchers who studied this work and/or conducted research with Beit Issie in the field of disability and accessibility. Much of the material cited below was gathered in a retrospective participatory process of learning from success designed to produce actionable knowledge gleaned from an analysis of multiple perspectives (Schechter et al., 2007). The focus of the inquiry was Beit Issie’s 30-year history and its impact on Israeli society, particularly in the area of disability (Sykes, 2011). The approximately 150 people convened for the inquiry had occupied a broad range of positions within Beit Issie and within its organizational environment, including managers, service providers, parents, people with disabilities, partners in government and municipal services and donors.

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They participated in facilitated group reflections in which they were asked to recall the way things were in Israel during the early years of Beit Issie’s activity, look at the current situation and note relevant changes that have taken place, and discuss the ways in which Beit Issie contributed to these changes. Analysis of the recorded group sessions led to an identification of an action model for social entrepreneurial ventures aiming to have broad systemic impact.

A CASE ANALYSIS OF BEIT ISSIE SHAPIRO Naomi Stuchiner, a community social worker, together with members of her extended family, who provided the initial financial resources, founded Beit Issie in 1981. In her retrospective account of Beit Issie’s history, Stuchiner (2011) framed the process as social entrepreneurship. Beit Issie took it upon itself to enable parents to keep their children at home while providing them with high quality care, treatment and education. Over the years Beit Issie identified the needs of these families and then developed new and innovative services to meet them – services that not only treated the child, but also brought about changes in the family and community contexts. Most of the programmes that Beit Issie developed to meet local needs had an impact far beyond its direct clientele because they spawned new services throughout Israel and strongly influenced government policy towards developmentally disabled children and their families (see Table 14.1). For example, one of the early services was a day-care centre that provided therapeutic services to children under three years of age. At the time there were no such services for this age group, which meant that (1) children with developmental disabilities failed to receive valuable help at a crucial period in their lives and (2) at least one of the parents had to care for the child full time, preventing any kind of outside work or activity. In response to this need, Beit Issie opened up family day-care funded by foundation grants and tuitions paid by parents. However, it also led a coalition of organizations that lobbied the government for early childcare support. This work was responsible, at least in part, for the passing of legislation in the year 2000 that entitles free therapeutic childcare beginning at one year of age for children with developmental disabilities. Today over 90 such day-care centres are functioning throughout the country with government funding. Table 14.1 illustrates how programmes created to meet a local need had a much wider impact on the field. Their impact was both quantitative, in terms of the number of children and families served, but also qualitative, in terms of the establishment of new and higher standards for service

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Need (1981)

Response

Dental care

Early intervention

No dental care available in community and no specialists who know how to provide it.

No therapeutic programmes in Israel for children under 3 years of age.

Established first community dental centre for people with development disabilities with funding from private donors. Research and training centre.

First therapeutic daycare in Israel funded by foundations and parents. Led coalition of organizations to improve rights of children with special needs. Afternoon programmes No afternoon care Afternoon enrichment available in community programme funded by in Israel. donations.

Programme

Table 14.1  Beit Issie programmes and their impact

16 more community clinics opened in Israel. High quality care. Prevention.

Reliable care is available for parents, enabling them to work outside the home.

All children with developmental disabilities over one year entitled to free day-care. Over 90 such day-care centers established country-wide.

Therapeutic day-care law passed (2000).

Children with developmental disabilities entitled to government funded extended school day. Government subsidizes care according to set criteria.

Impact (2011)

Government policy

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Lack of professionals with special skills for work with people with developmental disabilities.

Institute for training in developmental disabilities

Source:  Adapted from Stuchiner (2011, pp. 40–41).

No playground accessible to children with special needs.

Inclusive playgrounds

First institute for continuing education and training in the field of disabilities funded by donors and tuition fees.

First fully integrated and accessible playground in Israel with funding from donors.

20 municipalities have adopted this model park design funded by National Insurance Institute and private foundations. Government recognized certification. Institute increasingly commissioned by governmental and NGOs to develop training programmes.

Raised requirements for and the standard of service in the field of disabilities.

Raised standard of recreational facilities for children with ‘accessibility’ cornerstone.

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provision. An official from the Ministry of Social Welfare described the organization’s impact as follows: [. . .] many of the programs and services developed in Beit Issie Shapiro for families became services provided and funded by the government [. . .] Today the services do things that once were considered innovative, as part of their worldview and daily professional practice. And you really have to attribute this to its source. It all really began in Beit Issie Shapiro. (Sykes, 2011, p. 79)

The question, then, is through what processes did Beit Issie, a single social entrepreneurial venture, engage and ultimately contribute to a transformation of the wider fields in which it was embedded? The goal of the analysis of Beit Issie is to trace the links from the cre­ ation of a social entrepreneurial venture to changes in a larger social field. The field that we are interested in examining is the field of services in Israel for children with developmental disabilities and their families. We shall use this analysis to introduce the concept of an ‘enclave’, which we define as an alternatively configured field embedded within a larger field, that operates in accordance with rules that differ from those dictated by that field, and whose constituents consciously strive to change the configuration of the larger field (Friedman and Sykes, 2014). Rather than simply being a sub-field characterized mainly by a unique set of actors, an enclave differentiates itself through a distinct configuration of actors, relationships, meanings and rules of the game that challenge those of the incumbent field. Its own challenge is to interact with the larger field in ways that enable it to have an impact while at the same time protecting its own integrity. We will analyse Beit Issie’s strategic action as an enclave, using the framework of the four field components set forth above: actors, relationships, meanings and rules of the game. The Field prior to Beit Issie In 1981 the actors that constituted the field of developmentally disabled children were the children, their families, professionals and institutional actors who represented the very meagre social, health and educational services provided mainly by the state. These actors were positioned visà-vis each other in a strictly hierarchical relationship of power, control and dependence. The highly dependent children were at the very bottom of this hierarchy and had almost no power or control over their own lives. The families, or parents, were one level up but they too were highly dependent on the authorities and had very little power or control over the situation. The professionals and institutional actors had almost complete control over the families and children. They decided when and where to

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institutionalize the child and the families had no say in the matter. They also had complete control over what happened to these children once they were institutionalized. While professionals and administrators had power vis-à-vis families, they themselves were tightly constrained by the desires and expectations of the larger society. And, because the field of developmental disabilities was associated with a socially undesirable element, the professionals and authorities in this sub-field were in a position of inferiority relative to the larger professional fields to which they belonged. The meanings attached to developmental disabilities at that time were highly stigmatized. The term mostly used to describe these children was ‘retarded’, which meant that they were slower than or behind ‘normal’ children of the same age. Retardation was associated with behavioural abnormalities and physical deformity that instilled feelings of fear and disgust among people in normative society. Family members tended to internalize stigmatic meanings and to experience feelings of shame and isolation. The fundamental rule of the game in this field at this time was that these ‘defective’ children had to be put away in institutions located outside of or at the margins of communities. There they would receive humane treatment but would also be out of sight. The field of developmentally disabled children was, of course, embedded in and shaped by the larger social field. The rules of the game of the disability field functioned to protect society from a population experienced as arousing fear, disgust and pity. Envisioning an Alternative Reality and Initiating an Enclave Beit Issie formed out of conviction that institutionalization was not the only option for people with developmental disabilities; that parents should have a right to choose what is right for their child; that keeping children at home should be an option; and that society had an obligation to support families in pursuing this option. These beliefs were rooted in the value that ‘every person has the right to live in dignity and according to his [and her] abilities’ (Rimmerman, 2011, p. 257). At the time of Beit Issie’s founding there was an important anomaly in the Israeli reality. Over the years, there had been a steady rise in the number of children with developmental disabilities requiring special care, leading to a growing shortage of space in existing institutions. Because there seemed to be no other feasible option, the initial response of the social service system (the field) at the time was to develop more institutions to accommodate the growing waiting list of children in need. Meanwhile, these families were de facto caring for their children at home

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until ­something opened up, but without any of the necessary support. In other words, it was becoming apparent that keeping children at home was feasible and could even become optimal if the proper support services were provided. Beit Issie reframed the ‘problem’ of the waiting list as a potential ‘solution’ that was radically different from the normal response of adding more institutions. Once it became acknowledged, this anomaly pointed to a gap in the logic of the entire field in its current configuration, and this gap in turn became a cornerstone for re-envisioning the space – a process that first took shape in Stuchiner’s thinking. In her interactions with other stakeholders, including the Minister of Social Welfare, she used the anomaly and her vision as a kind of lever to open and widen the gap between what was taken for granted as ‘reality’ (the need for institutionalization) and alternative potential configurations of the field. The former Director of Community Services for the Retarded at the Ministry of Welfare, who worked with Stuchiner in those early years, described the dissonance he experienced at the time: Naomi told us what she wanted to do, develop real community services for people with developmental disabilities. She presented us with a picture of a vision. What we see today is actually very close to the vision she painted in 1980, but at the time it sounded delusional [. . .] After five minutes with her and her incredible staff you couldn’t grasp how you could one day be sitting there with them and on the next day you would be sitting in the Ministry. It was like living in two different worlds. (Sykes, 2011, p. 68)

Stuchiner and her staff created an enclave that provided a relatively stable and protected space in which these alternative actors, relationships, meanings and rules of the game could be developed, legitimized and consolidated. From the very beginning it was clear that, in order to develop the kinds of services that were really needed, Beit Issie would have to establish its independence from government funding (Stuchiner et al., 2011). Even when the immediate reaction of incumbents was to reject the vision or to treat it with scepticism, its independent resources, based initially on family funds and increasingly on private donors and foundations, enabled it to survive and grow. Over time interactions between the enclave and the larger field opened spaces of possibility – first in the minds of others and then through action in the social world. Actors and relationships A field is usually experienced by its constituents as ‘reality’; rarely can they discern that the same set of elements in the field, if differently configured, could create an alternative reality. The fact that Stuchiner could see beyond

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the current field, if only dimly, to a different configuration (for example different players, positions, meanings and rules of the game) was the starting point for the creation of an enclave that transformed the field. Stuchiner knew how to develop projects that mobilized others in developing concrete solutions, but the key to the process was forming a stable space through which to mount a sustained challenge to the incumbent field. This space was enacted through the relationships she formed with and among other actors or stakeholders. It was through these relationships that new services emerged, giving the vision concrete expression and shape as an enclave. Stuchiner described this process as follows: With every new challenge, we begin by examining our circles of relationships, seeking out the people and organisations who can potentially be partners to generating solutions. For example, we look to our children’s parents and other family members, staff, volunteers, donors, professional colleagues, like-minded professionals in the local and national government services and management. The development of each potential partnership is always carried out according to a well-defined community development process that seeks to engage and activate people so that each partner comes to take a share of the ownership over the joint solution. (Stuchiner, 2011, p. 39)

This quotation reflects a different, and much wider, view of the actors involved in the field of children with developmental disabilities. If the field in 1981 was constituted primarily by children, families and a relatively narrow range of professionals, many new actors became engaged in the emerging field (the enclave), including Beit Issie’s staff, donors, volunteers and a much wider range of professionals. This quote also reflects a fundamental change in the relationships which formed the enclave as a field within the larger field of caring for children with disabilities. New collaborative modes of relating were significantly different from the distinctly hierarchical and dependent relationships that characterized the existing field. The fundamental link in this emerging network of relationships was a reorientation of professional relationships with parents of developmentally disabled children, starting with Beit Issie’s staff and eventually influencing other professionals. In contrast to predominant hierarchical relationships, Beit Issie’s staff sought to understand the real needs of the parents, and to mobilize their experience, dreams and social networks to develop new solutions. These relationships were more than simply a means for gathering information, assessing needs and delivering services. Rather, as the above quote indicates, every interaction was a process of partnership building based on the vision of an alternative reality. Most importantly, partnership building was founded upon the recognition that everyone had something

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to contribute. A former official of the Ministry of Social Welfare, who was also instrumental in the development of services at Beit Issie, described the relationship that eventually emerged: Partnership is something very dynamic and holistic, and it’s mutual – it’s not just that a so-called professional comes and knows what to do. No, it’s this togetherness, enriching one another. Different family members also have what to give, whether the mom or the dad, or other children. We learn so much from them, and the insights are so deep, that that is what leads this partnership in the fullest meaning of the word. (Sykes, 2011, p. 88)

As this quotation indicates, the partnership grew out of a relationship of mutual learning in which the professionals came to truly value the knowledge of the families. It also shows how Beit Issie’s staff related to each family member as having unique perspectives, knowledge and needs. Describing the relationship between families and professionals as a ‘partnership’ reflects a fundamental change from the strictly hierarchical, oneway relationship of dominance that characterized the incumbent field. The fact that the speaker was a government official indicates that the change, which originated in the enclave, eventually influenced the incumbent field. The emergence of new actors and a shift in relationship between them was evident in the connection that formed between Beit Issie, its immediate neighbours and the community as a whole. When people in the neighbourhood, an affluent suburb, heard that a centre for ‘retarded’ children was going to be built in the heart of their neighbourhood, they organized to stop it, circulating a petition and putting pressure on the mayor. The community worker at Beit Issie assigned to work with the community described how the organization dealt with this problem: I spoke with the neighbors individually rather than in a group [. . .] about their fears and concerns [. . .] In the beginning, I heard ‘maybe they will be violent, maybe they will be contagious’. We worked step by step with the community [. . .] We convinced them that we were open to any request, that they could come to us and use our facilities. Slowly but surely we began to contribute to the community, going into the school and giving lectures, sending a representative to every community event. Over time, they felt that we were doing them a favor when they came into our building and felt pride at what they saw. In the end community representatives stood on the Beit Issie board. (Sykes, 2011, p. 82)

The interaction with the neighbours was not simply meant to overcome resistance. Rather, the neighbours too were regarded as potential partners to a relationship based on reciprocity. The neighbours had something significant to contribute and they benefited from the existence of Beit Issie in their midst. One of the key strategies here was to engage each family on

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the individual level rather than confronting them as a group. Rather than directly confronting field forces, this strategy enabled enclave actors to intervene at the point where individual attitudes both shape and are shaped by the incumbent field. Meanings An important step in the process of reconfiguring the field was a fundamental change in the meanings attributed to children with developmental disabilities and their families. Since society’s predominant perception of children with developmental disabilities was that they were strange, ­inferior and frightening, they were expelled from their families and from the public space to institutions located in isolated areas. In contrast, Beit Issie saw children with developmental disabilities and their family members as whole people with complex needs, who have a right to live with dignity in the community like any other person, and saw society as being obligated to understand their needs and to develop supports that would enable them to develop to their capacity. Prior to the 1980s the only real ‘need’ that was seen by the system was that of getting the children out of the homes and into institutions so that they could get proper care and not disturb the community. Other needs were always there but they were either unseen, unacknowledged or simply not something that mobilized a response from the existing actors. When Beit Issie entered the field, it saw each new need that it discovered as a potential – an opening for creating a new service that would expand the realm of the possible for disabled children and their families. Beit Issie consistently discovered new needs and translated them into programmes. As one former staff member put it: ‘Wherever there was a need – that’s where we went. That’s how it was with most of the services that Beit Issie developed [. . .] Wherever there was nothing, that’s where we moved in and started developing.’ (Sykes, 2011, p. 73). In spatial terms, ‘nothingness’ does not mean an empty space waiting to be filled, but rather the lack of a relationship out of which a field can form. Needs were the stimulus for forming new relationships and the response to needs was the nexus around which new spaces involving families, professionals and other actors emerged. As attention became organized around new meanings, a field change began to come into consciousness and discourse – becoming recognizable, knowable and distinct. This process of differentiation gave presence, visibility and new meaning to the lives of these families and their children. Differentiation accompanied by the emergence of new meaning led to increasing variety and complexity, opening up new realms of possibility and avenues for action. As the varied needs of children and their families

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became recognized and differentiated from one another, it meant that the services necessary for meeting their needs would also have to become increasingly differentiated and specialized. From the outset, a deliberate effort was made to change the meanings attributed by others to the children with developmental disabilities and their families. A social worker who was hired to write fundraising materials found that she herself needed to change her own ways of thinking: I found that a whole new vocabulary was being used. I learned not to use words like ‘charity’, nor to think of children as getting pity and needing charity. Instead, I learned to think of resource development as enabling children to get the education that they deserved – that was their right. (Sykes, 2011, p. 83)

This shift in meaning was reflected not only in the use of language, but also in the high standards the organization strove for and achieved. This was the case for therapeutic and community services, but was equally reflected in the aesthetics of every aspect of operations: ‘There will not be an installation or a wall or a stone that will not be so aesthetic and fine as to convey to all who enter the building that people with such difficult needs, people with intellectual disabilities and other difficult disabilities are entitled to the maximum.’ (Sykes, 2011, p. 84). Similarly, through its elegant events and high-level international conferences, Beit Issie brought interest, respect and prestige to what had been a neglected issue. Rules of the game Beit Issie also differentiated itself as an enclave within the larger field by instituting significant changes in the rules of the game. In 1981 the main rule of the game was that children with developmental disabilities needed to be institutionalized and that the professionals decided upon what was the most appropriate placement within very narrow administrative structures. Beit Issie challenged this rule, as illustrated above, but this challenge manifested itself in new rules of the game for initiating services to meet newly defined needs. The following quotes from two early staff members described this process as follows: Staff Member 1: When I got to know Naomi, one of the things that impressed me most was that I had lots of ideas and Naomi liked them all, and I found this so strange [. . .] It was a world of initiatives, not rules. We didn’t know about rules. Naomi said ‘It’s OK . . . just do it!’ And, following Naomi, I did it. (Sykes, 2011, p. 73) Staff Member 2: There was systemic thinking about [our] ideas [. . .] a great deal of emphasis on inter- and multi-disciplinary thinking at all times. It inspired us to go beyond the existing models. The moment you have backing and you see

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Field theory and a relational framing of social entrepreneurship ­255 that someone believes that your idea can happen, it gives the people working on the idea the strength to keep moving ahead. (Sykes, 2011, p. 74)

When the first staff member described ‘a world of initiative, not of rules’, she was pointing to new rules of the game – rules that said ‘if you have good ideas and are willing to take action to actualize them, I (the leadership) will support you.’ This rule was a revolution in how new services were developed. The second staff member illustrates how the creation of a new field can move actors in new directions. As described earlier, a social space forms when individuals express their thoughts and feelings and elicit a response. In her relationships with her staff Stuchiner invited them to dream, to express their dreams and to act to make them happen. It was Stuchiner’s responses to her partners and to their ideas, so different from what they had become accustomed to, that shaped the field over time. The building of a permanent home for Beit Issie also illustrates how the rules of the game in the field were transformed through the entrepreneurial process. At the time Beit Issie was founded, it was common practice to locate services for the developmentally disabled at the outskirts of communities, often in industrial zones, or in the countryside. When Beit Issie became established and began to plan a permanent facility, Stuchiner consciously decided that it would be located in the heart of an uppermiddle-class suburb ‘so that the families who come with their children will feel that their child is accepted in the community’ (Sykes, 2011, pp. 81–2). Locating Beit Issie in the heart of a residential neighbourhood represented a significant change in the rules of the game as to where such organizations were supposed to be. One of the ways Beit Issie changed the rules of the game and influenced the larger field was to become a ‘knowledge’ organization as well as a service organization. It established an extensive professional library as well as institutes for research, development and professional training that function alongside the direct services. A leading Israeli academic in the field of social welfare and planning described his initial reaction to this combination: I remember the library, which at the time seemed so strange to me. I would tell them, ‘Beit Issie Shapiro is not a university’. However, as an organization committed to transmitting knowledge to its clients, it took care to provide them with an up-to-date library. This same drive has since developed beyond the library, to the books that Beit Issie publishes, as well as to the international conferences that it hosts. (Rimmerman, 2011, p. 258)

In becoming an innovative knowledge organization and positioning itself alongside academic institutions, Beit Issie induced an important shift

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in the place of service providers in the broader field. By placing research and service aspects within the same organizational framework, it made a significant change in the rules of the game concerning where, how and by whom knowledge is produced and disseminated. Furthermore, it created a set of relationships through which Beit Issie could continually influence the meaning structure and the rules of the game of the larger field.

DISCUSSION The goal of this analysis has been to illustrate how field theory provides a useful conceptual and analytical framework for a relational framing of social entrepreneurship. The case analysis focused on Beit Issie Shapiro as an example of institutional entrepreneurship, rather than on its founder as an exemplary social entrepreneur. It illustrates how social entrepreneurship processes not only work at the material level, leading to the creation of new products, services or organizations, but also involve symbolic operations that change relationships, meanings and rules of the game that define an entire field. Indeed, it was the symbolic change that had the most promin­ ent and far-reaching effects. The analysis of Beit Issie suggests that social entrepreneurship processes, or at least some manifestations of them, involve the creation of enclaves in which new forms of sociality can emerge and influence the larger, incumbent field. Enclaves are closely related to what Steyaert (2010) calls ‘transitional spaces’ in which ‘the personal, the artistic and the political are simultaneously played out in practices of care of the self and selfformation’ (p. 48). The idea of a transitional space draws on Foucault’s (1995, as cited in Steyaert, 2010) concept of ‘heterotopia’ as spaces that contest the dominant field by mirroring it in ways that invert or neutralize relationships, meanings and rules of the game – providing for the existence and flourishing of alternatives to the status quo. Transitional spaces act heterotopically by permitting individuals to discover their otherness and re-form themselves in relation to, and challenging of, historically dominant practices and discourses. Enclaves are also heterotopic and may involve self-formation, but they differ from transitional spaces in focusing on, and challenging, the broader field in which they are embedded. In this respect enclaves and transitional spaces may be two sides of the same coin. One advantage of the term ‘enclave’ is that it implies a relationship. Enclaves are fields embedded in, but distinguished from larger, more dominant fields. However, it is critically important not to reify enclaves as a thing. Rather, as Beyes and Steyaert (2012) put it, we should ‘think of spaces as a verb and not a noun’ (p. 56). Enclaves are formed in r­ elationship

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to the larger field through an ongoing process of interaction and mutual shaping that holds potential for transforming the larger field. The enclave first took shape in the minds of Stuchiner and other main actors, but it was enacted in the social world through a wide network of relationships that took on a life of its own as Beit Issie Shapiro. The ana­ lysis illustrates how Beit Issie formed as an enclave in the field of families with developmentally disabled children and through a web of relationships that acted strategically in ways that challenged and generated significant changes in the incumbent field. Strategic action in this case meant bringing about changes (intuitively at the time) in all four components of a field: actors, relationships, meanings and rules of the game. While these components were analysed separately, the analysis shows how specific strategic actions often influenced multiple, if not all, components. From a field theory perspective, social entrepreneurship might be understood as action aimed at expanding the realm of the possible. Prior to Beit Issie the field of families of children with developmental disabilities could be characterized as an extremely limited space of possibility. Families, professionals and administrators alike could envision almost no alternative to the status quo. The only option seemed to be finding the most appropriate placement given the nature of the child’s disability and the availability of institutional facilities. Families, professionals and authorities alike occupied the positions dictated to them by the logic of the field and, by extension, they reinforced this logic. Under these circumstances, the main variables were quantitative – that is, the number of facilities available and the length of the waiting list. The status quo seemed increasingly inevitable, even if regrettable, and immutable. As an enclave, Beit Issie constituted an alternative field that was embedded within the larger field and explicitly challenged every aspect of its configuration. The enclave provided a space in which an alternative reality could take shape and become consolidated, and a relatively stable base from which actors could engage incumbents from a position of relative strength and confidence. Although many of the case illustrations emphasize the importance of participation and coalition building, the history of Beit Issie was one of constant struggle with, though not necessarily against, the larger field. The strategic actions carried out through the enclave and the alternative relationships, meanings and the rules of the game that it both embodied and promoted, generated a great deal of tension over the years. For example, Beit Issie became aware of the fact that each year about six children with mental disabilities being cared for at a local rehabilitation hospital reached kindergarten age. Each year the hospital director tried, unsuccessfully, to get the local municipality to take responsibility for these children – as was their obligation. Beit Issie organized the parents to put

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relentless pressure on the municipality and took steps to open its own kindergarten even though the municipality had not granted a licence. The night before the kindergarten was to open the municipality granted the licence and eventually took over the kindergarten, with Beit Issie providing special services. Although this kind of struggle led to a redistribution of resources and shifts of power among institutional actors, we propose that the entrepreneurial strategic action of Beit Issie aimed more at the symbolic than at the material level. The struggle in this case was not so much about getting funding for a kindergarten as about awakening a powerful actor in the field to obligations which were easy to ignore. In telling the story (Stuchiner et al., 2011), the municipality’s resistance was attributed to a lack of know­ ledge (how to provide appropriate services) rather than a lack of funds – a problem which Beit Issie could help solve. In general, Beit Issie’s symbolic struggles focused on (1) opening the field to previously unimagined possibilities that enabled children to stay with their families, and (2) generating programmes and knowledge that expanded the ways in which children with disabilities could live full lives in the community. The emphasis on strategic field action as symbolic struggle is particularly important because it suggests a way of moving beyond a discourse of winners and losers. Disability is a good example because societal perceptions of disability shape people’s thinking and prevent people with disabilities (and those around them) from imagining living full lives. Resources are necessary but there is no necessary material limit on the ability of people to see and fulfil their potential. Rather the key is changing relationships, meanings and rules of the game. A parent of one of the children who was a recipient of Beit Issie’s services and later became a member of its board of directors, recalled coming to understand Beit Issie’s strategy for dealing with the field as a whole: One of the first things I learned is that we cannot care for all the children. But we can create a superb model that others can learn from, copy, and implement in many other places. And if we create a model that others will want to copy or to imitate, the results will ultimately be much better than if we tried to do it all ourselves. And if we look now from the perspective of years, it worked. (Sykes, 2011, p. 79)

Beit Issie could have adopted a very different strategy based on domin­ ance of the field. It invested enormous energy and resources in creating innovative and alternative models of service provision and it would have been perfectly acceptable for it to try to maintain ownership over its products by trying to expand its own direct reach. It could have attempted to dominate the field and impede or control potential competitors for the

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same resources. However, as the case study illustrates, Beit Issie attempted to replace strictly hierarchical relations with relations based on mutuality and reciprocity. Rather than demonizing potential opponents or polarizing the field, it attempted to build partnerships and slowly change thinking and action. Rather than occupying more and more space within the field so as to deter and drive out incumbents or competitors, Beit Issie adopted a strategy of openness and generosity by disseminating its knowledge and encouraging others to copy and reproduce its products in their own ways. There are a number of weaknesses that need to be acknowledged and taken into account in considering our argument. Our analysis of Beit Issie is based entirely on a set of studies that were conducted by stakeholders whose objectivity can be questioned. Furthermore, while we have argued that Beit Issie had an influence on the larger field, many other actors and factors were of course involved in the changes that occurred. In addition, it should also be noted that similar changes took place elsewhere in the world, which also reflects the embedded nature of field phenomena. Although many of the main players attested to the important role played by Beit Issie, there is no way of knowing exactly how much of the change is attributable to the organization or whether the change might have occurred, albeit by a different path, even if Beit Issie never existed. The goal of this chapter, however, has not been to lionize Beit Issie or to argue that it should be credited with a change that took place in Israeli society. Rather the aim has been to use the case of Beit Issie as a way of illustrating field theory and how the idea of enclaves can be used to conceptualize the relational framing of social entrepreneurship. A field is usually experienced by its constituents as ‘reality’, but, in fact, it is only a particular order that people impose on a set of elements that then exerts influence on its constituents, guiding perception, thinking, feeling and behaviour. Although fields have a tendency to reproduce and reinforce themselves, there is always a potential for change in which the same elements can be reconfigured to create a different reality (for example a new configuration of different players, positions, meanings and rules of the game). Fields are first and foremost about the production of social worlds enacted by human beings and through which people act to meet their needs and achieve goals. Struggles over power and the control of resources commonly become central to strategic field action, but these processes are secondary rather than primary in the formation of fields. Eversberg (2013), for example, distinguished between ‘the power to do’ and ‘power over’. The emergence of fields reflects precisely the mobilization of the power to do. Within these fields, competition and struggles aimed at ‘power over’ may very well arise, but they are not an inherent, defining feature of fields. To the contrary, fields are rooted in human perception,

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consciousness and/or imagination. Alternatives are always imminent in the incumbent field and they may be triggered by awareness of a gap, limit or anomaly in the dominant configuration, or simply by a way of seeing, or envisioning, a different configuration of the same elements. The constructs of field theory and social space allow for the potential production of anything that can be imagined. In this sense, they offer potential for expanding the realm of the possible so as to make the world increasingly inclusive and conducive to the flourishing of people and their communities.

CONCLUSION A relational framing and conceptual foundation of social entrepreneurship in social space and field theory is a promising pathway towards both a complex and robust theory of the phenomenon and an ‘advance[ment of] theory toward more effective practice’ (Wallis, 2009, p. 102). Field theory is useful because it enables us to view social entrepreneurship in terms of larger processes rather than as a unique phenomenon with its own local theories. Furthermore, the application of social space and field theory responds to the need to (1) move beyond individual social entrepreneurs or their ventures to relationships as the basic unit of analysis (Steyaert and Dey, 2010), and (2) to trace links between the intrapersonal, interpersonal and systemic levels of analysis (Goldstein et al., 2009). It is timely because field theory is beginning to emerge from the margins of social science, offering new ways of thinking about social phenomena. Field theory is more than a tool for analysing social phenomena from the outside. It is also a way of reflecting on and seeing ourselves, our thoughts and our actions as constructing, at least in part, the social world in which we live. The power of field theory is that it implicitly contains an element of choice in how people frame strategic action. While a competitive market framing does reflect much of current social reality, it does not necessarily need to be the foundation for social entrepreneurship. People can choose a relational framing of social entrepreneurship as a way of becoming more self-conscious co-constructers involved in ‘inventing new possibilities of life’ (Hjorth, 2013, p. 40).

REFERENCES Beyes, Timon and Chris Steyaert (2012), ‘Spacing organization: Nonrepresentational  theory and performing organizational space’, Organization, 19 (1), 45–61.

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Bourdieu, Pierre  (1985), ‘Social space and the genesis of groups’, Theory and Society, 14 (6), 723–44. Bourdieu, Pierre (1989), ‘Social space and symbolic power’, Sociological Theory, 7 (1), 14–25. Bourdieu, Pierre (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1998), Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant (1992), An Introduction to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press. Cassirer, Ernst (1923 [1953]), Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing, (republished, 1953, New York: Dover Press). Cassirer, Ernst (1944), An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cassirer, Ernst (1957), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume Three: The Phenomenology of Knowledge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cassirer, Ernst (1961), The Logic of the Humanities, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dacanay, Marie L.M. (2004), Creating Space in the Market: Social Enterprise Stories in Asia, Makati City, Philippines: Asian Institute of Management and Conference of Asian Foundations and Organizations. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2010), ‘The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship’, Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 1 (4), 85–108. DiMaggio, Paul J. (1988), ‘Interest and agency in institutional theory’, in Lynne G. Zucker (ed.), Institutional Patterns and Organization, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Press, pp. 3–21. DiMaggio, Paul J. and Walter W. Powell (1983), ‘The iron case revisited’, American Sociological Review, 48 (2), 147–60. Duhl, Leonard J. (2000), The Social Entrepreneurship of Change, Putnam Valley, NY: Cogent Publishing. Eversberg, Dennis (2013), ‘Productive practice, government, conflict and struggle: How looking at the labour market forces us to revise field theoretical views’, paper presented at the European Sociological Association’s 11th conference, Torino (Italy), 30 August. Fligstein, Neil (2009), ‘Fields, power, and social skill: A critical analysis of the new institutionalism’, International Public Management Review, 9 (1), 227–52. Fligstein, Neil and Doug McAdam (2012), A Theory of Fields, New York: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel (1995), The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3, New York: Vintage Books. Friedman, Victor (2011), ‘Revisiting social space: Relational thinking about organ­ izational change’, in William A. Pasmore, Abraham B. (Rami) Shani and Richard W. Woodman (eds), Research in Organizational Change and Development, Vol. 19, Bingley: Emerald Group, pp. 233–57. Friedman, Victor and Israel Sykes (2014), ‘Can the concept “social space” reveal a deep structure for the theory and practice of organizational learning?’, in Ariane Berthoin Antal, Peter Meusburger and Laura Suarsana (eds), Learning Organizations: Extending the Field, Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media, pp. 143–56.

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Goldstein, Jeffrey A., James K. Hazy and Joyce Silberstang (2009), Complexity Science and Social Entrepreneurship: Adding Social Value Through Systems Thinking, Litchfield Park, AZ: ISCE Publishing. Hjorth, Daniel (2013), ‘Public entrepreneurship: Desiring social change, creating sociality’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 25 (1–2), 34–51. Humphries, Maria and Suzanne Grant (2005), ‘Social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: Re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching ­colonization of the lifeworld?’, Current Issues in Comparative Education, 8 (1), 41–50. Johannisson, Bent and Lena Olaison (2007), ‘The moment of truth – ­reconstructing entrepreneurship and social capital in the eye of the storm’, Review of Social Economy, 65 (1), 55–78. Lewin, Kurt (1936), Principles of Topological Psychology, New York: McGraw-Hill. Lewin, Kurt (1948), Resolving Social Conflicts,  New York: Harper & Row, reprinted in Kurt Lewin (1997), Resolving Social Conflicts & Field Theory in Social Science, 1997, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 153–422. Lewin, Kurt (1951), Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers, New York: Harper & Row, reprinted in Kurt Lewin (1997), Resolving Social Conflicts & Field Theory in Social Science, 1997, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 1–152. Martin, John L. (2003), ‘What is field theory?’, American Journal of Sociology, 109 (1), 1–49. Nicholls, Alex (2006), ‘Introduction’, in Alex Nicholls (ed.), Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–36. Parkinson, Caroline and Carole Howarth (2008), ‘The language of social entrepreneurs’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 20 (3), 285–309. Rimmerman, Arie (2011), ‘The changes and developments that took place in the State of Israel in the area of developmental disabilities, and the role of Beit Issie Shapiro’, in Naomi Stuchiner, Israel Sykes and Sharon Bacher (eds), From Darkness the Dawn: How Beit Issie Shapiro Changed the World of Disabilities in Israel, Givataim: Rotem Publishing, pp. 253–60. Schechter, Chen, Israel Sykes and Jona Rosenfeld (2007), ‘Learning from success as leverage for school learning’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 11 (3), 301–18. Scott, W. Richard and John Meyer (1983), ‘The organization of societal sectors’, in John Meyer and Richard W. Scott (eds), Organizational Environments, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 129–53. Slaper, Timothy and Tanya Hall (2011), ‘The triple bottom line: What is it and how does it work?’, Indiana Business Review, Spring 2011. Steyaert, Chris (2010), ‘Queering space: Heterotopic life in Derek Jarman’s garden’, Gender, Work, and Organization, 17 (1), 45–68. Steyaert, Chris and Pascal Dey (2010), ‘Nine verbs to keep the social entrepreneurship research agenda “dangerous”’, The Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1 (2), 231–54. Steyaert, Chris and Daniel Hjorth (2006), ‘Introduction: What is social in social entrepreneurship?’, in Chris Steyaert and Daniel Hjorth (eds), Entrepreneurship as Social Change, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1–18.

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Steyaert, Chris and Jerome Katz (2004), ‘Reclaiming the space of entrepreneurship in society: Geographical, discursive and social dimensions’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 16 (3), 179–96. Stuchiner, Naomi (2011), ‘The development of Beit Issie as a social entrepreneurship process’, in Naomi Stuchiner, Israel Sykes and Sharon Bacher (eds), From Darkness the Dawn: How Beit Issie Shapiro Changed the World of Disabilities in Israel, Givataim: Rotem Publishing, pp. 29–48. Stuchiner, Naomi, Israel Sykes and Sharon Bacher (2011), From Darkness the Dawn: How Beit Issie Shapiro Changed the World of Disabilities in Israel, Givataim: Rotem Publishing. Sykes, Israel (2011), ‘Learning from our partners: A thirty years retrospective’, in Naomi Stuchiner, Israel Sykes and Sharon Bacher (eds), From Darkness the Dawn: How Beit Issie Shapiro Changed the World of Disabilities in Israel, Givataim: Rotem Publishing, pp. 63–91. Wallis, Steven (2009), ‘Seeking the robust core of social entrepreneurship theory’, in Jeffrey Goldstein, James K. Hazy and Joyce Silberstand (eds), Complexity Science and Social Entrepreneurship: Adding Social Value Through Systems Thinking, Litchfield Park, AZ: ISCE Publishing, pp. 83–106. Werlen, Benno (2009), ‘Regionalisations, everyday’, in Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift (eds), The International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography, Volume 9, Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 286–93.

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15. Becoming possible in the Anthropocene? Becomingsocialentrepreneurship as more-than-capitalist practice Marta B. Calás, Seray Ergene and Linda Smircich BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION This chapter attempts to reposition ‘social entrepreneurship’ in the ­contemporary context of social, environmental and economic transform­ ation, that is, in the context of the Anthropocene1 – a geological epoch where humankind is foregrounded as geological force affecting all life on the planet (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000), a context when fundamental changes in (human/anthropocentric) modes of being in the world are sorely needed. We believe that social entrepreneurship may have something to contribute to these important matters. Neither ‘social’ nor ‘entrepreneurship’ is a fixed signifier, but what if we imagine that their current modes of existence are trapped in a space of signification that is no longer there. Thus, we ask: what may be that space which is no longer there? What is the ‘there’ we should attend to now? If we do so imagine, what would change in these two signifiers, ‘social’ and ‘entrepreneurship’? Would they continue to exist? If so, would they continue to exist together? What could they/we be otherwise becoming? And why would it matter? At its core, this chapter is an exercise in the ‘what if ?’ including ‘the Anthropocene’ as part of our contemporary imaginary. To address these questions we engage with three current literatures of different disciplinary provenance but with important philosophical commonalities: postcapitalism, new materialisms and posthumanism. Bringing them together facilitates articulating a continuum of practices and entities, which we assemble in a neologism as becoming-socialentrepreneurship. The resulting articulation, we claim, harbors the necessary processes 264

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for engaging the emergence of a post-anthropocentric world. Our contribution in this regard is both theoretical and empirically grounded, offering specific examples with contrasting interpretations ranging from a negation of social entrepreneurship to a hopeful reading of its becoming-socialentrepreneurship. As overarching epistemological argument we follow Latour (2005) and position theories as mediators allowing us to examine how they translate ‘the elements they are supposed to carry’ (p. 39). We follow, in particular, Latour’s (2013a) more recent work on an anthropology of ‘the Moderns’’ modes of existence and his observation that ‘for each mode and for each epoch’ there is ‘a way of establishing the relations between “theory” and “practice”’ (p. 46). Continuing from his earlier position (1993) that ‘we have never been modern’, Latour (2010, 2011, 2013a, 2013b) refers to ‘modes of existence’ as values and institutions constituted by the Moderns when maintaining separation between (apparently independent) domains of knowledge in theory and practice (for example science, law, religion, the economy). Yet he insists that these ‘modes of existence’ are human-made associations (assemblages) of heterogeneous entities (networks) that could have been made up differently. What are the modes by which these knowledge networks expanded as if they had nothing to do with each other? In the performance (‘performation’ in Callon’s (2007) terms) of their separate expansions, what issues and entities were they framing and then addressing or not addressing? Starting from these observations, we maintain that typical conversations about ‘social entrepreneurship’ articulate relations between theory and practice that take for granted ‘market capitalism’ and the Holocene2 – a mode of existence in/and the epoch where we may no longer find ourselves. Knowledge in/for the Anthropocene may require different kinds (modes) of heterogeneous associations and ways of performing them: This work of assembly is especially necessary if we now are to imagine the ‘we’ that humans are supposed to feel part of in taking responsibility for the anthropocene [. . .] Instead of trying to distinguish what can no longer be distinguished, ask these key questions: what world is it that you are assembling, with which people do you align yourselves, with what entities are you proposing to live? (Latour, 2011, p. 7)

Reflecting on the challenges posed by Latour and our own questions about social entrepreneurship’s possibilities for the Anthropocene – and attempting to do something about it – we assemble a set of literature representing these contemporary conversations in various disciplines. In so doing, we align ourselves with them and with other entities with whom

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we are proposing to live, hoping to perform an affirmative argument where other worlds are possible. . . but without guarantees. . .. We align ourselves, in particular, with works in economic geography that have opened space to possibilities for a postcapitalist world (GibsonGraham, 1996a; 1996b; 2006). Concurrently, works in political science addressing new materialisms (Coole and Frost, 2010), and conceptions of posthumanism in feminist philosophy (Braidotti, 2011) help re-imagining new subjectivities for living in such a world. Each of these authors has rearticulated their earlier arguments in light of the Anthropocene, and a coalescence of their concerns can be observed (for example Braidotti, 2013; Coole, 2013; Gibson-Graham, 2011; Gibson-Graham and Roelvink, 2009; Gibson-Graham et al., 2013). Our arguments here are informed by and build on these works, ‘learning to be affected’ by them (Cameron et al., 2011; Latour, 2004), and forwarding a hopeful extension of their ideas into our field(s) of research. Bringing them together facilitates rethinking ‘social’, ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘capitalism’ in new figurations (as if) for the Anthropocene. What would that mean? And what difference would it make? These questions orient us as we perform three theoretical-empirical assembling tasks as practices of (re)theorizing-(re)searching-(re)organizing heterogeneous associations. Through these practices we expose to scrutiny and defamiliarization the Moderns’ modes of existence within our field in their conventional constitution of market capitalism. Concurrently, we experiment with other possible modes where becoming-socialentrepreneurship and/in a more-than-capitalist/more-than-human world may be possible. As Task 1, (re)theorizing, we practice assembling theoretical perspectives that question many of the conventions we take for granted regarding ‘capitalism’ as well as conventional ideas in our field about ‘the social’ and about ‘the human’. What is being ignored or made invisible by these conventions? Through this task we aim to open other spaces for theoretically re-imagining such matters. As Task 2, we illustrate the value of this theoretical reassembling with an empirical example, our (re)searching practices, in an entrepreneurial business organization. These illustrations start with a brief dual-reading of observed business practices as if they had been articulated through the Moderns’ disciplinary knowledge. What might be observed through these understandings? Who/what matters? Next we re-read these practices ‘as if’ they had been articulated from a different epoch – the Anthropocene – where other modes of existence and other entities would appear possible. We represent these ideas methodologically through Latour’s version of actor–network theory. Each of our informing works in Task 1, under their

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own different theoretical premises, has also highlighted this approach as possible methodology for producing knowledge in the Anthropocene. Finally, as Task 3, (re)organizing – we offer some reflections following from the empirical explorations offered in Task 2. These, we hope, are affirmative possibilities for ethical action in the Anthropocene that becoming-socialentrepreneurship may have opened up; possibilities that might spark the imagination for a ‘we’ (we might) be-coming. Altogether, we acknowledge there is not much novelty in what we are attempting to do. In principle, it is an attempt to examine once again theory–practice relationships in organization studies as both ways of seeing and ways of not seeing. Yet we also believe there is merit in re-imagining what we collectively already know, opening possibilities for re-assembling what we collectively already do as practice/practicing and theory/theorizing in our field. In so doing we join the experimenting interests, imaginative sensibilities, conceptual and methodological concerns, and, in particular, the performative value of writing for social change that can be observed in some European social entrepreneurship and entrepreneuring studies (for example Steyaert, 2011; Hjorth, 2013). The hopes for our writing experiment are to configure a posthuman subjectivity – theoretically and empirically grounded – as becoming-socialentrepreneurship. We envision its possibilities as those of a subject capable of carving material spaces for more-than-capitalist entrepreneuring practices in the Anthropocene; spaces that might emerge here, in the space of writing, as lines of flight from within the Moderns’ capitalist machine.

TASK 1: (RE)THEORIZING: RE-IMAGINING ‘CAPITALISM’, ‘THE SOCIAL’ AND ‘THE HUMAN’ The literature we draw on exhibits several commonalities. Each of these works has returned to materialist concerns voiced by earlier feminist perspectives: the loss of political agency posed by the postmodern/poststructuralist discursive focus (the ‘linguistic/cultural turn’) and its radical anti-essentialism. Here the materiality of bodies – humans and others  – would regain central consideration (for example Ahmed, 2008; Willey, 2016). At the same time, the literature shares attachments to process phil­ osophies inimical to dualisms, including Deleuzian thought, while exhibiting contemporary feminist theoretical sensibilities. That is, these works address many kinds of ‘outsiders’ – issues, people, topics, entities and processes – in ethical stances that go beyond the theoretical constraints of, for instance, ‘gender’, ‘identity’, ‘intersectionality’, and so on. In addition, these works have engaged with the Anthropocene,

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r­ ecognizing that now we must live in a more-than-human world, explicitly acknowledging the interdependence of humans and nonhumans in a world they/we have co-constituted. Under this recognition they have also articulated the necessity of new ontological and methodological considerations. It is in this context that the potential of Latour’s scholarship for understanding and addressing these matters – including through actor–network theory – has been highlighted. Nonetheless, each of these works also offers unique insights worth emphasizing. Our intent, thus, is not to perform an act of ‘purification’ for each of their ‘domains of knowledge’ – that is, to keep them separate, as the Moderns would have done – but to expand a heterogeneity of ideas and entities which we may need for imagining, assembling and engaging differently with/in other possible modes of being-in/of-the-world now. Re-imagining ‘Capitalism’ Gibson-Graham and co-authors in economic geography (Gibson-Graham, 1996a, 1996b, 2006; Gibson-Graham et al., 2013) open our first line of flight. These works help us highlight that a more-than-capitalist world is and has always been possible. Informed from the start by a feminist political imaginary, GibsonGraham (1996a, 1996b) argued for queer(y)ing capitalist organization by denying capitalism the solidity and hegemonic social position it apparently demands: it is possible [. . .] and potentially productive to understand capitalist hegemony as a (dominant) discourse rather than as a social articulation or structure. Thus one might represent economic practice as comprising a rich diversity of capitalist and non-capitalist activities and argue that the non-capitalist ones had until now been relatively ‘invisible’ because the concepts and discourses that could make them ‘visible’ have themselves been marginalized and suppressed. [. . .] In this project of discursive destabilization, the first task is to undermine familiar representations of capitalism – as the hegemonic form of economy, as necessarily and naturally dominant. (Gibson-Graham 1996a, p. 543)

Efforts to re-imagine capitalism continued in Gibson-Graham (2006) and associates (Gibson-Graham et al., 2013) when focusing on bringing to visibility the unavoidable diversity in all economies – where capitalist and non-capitalist practices co-exist, but where the latter, such as caring practices, often remain submerged as invisible or irrelevant. Gibson-Graham (2006) posits capitalism and non-capitalism as coexisting in a relational space where three economic practices are present in complex combinations: ‘transactions’ that circulate the goods and services;

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‘labor’ that supports material well-being; and ‘enterprise’ that organizes the production, appropriation and distribution of surplus labor. While capitalism involves exchange in transactions of equivalent value within what is regarded as the free market space (rules of exchange based on the laws of supply and demand), non-capitalism appears within nonmarket and alternative market transactions involving culturally shared rules and norms rather than rules of commensurable exchange (for example household production, state allocations, underground market, informal market, and so on). Accordingly, capitalism employs wage labor, that is, the practice of exchanging the effort of workers who do not own the means of production in return for a monetary compensation, whereas non-capitalism involves unpaid and alternatively paid labor, that is, labor not compensated in monetary terms but through other benefits such as sharing, love and emotional support and subsistence. Further, through enterprises, capitalism organizes the relationship between production and ownership, that is, non-producers appropriate (for example board of directors) and distribute (to shareholders) surplus labor by limiting its control by the producers (workers). Concurrently, non-capitalist and alternative capitalist enterprises provide the control of surplus labor to the producers as mode of allocating the surplus. These forms of enterprise include, for instance, varieties of worker cooperatives, green and socially responsible firms. In these arguments, diverse economies – a more-than-capitalist world – exist but often go unrecognized or dismissed as fringe alternatives. Thus, this work emphasizes the ontological reframing required for a politics of economic possibility, including a politics of language for gaining a discursive space in which economic innovation can be recognized as viable. Concurrently, a politics of the subject is necessary – a resubjectivation where subjects are available to other possibilities of becoming in diverse economies. To this they add a politics of collective action involving ‘conscious and combined efforts to build a new kind of economic reality’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006, p. xxxvi). Gibson-Graham et al.’s (2013) book reframes the economy further as a space of ethical action, which communities can shape and alter according to what is best for the well-being of people and the planet in the age of the Anthropocene. This volume functions as a workbook, merging theory–practice while exploring what is already being done to build ethical economies as mutual concerns of everyone – no experts needed. Here the aim is not accumulation but asking what is necessary for survival, and what to do with the surplus produced beyond fulfilling basic needs. Their work focuses on how all people in communities consume, preserve and replenish, and how to invest in a future worth living in. It reiterates what started

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as the Community Economies projects,3 making practical interventions to further emphasize and make accessible the relationships between the possibility of diverse economies and the communities in which they are embedded. In short, these authors highlight possibilities for a more-thancapitalist world; a world that seems to be intensifying as diverse economies attain increasing recognition worldwide (for example Cameron et al., 2014; Newbury and Gibson, 2016; Roelvink et al., 2015). Performing diverse economies would disarticulate the capitalism–socialentrepreneurship nexus. This performance contributes to dissolving this nexus by exposing the mirage of capitalism’s hegemonic solidity, which subordinates ‘social entrepreneurship’ and those who engage in such practices (for example Cameron, 2010). That is, this performative ontological project would break the ongoing naturalization of capitalism and social entrepreneurship – as also called for in the social entrepreneurship literature (for example Jones and Murtola, 2012; Hjorth, 2013) – to move it beyond the representation of social entrepreneurship as within capitalist relations and practices. What are other possibilities of becoming subjects in diverse economies? How would these possibilities manifest themselves as other than, for instance, ‘social entrepreneurs’ as we know them? Gibson-Graham and associates have reconsidered the question of the subject once again by addressing the Anthropocene directly: responding to the challenges of the Anthropocene is not simply about humans finding a technological or normative fix that will control and restore the earth. It is about human beings being transformed by the world in which we find ourselves – or, to put this in more reciprocal terms, it is about the earth’s future being transformed through a living process of inter-being. (Gibson-Graham and Roelvink, 2009, p. 322)

These arguments bring with them a different ethical posture for the human subject, that of learners, in particular Latour’s (2004) notion of learning to be affected. Following feminist critiques of hyper-separation, Gibson-Graham (2011) observes that the ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene would require ‘us to move beyond the divisive binaries human/nonhuman, subject/object, economy/ecology, and thinking/acting’. They forward an inspiration to reframe ‘our living worlds as vast uncontrolled experiments [. . .] to reposition ourselves as learners, increasingly open to interconnections with earth others and more willing to intervene in adventurous ways’ (Gibson-Graham, 2011, p. 1, emphasis added).

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Re-imagining ‘the Social’ Following the works just discussed, we reposition ourselves as learners. In doing so, we heed their call for a politics of the subject and resubjectivation as part of the processes of making possible diverse economies in a morethan-human world. How would that world be-come? By what sociality would it be engendered? (cf. Hjorth, 2013). For our purpose there is more assembling to be done via other ontological and epistemological arguments as we re-imagine ‘the social’ through the lenses of new materialisms, our next line of flight. Here we draw from the works of feminist political theorists Coole (for example 2015) and Frost (for example 2014). We are particularly interested in their ontological arguments regarding new critical materialisms (Coole; 2013; Coole and Frost, 2010), where society is simultaneously material and socially constructed as they insist on ‘the generative and resilience of the material forms with which social actors interact’ (Coole and Frost, 2010, p. 26). This work moves the focus of attention to the social as contingent processes of materialization where ‘more or less enduring structures and assemblages sediment and congeal, sometimes as a result of their internal inertia but also as a manifestation of the powerful interests invested therein’ (ibid., p. 29). Coole and Frost’s arguments foster a shift of perspectives in areas of social theory that maintain ethical concerns about subjectivity. In calling for such shifts, they recognize that after poststructuralism, issues of subjectivity materialize in terrains needing different approaches to social analysis. In their view, analytical approaches within disciplinary domains dissolve, for instance, into spaces where biopolitics, critical geopolitics, political economy, genealogies and phenomenologies of everyday life would combine in critical new materialist analyses. Such analyses foreground what it means to be ‘a material individual with biological needs for survival yet inhabiting a world of natural and artificial objects, well-honed micropowers of governmentality, and [. . .] anonymous but [. . .] compelling effects of international economic structures’ (ibid., p. 28). Coole (2013) extends these arguments further as an ethico-political intervention to focus on the question of agency. Ontologically, new ma­terialism shifts agency away from specific actors. Rather, agency is ascribed to processes of becoming where ‘the generativity of materialization is not attributable to any extraneous substance, force or agency, but [. . .] inherent in the fractures, non-coincidence, relationality, encounters that endow matter with internal effulgence’ (p. 456). To this effect, analytical emphasis would not focus on actors but ‘on the shifting associations between and within entities that are incessantly engendering new assemblages within

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open systems’ (ibid.). These systems are made up of agentic forces, interacting with and transforming one another. Specifically, this is not an argument to discard ‘agency’, or to absolve ‘agents’ from their responsibility but a re-thinking of these notions as distributed agency where everyone and everything has ‘agentic capacities’. In particular, Coole (2013) argues that by rejecting this language of agency (cognition, rationality, masculinity) and by showing that agentic capacities are diffused across many types of material entity, new materialists are able to decouple agency from humans while raising questions about the nature of life and the place or status of the human within it. (p. 457)

This is especially important when recognizing the question of human responsibility in the Anthropocene. Coole does not absolve humans from their responsibilities for environmental damage, yet she also rejects expect­ ations that humans can solve these problems. They are neither omnipotent nor omniscient: ‘on the contrary, new materialist ontology emphasises the lack of control humans exercise over the complex systems with which they are melded and the weakness of collective agency in geopolitical contexts’ (2013, pp. 460–61). In fact, she cautions that in trying to resolve these problems, one ‘must also be alert to the unique ways humans’ imprudent interventions in basic life-support systems pose a threat to all species and to the very fabric of the earth’ (ibid.) Under these circumstances Coole suggests an ethical direction: a new sensibility which appreciates the agentic capacities of the nonhu­ man and the complex systems in which humans are embedded. This is not a romantic understanding of humans communing with nature. Rather, it is a call for empirical, scientific and political investigations to obtain ‘better understanding and cri­tique of the circuits through which matter flows’ (2013, p. 463). The focus of these investigations, to which she calls the scholarly communities to task, is to be able to grasp ‘the damage and challenges current forms of production and consumption involve or to think realistically about ways mate­rially to transform them’ (ibid.). In this argument, it is still premature to put forward an alternative to global capitalism, but it is necessary to at least articulate an ethical posture. Responsibility falls on social scientists and critical theorists. It is their/ our job to bring to visibility these contemporary conditions with a focus on how most of material life has been commodified and embedded in the competitive market system. Specifically, dominant discourses ‘of economics, politics and demography have been complementarily pro-growth: they both promote and rely upon incessant increases in consumption, pro­ duction and population’ (Coole, 2013, p. 463). Thus, even in the unlikely

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event that a new ethos would emerge countering the hegemonic position of pro-growth policies, it is still the responsibility of scholars ‘to analyse these discursive frameworks and ideological claims, to demonstrate their material consequences, to identify the constituencies that benefit materially and disproportionately from them, and patiently to engender agentic forces that are persuaded of the high stakes at issue’ (ibid.). Of key importance for these analyses is recognizing that materiality’s mode of existence is constantly appearing/transforming/disappearing in emergent and contingent relational processes of materialization. Therefore, understanding its constitution requires what Coole and Frost (2010) name as a ‘multimodal materialist methodology’. In this regard, methodological approaches would allow for tracing complex causalities and ­interdependences – where human intervention can also be observed – running between micro-processes of everyday life and what might have congealed as apparently macro-structural. Coole (2013) explicitly identifies actor–network theory, and Latour’s work in particular, as consistent epistemologically and methodologically with her arguments when irreducibly ascribing agency to human/­ nonhuman systems. By tracing empirical details of varieties of actants (in actor–network theory’s lexicon) and dense networks, it is possible to account for these assemblages’ actions; that is, action that should be recognized as a ‘conglomerate of many surprising sets of agencies that have to be slowly disentangled’ (Coole, 2013, p. 460). The ‘social’ thus resides in these events. Re-imagined as contingent processes of materialization, the social emerges from its own conditions of possibilities and, concurrently, from powerful interests contributing to its sedimentation and naturalization. As such, we further emphasize the importance of understanding ‘the social’ methodologically through multi­ modal materialist analyses of relationships of power in nondeterministic ways, where ‘other worlds’ are possible (cf. Steyaert, 2011) even though without guarantees. Following from such premises, we, as social scientists, can also re-imagine ‘entrepreneurship’ not as a structural social position for some humans but as agentic forces in contingent processes of materialization, human and nonhuman, which would require accounting for their actions. For instance, how are these assemblages – that is, agentic forces of entrepreneurship – entangled in pro-growth policies? Re-imagining ‘the Human’ From these reflections, we go on to observe that too much ‘modern humanity’ continues to be attached to notions of ‘entrepreneurship’ as well as to

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processes of entrepreneuring as we know them (even though Steyaert’s (2007) review revealed some overtures moving away from human-centered perspectives). What would it take to further re-imagine an entrepreneurship that is not dependent on human-social positions or processes? What would it take to re-imagine it as agentic forces emerging in contingent processes of materialization beyond the human? And, how would we go beyond ‘the human’ without falling into inhumanity? Braidotti’s (2011; 2013) feminist philosophy might help in conjuring a posthuman figuration of ‘entrepreneurship’, our third line of flight. Braidotti (2011) provides an account of feminist new materialism – which she labels ‘nomadic critical theory’ – to offer a ‘redefinition of thinking that links philosophy to the creation of new forms of subjectivity, and collective experiments with ways of actualizing them’ (p. 6). From this perspective, new materialism is a critical perspective as well as a method and a political standpoint that insists on the materiality of relations of power. Specifically, Braidotti considers subjectivity as the effects of the constant flow of these relations of power, emphasizing the emergence of social subjects as an ongoing and negotiated collective phenomenon. A central aim of the nomadic subject is a critical yet affirmative imagination, combining critique with creativity in the pursuit of producing alternative visions and projects for social life. Braidotti (2013) goes further on to offer an anthropogenic ­perspective – that is, starting from the human impact on the environment – to make sense of our present subjectivities ‘in the bio-genetic age known as “anthropocene”’ (p. 5). Similar to her prior work, Braidotti follows process philosophy of a monist persuasion that she calls a ‘rehabilitated Spinozist monism’ (p. 56), defining matter as vital and self-organizing, and rejecting all forms of transcendentalism. Her proposed general frame of reference aims to conceive a post-anthropocentric contemporary subjectivity as a direct connection between philosophical monism and the unity of all matter. Taking inspiration from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), and their differentiating between the virtual and the actual, her notion of ‘posthumanism’ expands the idea of becoming as a bringing together of human and nonhuman life, and stressing matter’s self-organizing force. While sympathetic to Latour’s version of actor–network theory as a methodological possibility, she decries more generally the degree of political neutrality in science and technology studies. As such, Braidotti’s posthuman post-anthropocentric subject fosters a new ecological posthumanism, questioning reflexively issues of power and entitlement under conditions of globalization while envisioning affirmative practices of relating to others. Such practices produce ways of ‘combining self-interests with the well-being of an enlarged community,

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based on environmental inter-connections’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 48). To this effect, she defines the posthuman as a relational subject constituted by internal and external multiplicity and belongings, but also grounded and accountable. Importantly, in this argument ‘posthuman subjectivity expresses an embodied and embedded [. . .] partial form of accountability, based on a strong sense of collectivity, relationality and hence community building’ (ibid., p. 49). Braidotti re-thinks these posthuman post-anthropocentric subjects as ‘nature–culture continuums’, in a move avoiding separation between anthropos – life as biologically organic and culturally discursive – and zoe – life outside of anthropos, as in the scope of animals and other nonhuman matter, including technology. Inspired by but not identical to Haraway’s (for example 1989, 1991, 1997) original natureculture4 formulation (for example cyborgs), nature–culture continuums are not hyphenated dualisms but shown as figurations to stress the self-organizing force of living matter in radical transversal relations, which in Braidotti’s arguments are capable of moving against spurious and opportunistic aspects of advanced ­capitalism. They are part of her methodological strategy of defamiliarization, offering a critical distance from conventional figurations of the subject. This posthuman subject would require new normative frameworks articulating relational structures of subject formation and possible ethical relations that, in Braidotti’s (2013) words, ‘is the focus of collectively enacted, non-profit oriented experimentation with intensity, that is to say with what we are actually capable of becoming’ (p. 92). In this argument, she fosters a sustainable ethics for non-unitary subjects resting on an increased sense of interconnections between all ‘by removing the obstacles of self-centred individualism [. . .] and the barriers of negativity’ (ibid., p. 190). This is an ethics of experimentation and imagination, geared towards creating possible futures and linked to the affirmative creative powers of feminism. In short, for Braidotti ‘becoming-posthuman’ (ibid., p. 192, hyphen in original) resides in an affirmative politics redefining one’s sense of attachment to a shared world, and expressing multiple ecologies of belonging. On this basis, what would a posthuman entrepreneurship subject become if we re-imagine ‘entrepreneurship’ as nature–culture continuums articulated in multiple transversal relations and ecologies of belonging? We call it becoming-socialentrepreneurship. This posthuman figuration – ‘the expression of alternative representations of the subject as a dynamic non-unitary entity; a dramatization of processes of becoming’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 164) – can act against what may otherwise appear as legitimate and appropriate aspects of advanced capitalism, while creating an ethos

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of affirmative possibilities, ‘expanding the boundaries of what transversal and non-unitary subjects can become’ (ibid., p. 194). In conjuring becoming-socialentrepreneurship we thus imagine it as a posthuman figuration suitable for a more-than-capitalist world admitting to diverse economies, and for a re-materializing social denying the inevitability of social structure. As such, we return to where we started, arguing that this subject is capable of queer(y)ing capitalist hegemony and breaking apart some of its consolidating associations, including exposing the diversity of economic and organization activity, and entities that exist under what otherwise appears as the stable norm and only possibility. We arrive at this point by reflecting on our re-theorizing task. As we think it, we have moved through cycles in which processes of ­materialization – the virtual and the actual – reclaim solidified images of ‘the social’ and of ‘the human’ as collectivities with agentic capacities, and also break them apart and expose the complexity and diversity of what they might become as human/nonhuman assemblages. In our view, these are empowering practices of theorizing feminist affirmative possibilities for ‘entrepreneurship as social change’ in/for the Anthropocene. For sure, they belong to a theoretical space far beyond our earlier human-centered feminist reclaiming of entrepreneuring as social change processes (Calás et  al., 2009), a space which we think is no longer sufficient for the world we now inhabit. Rather, now we must ask, what can practices of re-theorizing in/for the Anthropocene, as we have done here, accomplish in re-search practic/es/ ing?

TASK 2: (RE)SEARCHING: BECOMINGSOCIALENTREPRENEURSHIP AS PRACTICE Our illustrations in the following paragraphs may help answer this latter question. Here we examine empirically some practices of an entrepreneurial business organization whose activities – some of which may be seen as aspects of ‘social entrepreneurship’ – we have been following and observing at various points since 2012. We describe the company first and then offer empirical illustrations, starting with a brief dualreading of observed business practices as these might be articulated by the Moderns’ disciplinary understandings. What may be observed through these understandings? Who/what matters? The dual reading is a prelude to our ‘as if’ story, that is, ‘as if’ the story were told from a different epoch – the Anthropocene – where other modes of existence and other entities would appear possible. This ‘as if’ story emerges from notions already articulated in our theoretical re-imaginings. What difference would this

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make in research practices? Is it that normative (the Moderns) theoretical and research frameworks prevent us from observing these processes? We answer these questions by performing an actor–network analysis to re-present becoming-socialentrepreneurship. The Company Founded in the US in the mid-1980s by a female entrepreneur, and now also located in other countries, this organization would be seen by outsiders as a fashion company whose intended customers are mostly upper-middle class women. The company is notable for the simplicity of its designs, but otherwise very much engaged in traditional market-based economic activity. Yet some company publications describe the company’s activities as ‘Working in the uneasy space between fashion and timelessness’5 aspiring to maintain this open space every day and, paradoxically for a fashion company, contesting temporariness. In fact, the company’s personnel – cutting across what traditionally would be described as people in various hierarchical positions – see their jobs as creating ‘life beyond just season’, a style that never goes out of fashion. Recently, they have fully embraced environmental sustainability, starting from the seed of the fiber, and striving for embedding the fiber’s natural strengths into their designs. Meanwhile, internally this has always been an employee-oriented company, and often recognized as such by the business press. For instance, since 1991 the company has provided their employees with wellness and education benefits packages. In 2006, it started an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), transferring 30 percent of the company shares to the employees. As far as we can tell, this is still an ongoing program where the founder continues to transfer ownership gradually for the remaining shares. A more recent practice includes distributing profits in similar profit ratios to all employees at year’s end. It should also be said that the company stock is not publicly traded. Not surprisingly, the company has been selected since 2004 as one of the ‘25 Best Medium Size Companies to Work for in America’. It has also been described as a socially responsible entrepreneurial company, undertaking projects supporting women and girls, employing raw materials that are environmentally sustainable, and engaging in ethical practices by focusing on human rights issues around the world. For company personnel these practices also mean raising awareness in society – customers, vendors, partners – and getting everyone included as stakeholders that would join such concerns. Further, the company has been engaged in lobbying activities to resist and change the unfair system within which the garment industry exists.

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For instance, since 2012, the company has been partnering with an NGO which tracks worker slavery, including human trafficking and sex slavery, all around the world. In these regards, someone who may be seen as occupying the equivalent of an executive position (in other companies) describes what she considers to be her and the company’s responsibility as follows: The reason why the kind of work that I do right now exists is because it was felt many years ago that governments all over the world, are not carrying their weight, they are not enforcing their own laws, which is really what it comes down to. . . I think what we’ve learned is that our responsibility doesn’t stop at the walls of our own company. We really do have a responsibility to partner with others who can help us produce ethical and responsible products all the way down to where the seeds come from. (Radio show interview, emphasis added)

The information about the company is drawn from empirical m ­ aterial we have been collecting over the last three years for a still ongoing research project. So far the collected data includes observations at various company sites (for example company offices and retail stores), meetings with several company actors, attendance at company-sponsored public events, documents from internal publications and public media, and other material artifacts associated with the company’s products. The materials we use for  illustrations in this chapter, however, are drawn exclusively from public documents and media, and other publicly accessible artifacts, including  those from some of our observations as customers in retail stores. As publicly available information this is a view from afar into the doings of this company, which any observer (for example lay or academic) would have been able to access. What kinds of stories emerge from this information? Dual-reading from the Moderns For our dual-reading here we leave intact assumptions regarding organizations under normative market capitalism, expected to be hierarchically structured and with the potential for creating and probably maintaining a healthy financial outlook. What would we see as happening here if we think from the capitalism–social-entrepreneurship nexus? For instance, what kind of analysis may be leveled at the practices of such a company from a functionalist managerialist perspective? Further, what kind of analysis may be leveled at the practices of such a company from a critical emancipatory perspective? Note that in doing this we are emphasizing that these two interpretations comprise a dual-reading reiter-

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ating ‘the Moderns’ modes of existence’. Whether functionalist or critical, managerialist or emancipatory, they still belong to the same domain of expectations, albeit in opposition to one another, that is, the values and institutions constituted by the Moderns when maintaining separation between (apparently independent) domains of knowledge in theory and practice. Insofar as assumptions regarding organizations under normative market capitalism are left intact, not much would change in the way we think about these practices or about capitalism more generally. Roughly, a reading under functionalist managerialism would focus on some of these practices for their primary value as entrepreneurial opportunities through marketing activities –possibly pro-growth opportunities – and also assess the company’s limitations in this regard. Therefore this reading might pay attention to the (human) personnel in the retail stores as carrying the image – or not – of the merchandise itself (fairly expensive merchandise for fairly upper-middle-class customers). This reading may also question the logic of a paradoxical ‘timeless fashion’ when trying to sustain competitive advantage in the fashion industry, where designing ‘novelty’ is standard practice. A managerialist view might also show concern about the cost for the company of being too oriented to sustainability or human rights issues, that is ‘for real’ regardless of cost, rather than specifically good for marketing – that is, the business case for corporate social responsibility. How much is spent in these activities? What is the return on investment? In the other extreme, a roughly critical emancipatory reading, more easily associated with social entrepreneurship, would likely parallel the one above. Some questions might be raised about the high visibility acquired by notions of sustainable practices in marketing activities, and how these are implemented by accessing producers in non-affluent countries – for example ‘third world’ women: isn’t this another form of exploitation? And what about participating in ‘human rights campaigns’? Who is ‘the human’ represented by these campaigns? In whose image from the ‘global north’ are ‘rights’ articulated? What ‘local rights’ are left unrecognized? Note, thus, that this dual-reading – in both managerialist and emancipatory versions, separate and together – reiterates the primacy of market capitalism as solid and in a hegemonic position, whether condoning or resisting it . . . Capitalism as we know it . . . (Gibson-Graham, 1996b). In addition, the society articulated in these narratives is hierarchically structured, and the notion of humanity – whether individualized or collectivized (for example individual employees or ‘third world’ women) – is an integral human ‘subject of rights’ (or lack thereof), whether this subject is the affluent or the deprived. This dual-reading, thus, is probably not news to anyone, but we also believe doing it was a necessary first move for

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disarticulating the nexus capitalism–social-entrepreneurship, which is the focus of our ‘as if’ story below. ‘As if’ in/for the Anthropocene Specifically, in this second reading we start by interpreting company practices ‘as if’ these practices would be queer(y)ing capitalist market organization and economic practices as we know them. How can we re-imagine ‘social’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ under more-than-capitalist premises in order to make visible diverse economies? What else is going on in this company? What new forms of ‘sociality’ and ‘humanity’ might be emerging? At face value, a new materialist reading would see the company redressing ‘capitalism’ as contingent processes of materialization. The company sustains capitalist practices through its employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), but also queers them through non-capitalist practices by distributing the same wellness packages and profit ratios to all employees; it produces clothes for affluent customers but also engages in public awareness practices addressing multiple stakeholders and intervening in global social issues. Yet, more than a space of co-existence (Gibson-Graham, 2006) there are tensions between capitalist and non-capitalist practices in these activities. Agentic forces appear in these tensions and, if sustainable, they might also help re-think ‘class’ (for example reconciling customers in the ‘global north’ and producers in the ‘global south’) through transversal relations and emerging collectivities. These would act as wedges between the re­appearance of a ‘sociality’ supporting market capitalism as hierarchically structured, sedimented and inevitable. Several company practices already reduce hierarchical arrangements by renouncing titles and emphasizing collectivities in decision-making, and by implication reducing the importance of the traditional ‘individualized and competitive human’ in the organization. However, there is no guarantee that these tensions would be sustainable – that is, stay ‘unresolved’. Instead the weight of market capitalism might pare down what would be seen as ‘contradictions’ in the company’s public awareness activities and attempts to ‘reorganize’ them along ‘pro-growth’ market logics may appear. Nonetheless, there could be other agentic forces emerging within the company’s own values that would counter such possibility: company personnel learning to be affected by its engagement with a diversity of peoples in the world, including those involved in producing seeds, producing the clothes, all through the supply chain and up to relations with the customer. As declared by a company member in our earlier quote, ‘we’ve learned that our responsibility doesn’t stop at the walls of our own company. We really do have a responsibility to partner with others who can help us produce

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ethical and responsible products all the way down to where the seeds come from’. And further, many company practices regarding ‘sustainability’ might also be thought of as contributing toward the becoming of a postanthropocentric/postcapitalist subject in new relationships between humans and nonhumans. This shows up in particular when the company refuses to articulate such relationships in terms of market value. For instance, in a recent brochure and newspaper advertising, the company founder states: Becoming more mindful about clothing means looking at every fibre and every seed and every dye and seeing how to make it better. We don’t want sustainability to be our edge, we want it to be universal. (Company document; emphasis added)

This wording signals to us that despite the company’s apparently ‘modern humanist practices’, a posthuman subjectivity may also be emerging: it seems that every fiber, every seed and every dye are becoming important actors for a more-than-human, more-than-capitalist world. Observing such emergence, though, would require new normative frameworks for articulating relational processes of subject formation and possible ethical relations that, in Braidotti’s (2013, p. 92) words, ‘is the focus of collectively enacted, non-profit oriented experimentation with intensity; that is to say with what we are actually capable of becoming’. Is this already happening in this company? Tracing the Seeds: Becoming-socialentrepreneurship This part of the story focuses on the company’s acceleration of sustainability efforts, several of which existed earlier (before 2012) but not with the same intensity. To articulate our methodological-analytical narrative and tell the rest of this story we must ask other questions first: how and by whom is sustainability done in this company? How to know ‘sustainability’ if a nonhuman agent such as a seed were to actively organize everything and everyone that makes up the company? Methodologically informed by actor– network theory as a form of multimodal materialist analysis, we engage in a strategy of defamiliarization by allowing nature–culture continuums to act. As already indicated in Task 1, in each of the reviewed works, actor–network theory is highlighted as appropriate methodology for restoring parity to nonhuman action possibly distorted or made invisible by privileging human agency. Not doing so leaves the former unspoken and unattended. An actor–network theory narrative allows the seeds to act and material artifacts to be assembled and reassembled without having human action at the center of the narrative. This is of particular importance when studying

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the doing of sustainability since the making of this process includes nonhuman elements: the seeds, leaves, worms, water, land, and so on. These are also the incipient elements of our assemblage becoming-socialentrepreneurship, which we claim is an ongoing process in the company. To perform actor–network theory we start from Latour’s (2005) retelling and clarification of it as the sociology of associations where actants – acting human or nonhuman elements – have agency to move, act and make others do things. He addresses agency as a process through which translation and performance occur, while actants are mediators which translate the social by their movement. Here we re-translate the agency of actants as agentic capacities (Coole, 2013). We thus conceive of sustainability in new materialist terms as a complex construction process of the social and follow how this process of displacements and associations unfolds and extends as a network of agentic capacities. As human and nonhuman actants move and make others do things, they generate relational effects – associations – and render visible the movement of the social in material representations. When these effects are translated from one representation to the next they may become stabilized as material artifacts which are visible to the observer. Each time that the social stabil­ izes, it means that it has circulated, translated, assembled and reassembled in a different material form and representation. These effects are thus the distributed agency that researchers trace and see as the flow of the social; that is, it is the traceable process of becoming social. In short, the network followed by researchers in actor–network theory ‘is the trace left behind by some moving agent’ (Latour, 2005, p. 132). Thus, we can now ask: through which associations between cotton seeds, peasants, fiber, factory workers, sustainability department, racks, retail stores, customers, and so on is sustainability produced, translated, assembled and reassembled? How and by whom is sustainability done in this company? The seeds we are tracing in this story are the ones that the clothing company translates into what it calls ‘eco-social product’ – clothing made of fibers that are organic and responsibly produced. They say ‘these clothes start with a seed’: ‘A seed that grows into a plant, a plant that flowers and is pollinated by the very bees whose plight is in the headlines.’ (Company document), and turning seeds into eco-social products constitutes a major translation process: What does it mean to be a socially and environmentally responsible company – and still sell clothes? [. . .] offsetting our domestic energy usage, exploring chlorine-free wool and looking for new ways to fight human trafficking and slavery. But it’s an imperfect world out there [. . .]. (Company document)

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The seed by itself is a biologically natural living object producing and reproducing cotton plants, flowers and other seeds through its associations with the land, water and air. However, the movement of the seed and its becoming of other assemblages (for example eco-social products) make the seed not only natural but also social. To rephrase through the language of actor–network theory, as the seed circulates and creates the worknet, it generates effects and its socialness becomes visible. It is only after we recognize this movement of the seed that we can (re)trace the work-net and know about how and by whom sustainability is done in this company. Following trajectories of the seed, we learn that the current issue at hand is to prevent the seeds from doing bad; in other words, what is at stake is controlling the seeds harming: the water, Uzbekistan’s cotton industry is creating immeasurable damage to the environment [. . .] Its cotton irrigation and drainage systems have all but eradicated the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world. Eighty-five percent of the water from the Aral Sea has been drained in order to irrigate cotton fields, causing a 600 percent increase in the salinity of the local water and permanently damaging the irrigated soil and local ecosystems. (Company document)

farmers and local communities, This family-friendly supply chain, which we have been part of since 2005, is thoughtfully conceived from field to factory. The cotton is organic, which means farm workers are not exposed to harmful pesticides. (Company document)

the land, Like children, growing plants need lots of nutrients. Organic farmers create healthy soil with compost and cover crops. Conventional farmers rely on nitrogen-rich synthetic fertilizers similar to those applied to American lawns. At home and on the farm, these have unwanted side effects: They create nitrogen runoff that has been linked to the declining health of Chesapeake Bay and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. (Company document)

and the factory workers, We have to be responsible for our products from the very beginning. We have to ask ourselves: how are men and women being treated when they’re creating our clothes? What can we do to affect their situation, their lifestyle and their working hours? – the founder. (Company document)

Meanwhile, an account from the coordinator of sustainability written in a company document indicates other company concerns even beyond their supply chain:

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[. . .] the factories that sew our clothes and knit our sweaters. [But] What about the mills that supply them with fabrics and yarns? Who makes the zippers and buttons? And who works in the cotton and flax fields, the sheep and alpaca ranches where our clothes begin? (Company document, emphasis added)

And we also hear concerns about how it is not easy to control the seed from doing bad. For instance, a designer acknowledges: Denim is a dizzying world. You hear so much about the washes polluting and the working conditions being terrible. We thought that if we asked for organic cotton it would naturally lead us to the right kind of a supply chain and the right niche for our product. It wasn’t easy – a denim fabric designer. (Company document, emphasis added)

Reading the field from the sociology of associations, we understand that it is probably not so easy to keep the seed under human control when there are a lot of possibilities for the seed to escape and become an actant making others do bad. In fact, the following dialogue, portraying an inquiry to the coordinator of sustainability, illustrates ways in which the seed becomes uncontrollable: ‘Recently [the company] received a letter from a nonprofit asking if we use cotton from Uzbekistan, where child and forced labor is common and where the Aral Sea is being drained to irrigate cotton fields.’ (Company document). The coordinator of sustainability replies: We think the answer is no [. . .] We have a policy against using Uzbek cotton. But can we be absolutely certain that a bale hasn’t been mixed in by some middleman in our supply chain? Verification of fibre sourcing is extremely tricky. (Company document)

Is it possible that because the seed persistently escapes, the simple questioning of the seeds doing bad becomes indispensable for the survival of the company? Is this a constant becoming-socialentrepreneurship? For instance, in pursuit of controlling the seed not doing harm to the land, the coordinator of the supply chain operations located in New York flies to Arizona and organizes meetings with the local cotton growers. An organic cotton grower states: It is hell of a lot more work. A conventional guy gets a problem, he can spray. We get a problem and we basically have to shoo the bugs out of the field. Neem, cedar and the oils we use don’t kill per se. They retard. They do things the bugs don’t like. One of us – me or my foreman – walks the fields three to four times a week looking for bugs. You have to be ahead of the problem. If the bugs get a foothold, they’re going to do a lot of damage until they decide to pick up and leave. – an organic cotton grower. (Company document)

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Similarly, as the seed transforms into ‘cotton’ and moves from the hands of the peasants to the hands of the workers in the form of fibers and yarns at the contractor manufacturing facilities in China, the coordinator of workers’ rights located in New York flies to China to organize training about safe working conditions. The coordinator of sustainability explains at a public interview: [. . .] we provide training along the way, we partner with NGOs in their communities to work with workers as well as the managers. [. . .] So an example of that is work that we’ve done recently around human trafficking and slavery. And raising awareness among our suppliers around what the red flags will be, should they encounter human trafficking in their [. . .] supply chain. [. . .] I think the value comes in the training that we give or that we partner with local organizations to provide to our suppliers [. . .] so for us it’s about the training, the interaction and the relationship building. – the coordinator of sustainability. (Public interview)

So now, is the seed under control? Does that mean that it cannot escape and do harm? What about the carbon dioxide emissions produced during those flights, and the transportation of the fabric and clothing to/from the US or China? We also observe that the company is mobilizing all its members around sustainability through organizing company-wide meetings, but there are other more extensive examples of mobilization that can be observed in still other practices of the organization. For example, a recent recycling initiative asks customers to return their used company clothes, which then get repaired, cleaned and resold in the company’s ‘green’ stores for a much lower price. All the revenues generated from this business are being donated to non-profit organizations that support women’s and girls’ education.6 Through this recycling program, we observe that the company mobilizes customers for higher environmental public awareness. We are also able to trace this mobilizing process by looking into material artifacts assembled in the form of message tags. These tags are attached to the recycled clothing ready to be sold, and attempt to mobilize customers with messages such as: Steam instead of iron. Steaming saves energy and freshens clothes, extending the time between dry cleanings. Switch to green power. Check with your local utility company to sign up for green power. Try cold water. 90 percent of the total energy used by a typical washing machine goes to heat the water – only 10 percent is used to power the motor.

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Seeds Act. . . Seeds Escape. . . Seeds Organize. . . Possibilities of Becoming In all the above examples, there is an on-going organizing happening around the seed; the seed transforms and is translated into other material artifacts that move the flow and make others become actants in the work of doing sustainability: the peasant who grows cotton, the land that hosts the seed and the cotton plant, the coordinator of supply change operations who supplies the cotton fiber, the worker in the manufacturing facility who works with the yarn, the coordinator of workers’ rights who talks to the workers, the customers who recycle their clothes or buy recycled clothes, the tags that increase environmental awareness, the non-profit organizations and the women and girls who benefit from them. These human and nonhuman actants are associated in becoming-socialentrepreneurship as distributed agency making others do things. In this story of sustainability, the seed escapes, and makes others do things. Sustainability is achieved only through following the thread of the seed which is relentlessly escaping from the controlling practices, further becoming assembled and reassembled into material artifacts, looking for other possibilities of becoming good. A company document evocatively represents the ambiguity of this process: [The coordinator of sustainability] sits at a sunny desk overlooking the [river], but she spends a lot of her time in what she calls ‘the gray zone.’ It’s that place between yes and no, between good and bad. A place that shouldn’t have Uzbek cotton, but might possibly. (Company document)

Then, how and by whom is sustainability done in this company? Through (re)tracing this translation process, we see that the seed becomes the most powerful element in the work-net, and becomes central for the survival of the organization. As the seed escapes, more actants revolve around the seed in order to organize it, but then become organized by it. That is, the seed and its other assembled representations (that is, the cotton plant, the fiber and yarn, the message tags, and so on) are what the human actants revolve around and become organized as the human/nonhuman assemblages move the flow of sustainability, creating possibilities of becoming, both good and bad. In so doing, actions for controlling the seed doing bad have assembled more and more actants, and more and more work for many. Perhaps, the following message from the founder, distributed publicly, summarizes this affective paradoxical story of sustainability: Every piece you see on these pages starts with clean water, clean air and a healthy environment with workers and wildlife. It’s taken us 30 years to get here. [We] began with a commitment to natural fibres. Along the way, we’ve learned that natural can come with pesticides and herbicides that have far-reaching effects.

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Becoming-socialentrepreneurship as more-than-capitalist practice ­287 In the 10 years since we introduced organic cotton, we’ve had strong eco collections and not-so-strong ones. This season we took a hard look at our mission and our progress and decided we need to do more. A lot more. So we doubled the amount of organic fibre [. . .] It won’t be easy. [. . .] We know it will take time to connect the dots between farmers and fashion, between clothing and clean water. But we’re committed. And hope you are, too’ – the founder. (Company brochure, emphasis added)

We note thus that sustainability is a complex construction process of the social incorporating heterogeneous entities, both nonhuman (for example the seeds, land, leaves, worms, water, air, and so on) and human (for example peasants, workers, employees, customers) elements. It can be understood as an ongoing assembling and reassembling of distributed agencies, which materializes this company as part of a diverse economy becoming possible in a more-than-capitalist, more-than-human world. This assemblage, becoming-socialentrepreneurship, has also created possibilities for renewal, innovation and awareness within and beyond the company, spreading sustainability beyond the grip of the market.

TASK 3: (RE)ORGANIZING: BECOMING POSSIBLE IN/FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE Our articulations in the prior pages (Task 1 and 2) attempted to open a space for writing that stays away from conventions in our field of organization studies, including entrepreneurship studies. That space had already been pre-figured for us in general conversations about ‘climate change’, in actual concerns for ‘people and planet’ we observe, and within literature we have been reading over the years from authors we admire. Reading the coalescence of these voices around figurations of the Anthropocene was a clear signal that we had to learn to be affected by them, even if we did not know where to start. Several other issues provided a path – even though a meandering one – and we let ourselves go. In particular, being inside the company described above, and observing their trials and troubles with ‘sustainability’, accelerated our interests and intensified our concerns. We thought something important was happening, but we had no confidence that we knew how to articulate it outside the ‘organization lexicon’, the company’s and ours. Actor–network theory provided a methodological avenue, a different lexicon, and an ontological revision, but it was not enough to make us proceed beyond it. The impetus to proceed eventually came from the readers of the first draft of this chapter (the editors of this volume – thank you!) who asked about the ethical dimensions of our arguments – something we had

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not even thought about – and pointed to our own prior feminist work on entrepreneurship (Calás et al., 2009). Where do we stand now? While we are not sure we have answered their question, here are some clarifications. First, our ethical stance in this chapter is in fact a continuation of where we ended in that other work: [w]e promoted critical reflexivity by discussing each [feminist] theoretical frame in relation to others in a more or less historical sequence, highlighting that crit­ical perspectives on social change, such as feminist theorizing, will always suspect theories that get too settled as favoured explanations. These views see solutions as always contingent, for the world will change and so will the problems for which solutions were found. (Calás et al., 2009, p. 566)

Thus, a feminist ethos continues to impel us to search for frameworks that would give voice to problems of the time, accounting for those who are the most vulnerable and opening space for their voices. But, at this point in time, a focus on gender – even as a category of analysis – could be a distraction. At the moment, the guiding theoretical literature we have gathered in this chapter is representative of contemporary feminist theoretical sensibilities from which we wanted to learn (for further on this see Ergene et al., 2017). All the authors stand indeed on feminist ethical stances – yet their frameworks extend beyond ‘the human’ and therefore so does the grounding of their arguments. For instance, Gibson-Graham et al. (2013) reframe the economy as a space of ethical action, which communities can shape and alter according to what is best for the well-being of people and the planet in the age of the Anthropocene. Coole (2013) extends new materialist arguments into an ethico-political intervention to focus on the question of agency, shifting agency away from specific actors and ascribing it to processes of becoming. In so doing, she decouples agency (and the masculinist lexicon of ‘agency’) from humans while raising questions about the nature of life and the place or status of the human within it, including humans’ responsibility in the Anthropocene. Braidotti’s (2013) posthuman figuration starts from the human impact on the environment in the age of the Anthropocene. In this argument, she fosters a sustainable ethics for non-unitary subjects (her nature–culture continuums) as an ethics of experimentation and imagination, geared towards creating possible futures and linked to the affirmative creative powers of feminism. Following from this, the fundamental shift present in all of these arguments is a redefinition of ‘the subject’ as collectivities comprising heterogeneous elements, human and nonhuman. Questions of ethical practices and actions must then be rethought in those terms. Yet we have been cautious

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with our own wording in this text when it comes to questions of ethics for it is too easy to revert to (the Moderns’) human-centered arguments in our field’s theories, and in most feminist theories. Nonetheless, intending to find a way to articulate our ethical concerns in response to the editors’ query, we read two of their recent papers on ethics in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship (Dey and Steyaert, 2015; 2016). At first we imagined experimenting with their ideas as part of developing an ethical framework for our becoming-socialentrepreneurship but with not much luck, for ‘the human’ kept getting in the way. But later it dawned on us that we all were dealing with similar concerns. To escape the constraints of our fields we all had to bring other actants into the conversation, and that is what Dey and Steyaert were doing by enrolling Foucault and Ricoeur into their papers: ‘a need for future studies to intensify research on the intersection of ethico-politics and imagination by highlighting not only the role of narration, but also other aspects of imagination’ (Dey and Steyaert, 2015, p. 244). That, we think, is also what we have been doing here – as we said in the beginning, in this chapter ‘we join the experimenting interests, imaginative sensibilities, conceptual and methodological concerns, and, in particular, the performative value of writing for social change, that can be observed in some European social entrepreneurship and entrepreneuring studies’. But further, when thinking of/in the Anthropocene, what shone through for us was the still almost empty space of ‘ethics’ and what that would mean in the future. In this context, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we were particularly affected by our theoretical inspirations: to adopt an experimental orientation and approach the world to learn from things that are happening on the ground instead of asking what is good or bad about these things (Gibson-Graham, 2011); to explore new normative frameworks for the posthuman subject, including ethical relations, as the focus of collectively enacted, non-profit oriented experimentation ‘with what we are actually capable of becoming’ (Braidotti, 2013, p. 92). And thus, this chapter (with all its actants) has also been an experiment in ways to perform a writing for social change that (re)organizes (the Moderns’) strictures in our fields while trying to find affirmative possibil­ ities for writing in/for the Anthropocene. At the moment, we think of it as an ethical practice of belonging to our profession. As scholars in fields who have been called to task for our dominant discourses being ‘complementarily pro-growth’ promoting and relying ‘upon incessant increases in consumption, pro­duction and population’ (Coole, 2013, p. 463), it is our responsibility to bring to visibility these contemporary conditions with a focus on how most of material life has been commodified and embedded in the competitive market system. This, we think, is what we brought to

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visibility, not as a critique but as a performance on how we could think otherwise by tracing the seed’s trajectories. That is, by tracing the seed’s trajectory as a story of sustainability we portrayed practices breaking the capitalist–social-entrepreneurship nexus, albeit by navigating through various other theoretical spaces. As such, our story made it possible to argue that despite its appearance as a market-based capitalist company, this organization engages in varieties of more-thancapitalist activities to maintain the presence of their non-capitalist values as viable options. Concurrently, observing the continuum nature–culture through the actants in the story brought to visibility our different modality of social entrepreneurship, becoming–socialentrepreneurship, which is not human-centered. The seeds organizing everything also incorporated human agency in their ecosystems, a reversal of the traditional humancentered argument with humans in charge of maintaining ecosystems controlled in their own image (for example Cardozo and Subramaniam, 2013). The translated effect was that of a posthuman hybrid assemblage, more-than-human, which might in time help us appreciate that we all are moving hybrid entities, and facilitate enacting and understanding our common more-than-capitalist organizing relations as transversal processes rather than hierarchical capitalist structures. Observing the practices of this company under such premises gave us hope that this is already possible in/for the Anthropocene. However, we also add many caveats to this chapter. Up to this point, we have mostly tried to go around the main obstacle to ‘thinking otherwise’: values and institutions constituted by the Moderns when maintaining separation between (apparently independent) domains of knowledge in theory and practice. That is, we were trying to perform how the Moderns’ modes of existence can be of little use when constructing knowledge for the Anthropocene, but we are not sure we succeeded. This became very present while writing the chapter as a ‘business school practice’ while dabbling in the other literature to strengthen our imaginaries. We did not want it to be seen as an exercise on ‘interdisciplinary writing’ or an ‘integration of literature’ with ‘a model for further research’ for ‘our field to follow’. Rather, we wanted to escape these strictures, and yet all we could do was to present you with ideas in this literature, not as ours, but as becoming part of assemblages of publics that mostly reside outside the domains of knowledge we usually inhabit and to which we hardly have access. At the end, the question that remained was: in light of the seriousness of the situation in the world and the scholarly space we inhabit, what are the ethical positions available to us? How can we become part of those other publics? The current strictures of our field – at their most mundane – such as rankings and branding for business schools – and what counts as ‘pub-

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lishable’ for these purposes, are perhaps the institutionalized values of ‘the Moderns’ at their most naked, reiterating and guaranteeing that no other world would be possible. . . and yet. . . the seed always escapes. . ..

NOTES 1. The Anthropocene was proposed in 2008 to the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London as a new geological epoch, requesting its recognition as formal geological unit. Various scientific communities around the world have working projects to find evidence supporting this proposal, but the term is nonetheless already widely used in scholarly publications and even in the popular press, as a minimal keyword search would reveal. More recently, scientists made recommendations to the International Geological Congress for the official declaration of the epoch as starting about 1950 (Carrington, 2016). 2. The interglacial span of stable climate allowing for the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization in the last several million years – that is, the epoch assumed to have preceded the Anthropocene (see Braje, 2015, for a recent review). 3. http://www.communityeconomies.org/Home/Key-Ideas. 4. See also Cardozo and Subramaniam (2013) for other examples. 5. Quoted from one of the publicly distributed company documents. 6. The recycling program has generated more than $2.2 million as of fall 2013, all of which has been donated to non-profit organizations.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara (2008), ‘Open forum imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the “New Materialism”’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15 (1), 23–39. Braidotti, Rosi (2011), Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, New York: Columbia University Press. Braidotti, Rosi (2013), The Posthuman, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Braje, Todd J. (2015), ‘Earth systems, human agency, and the Anthropocene: Planet earth in the human age’, Journal of Archaeological Research, 23 (4), 369–96. Calás, Marta B., Linda Smircich and Kristina A. Bourne (2009), ‘Extending the boundaries: Reframing “entrepreneurship as social change” through feminist perspectives’, Academy of Management Review, 34 (3), 552–69. Callon, Michel (2007), ‘An essay on the growing contribution of economic markets to the proliferation of the social’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24 (7, 8), 139–63. Cameron, Jenny (2010), ‘Business as usual or economic innovation?: Work, markets and growth in community and social enterprises’, Third Sector Review, 16 (2), 93–108. Cameron, Jenny, Katherine Gibson and Ann Hill (2014), ‘Cultivating hybrid collectives: Research methods for enacting community food economies in Australia and the Philippines’, Local Environment, 19 (1), 118–32. Cameron, Jenny, Craig Manhood and Jamie Pomfrett (2011), ‘Bodily learning for a (climate) changing world: Registering differences through performative and collective research’, Local Environment, 16 (6), 493–508.

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Cardozo, Karen and Banu Subramaniam (2013), ‘Assembling Asian/American naturecultures: Orientalism and invited invasions’, Journal of Asian American Studies, 16 (1), 1–23. Carrington, D. (2016), The Anthropocene epoch: Scientists declare dawn of humaninfluenced age, The Guardian, 29 August, available at https://www.theguardian. com/environment/2016/aug/29/ declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geolog​ ical-congress-human-impact-earth. Coole, Diana (2013), ‘Agentic capacities and capacious historical materialism: Thinking with new materialisms in the political sciences’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41 (3), 451–69. Coole, Diana (2015), ‘Emancipation as a three-dimensional process for the twentyfirst century’, Hypatia, 30 (3), 530–46. Coole, Diana and Samantha Frost (2010), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crutzen, Paul J. and Eugene F. Stoermer (2000), ‘The Anthropocene’, Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17–18. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2015), ‘Tracing and theorizing ethics in entrepreneurship: Toward a critical hermeneutic of imagination’, in Alison Pullen and Carl Rhodes (eds), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organizations, London: Routledge, pp. 231–48. Dey, Pascal and Chris Steyaert (2016), ‘Rethinking the space of ethics in social entrepreneurship: Power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom’, Journal of Business Ethics, 133 (4), 627–41. Ergene, Seray, Marta B. Calás and Linda Smircich (2017), ‘Ecologies of sustainable concerns: Organization theorizing for the Anthropocene’, Gender, Work & Organization, doi:10.1111/gwao.12189. Frost, Samantha (2014), ‘Re-considering the turn to biology in feminist theory’, Feminist Theory, 15 (3), 307–26. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996a), ‘Queer(y)ing capitalist organization’, Organization, 3 (4), 541–5. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996b), The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006), A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2011), ‘A feminist project of belonging for the Anthropocene’, Gender, Place & Culture, 18 (1), 1–21. Gibson-Graham, J.K. and Gerda Roelvink (2009), ‘An economic ethics for the Anthropocene’, Antipode, 41 (s1), 320–46. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (2013), Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna J. (1989), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York: Routledge. Haraway, Donna J. (1991), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge. Haraway, Donna J. (1997), Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_ Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience, New York: Routledge.

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Hjorth, Daniel (2013), ‘Public entrepreneurship: Desiring social change, creating sociality’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25 (1–2), 34–51. Jones, Campbell and Anna-Maria Murtola (2012), ‘Entrepreneurship, crisis, critique’, in Daniel Hjorth (ed.), Handbook on Organisational Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 116–33. Latour, Bruno (1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (2004), ‘How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies’, Body & Society, 10 (2–3), 205–29. Latour, Bruno (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno (2010), ‘Coming out as a philosopher’, Social Studies of Science, 40 (4), 599–608. Latour, Bruno (2011), Waiting for Gaia: Composing the Common World through Arts and Politics, lecture at the French Institute, London. Latour, Bruno (2013a), An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (2013b), Summary of the AiME Project: An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, accessed at http://www.bruno-latour.fr. Newbury, Janet and Katherine Gibson (2016), ‘Post-industrial pathways for a “single industry resource town”: A community economies approach’, in Ismael Vaccaro, Krista Harper and Seth Murray (eds), The Anthropology of Postindustrialism: Ethnographies of Disconnection, New York: Routledge, pp. 183–204. Roelvink, Gerda, Kevin St Martin and J.K. Gibson-Graham (2015), Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Steyaert, Chris (2007), ‘“Entrepreneuring” as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 19 (6), 453–77. Steyaert, Chris (2011), ‘Entrepreneurship as in(ter)vention: Reconsidering the conceptual politics of method in entrepreneurship studies’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 23 (1–2), 77–88. Willey, Angela (2016), ‘A world of materialisms: Postcolonial feminist science studies and the new natural’, Science, Technology & Human Values, 41 (6), 991–1014.

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16. New framings and practices of critical research Jenny Cameron The two chapters in this section on Social Entrepreneurship, Relationality and the Possible push at our understandings of social entrepreneurship. Both take a relational view of the world, exploring the importance of the relationships between people, and between people and ‘things’. What emerge are insights into social entrepreneurship as a social change practice not so much for finding accommodations in what is already present but for shifting the frame of what is thinkable and doable. The chapters document strategies for social change while also recognizing that social change is an unpredictable and uneven process that involves responding to the unexpected. The chapters also invite reflection on the contribution of social research to the social change process by demonstrating how social research can be oriented towards ushering in the new, an orientation that is captured in the notion of research as a performative practice. In what follows, I take up these themes of relationality, social change and research orientation.

A RELATIONAL VIEW OF THE WORLD Victor Friedman, Israel Sykes and Markus Strauch present social entrepreneurship as ‘a widely distributed, prosaic process of everyday interaction through which citizens co-construct the societies in which they take part’ (Chapter 14, this volume). Such an understanding shifts the emphasis away from individuals and their initiatives to the more mundane but nevertheless complex processes by which people act in concert to generate change. This is strikingly evident in their case study of Beit Issie Shapiro, an organization that since 1981 has been helping to transform how services are designed and delivered for children with developmental disabilities. In the case study we hear of how relationships and partnerships were formed with and between staff, families, volunteers, donors, professionals, neighbours, community members, ministry officials and others in order to 294

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create new worlds and new possibilities for children with developmental disabilities. What is documented in this chapter is no superficial makeover or quick-fix solution but a decades-long and comprehensive process of transforming an entire field of practices and policies. Marta Calás, Seray Ergene and Linda Smircich (Chapter 15, this volume) similarly present a relational view of the world; however, they go one step further to consider the role of non-human actants. They take us into a world in which it is not only humans that are capable of exercising agency, rather agency is widely distributed such that all entities (human and non-human, animate and inanimate) are potential actants. Calás et al. explore this through the example of an enterprise that has sustainability at its core and by focusing on the actancy of the cotton seeds that are pivotal to the sustainability ‘mission’. Using the Actor–Network Theory approach of following the object, they reveal the contributions of not just a variety of human actors (organic and conventional farmers in countries from around the globe; farm workers; ‘middlemen’ in the cotton supply chain; factory workers; fabric dyers; clothing designers; sales people; publicists; copywriters; customers and more) but a variety of non-human actors (the seeds themselves; rain water and ground water; irrigation infrastructure; soil; fertilizers; pesticides, herbicides and defoliants; insects; chemical bleaches and dyes; energy generation; machinery and factories; fibres, yarns and fabrics; shop fittings; clothing labels and so on). What emerges is a world that is at once solidified around an established set of practices (or ‘field’ as Friedman et al. would say) but also open to the same sort of unravelling that can occur as when a nick or tear is made to the body of a ‘finished’ garment. Taken together, the two chapters present social entrepreneurship as a process of fundamentally changing how fields operate, with the focus in these two chapters being the fields of what might be called ‘disability services’ and ‘business’. Social entrepreneurship is thus pushed from being a ‘system-maintaining, social-order approach’ (to borrow the phrase that DeFilippis et al. (2010, p. 103) use to refer to some forms of community development) into more radical terrain as a system-changing activity. What then becomes critical is how the social change process is understood as taking place.

THE SOCIAL CHANGE PROCESS In the case of Beit Issie Shapiro, Friedman et al. identify a series of ‘strat­ egies’ that were used, including developing a vision of an alternative way of providing services for children with developmental disabilities; introducing

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new ways of thinking about children with developmental disabilities; changing what was considered the norm in the sector; and building relationships and partnerships (as above). Friedman et al. identify that these shifts in what they call the ‘symbolic operations that change relationships, meanings and rules of the game’ (Chapter 14, this volume) were far more critical in generating transformation than developments at the material level of new products, services or organizations. Here there are parallels with the practice of reframing, an idea which was brought to wide attention by the cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff. In Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (2004), Lakoff argued that we make sense of the world through ‘frames’ which organize and structure our cognitive unconscious. For Lakoff, social change occurs by reframing, a process of using language to destabilize established ways of thinking and change what counts as common sense. I have written about reframing with my colleagues J.K. Gibson-Graham and Stephen Healy (2013) in our book Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities. In this work we explore the ways people across the globe are transforming economic activities in order to build what we call ‘community economies’, that is economies based on recognizing and enacting interdependencies among people and between people and the world around. We argue that the practice of reframing is central to the process of economic transform­ ation. The range of initiatives that we document in Take Back the Economy are testament to the ways that people are reframing the economy not as a machine that operates according to its own unvarying logic but as a series of practices that emerge from the actions that people take in their everyday lives; not as inescapably capitalist but as comprising a diversity of ways of working, transacting, running enterprises, relating to property and investing in futures. Just as Friedman et al. identify that shifts in the symbolic operations entail changes to relationships, meanings and rules, so too the practice of reframing involves shifting how we think about and understand our place in the world, our relationships with human and non-human others, and the values we ascribe to these. Reframing has been fundamental to the social change process. In the nineteenth century, the abolitionist struggle to end slavery was based on the reframing of slaves as fellow humans, captured in the image of a kneeling slave and the accompanying question, which became a catchphrase for the movement on both sides of the Atlantic, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ Arising out of the abolitionist movement, the women’s rights movement has successively used the strategy of reframing to that extent that gener­ ation by generation the lives of many women have been transformed (with struggles continuing in many parts of the world). Characteristic of these

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major social movements, and of social change activities in fields such as disability services (discussed by Friedman et al.) and smoking (as we discuss in Take Back the Economy), reframing changes our sense of what is possible, introduces new ways of acting and generates new realities. It is not surprising that in the case of Beit Issie Shapiro one senior ministry official recounts how the vision that was laid out in 1980 ‘at the time [. . .] sounded delusional’ but is today the basis of how services in Israel operate. I am reminded of the philosopher Peter Singer’s comment in 2012 when the European Union’s ban on battery cages for egg-laying hens came into force. Reflecting on his activism against battery cages in the early 1970s he said ‘Many people applauded our youthful idealism, but told us that we had no hope of ever changing a major industry. They were wrong.’ (Singer, 2012). In both instances, something only imaginable to a few has become not just a reality but an accepted norm. This is the work of social entrepreneurship. Consistent with the relational view of the world, discussed above, the social changes that result from the practice of reframing occur through the endeavours of multiple actors working, not as one tightly organized operation, but in a range of ways on multiple fronts. In their chapter Calás et al. capture the open-ended and even uncertain nature of this process, ‘human and nonhuman actants move and make others do things’ (Chapter 15, this volume). What is generated or what reverberates through such chains of effects cannot be known in advance. There are, as Calás et al. remind us, no guarantees. Thus Calás et al. destabilize the idea that human agency is able to generate, in a linear way, predictable outcomes. But they further destabilize understandings of human agency by introducing the idea of a posthuman subjectivity that displaces humans as the locus of change. Their account of the effects produced by nonhuman actants, such as cotton seeds, has parallels with Jane Bennett’s essay on hoarders, those who are ‘preternaturally attuned to the call from things’ (2012, p. 241). Bennett’s exploration of hoarding is guided by the maxim of putting things in the foreground and humans in the background, in the same way that Calás et al. foreground the capacity of seeds to provoke actions oriented around something we call sustainability. The combination of relational and posthuman thinking that features in these works is pivotal in a climate changing world which is calling on humans to become different types of creatures, ones that are more attuned and more susceptible to the changes around us. In such a world, the social change process is perhaps less about taking action (in the sense of taking charge) and more about learning to be affected, an embodied process described by Bruno Latour (2004) in which humans are ‘moved, put into motion by other entities, humans or non-humans’ (p. 205; see also Cameron et al., 2011).

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THE ROLE OF SOCIAL RESEARCH The two chapters in this section invite us to reflect on the role that research can play in the social change process. In my own work I have been strongly influenced by the understanding that research is a generative and performative practice that helps to shape the world we come to live in (for example Cameron and Hicks, 2014; Cameron and Wright, 2014). As discussed by John Law and John Urry (2004), all research is a performative practice. Even research that purports to be objective and ‘merely’ descript­ ive nevertheless generates findings that combine with existing bodies of knowledge to help make some realities stronger and more apparent, and others less so (p. 396). Thus, as Law and Urry highlight, it is important for researchers to consider what realities our research is helping to bring into being or strengthen. In their chapter, Friedman et al. explicitly take a different approach from existing research in field theory and social entrepreneurship by examining not how fields emerge and are maintained but how fields are transformed. They do this by adapting the idea of an enclave to conceptualize how Beit Issie Shapiro operates within a larger field through ‘a distinct configur­ation of actors, relationships, meanings and rules of the game that challenge those of the incumbent field’ (Chapter 14, this volume). The intention is to show how Beit Issie, although embedded in the field of disability services, has been able to operate in ways that have both challenged and transformed the wider field. It is this capacity to change and transform existing fields that Friedman et al. characterize as social entrepreneurship. Thus their investigation of Beit Issie (that is, the questions they ask, the concepts they use, the features they focus on and so on) is driven by this agenda of helping to make more apparent the ways that social entrepreneurship can help, as they put it, ‘expand the realm of the possible’. Calás et al.’s chapter is similarly oriented towards expanding the realm of the possible but theirs is a more experimental mode of research in which they are seeking to ‘spark the imagination’ by rethinking concepts such as the social and entrepreneurship, and recombining them as social­ entrepreneurship, a form or modality of social entrepreneurship that is not human-centred. Together these two chapters demonstrate some of the possibilities that emerge when researchers are attentive to the performative elements of research. On the one hand, Friedman et al. offer us an example of research that is attuned to investigating practices in order to help deepen our understanding of the sorts of strategies that social entrepreneurship might mobilize to help create new worlds. This project leads to questions such as what other sorts of strategies are being used in social entrepreneurship to

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create new worlds? What are some other fields that social entrepreneurship is transforming? What are the contexts in which transformation is difficult to achieve? On the other hand, Calás et al. offer us an example of an exploratory form of research that is pushing at understandings of social entrepreneurship in order to shed new light on how we might conceive of and practise social entrepreneurship in a world in which the givens are destabilized. As we contend with life in a climate changing world it seems that both modes of research have much to offer. Perhaps more than ever we need a deep understanding of the social change process while at the same time being open to new forms of revolutionary thinking and acting.

REFERENCES Bennett, Jane (2012), ‘Powers of the hoard: Further notes on material agency’, in Jeffrey J. Cohen (ed.), Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects, Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, pp. 237–72. Cameron, Jenny and Jarra Hicks (2014), ‘Performative research for a climate politics of hope: Rethinking geographic scale, “impact” scale and markets’, Antipode, 46 (1), 53–71. Cameron, Jenny and Sarah Wright (2014), ‘Researching diverse food initiatives: From backyard and community gardens to international markets’, Local Environment, 19 (1), 1–9. Cameron, Jenny, Craig Manhood and Jamie Pomfrett (2011), ‘Bodily learning for a (climate) changing world: Registering differences through performative and collective research’, Local Environment, 16 (6), 493–508. DeFilippis, James, Robert Fisher and Eric Shragge (2010), Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (2013), Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lakoff, George (2004), Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Latour, Bruno (2004), ‘How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies’, Body and Society, 10 (2/3), 205–29. Law, John and John Urry (2004), ‘Enacting the social’, Economy and Society, 33 (3), 390–410. Singer, Peter (2012), ‘Europe’s ethical eggs’, Project Syndicate, accessed at http:// www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/europe-s-ethical-eggs.

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Index Abbott, T. 9, 75, 76, 87–8, 89, 92, 96 abolitionism 296–7 absence of role privileges 201 academic journals 4–5 accountability 115–16 actor–network theory 273, 281–7, 295 actors 243, 244, 250–53, 257–9 Adams, G.B. 219 Adorno, T.W. 2–3 advocacy role 169–70 aesthetic adornment 80–81, 82 Big Society as 91–2, 93 aesthetic validity 202 affective qualities 116–17 affirmation 2 African orphan children 182, 183 afternoon care programmes 246 agency 271–3, 280–81, 282, 288, 297 distributed 272, 286–7, 295 Alcock, P. 86 Alexander, J. 216 Alvesson, M. 5 Alvord, S.H. 220 Anderson, A.R. 108 Andersson, F.O. 106, 107 Andrews, K. 89, 90 Annual Small Business Surveys (ASBS) 24, 27, 29–32, 35 Anthropocene context 12–13, 264–93 Aquinas, T. 88 Aral Sea 283, 284 area-based deprivation 23 Aristotle 218 arts and culture nonprofits 44, 51–4, 59, 60 association of commercial activity with other revenue streams 54 rise in commercial activity 51–3 Arzu 202 associations 282 associative democracy 218 associative entrepreneurship 218

asymmetrical power relations 173 austerity 167 Austin, J. 213 Austin, J.L. 140–41 Australia 9, 75, 76, 87–97, 212 Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission 89, 90 Australian Labor Party (ALP) 89 authority 197–8 Baiocchi, G. 221 Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (later BRAC) 193, 194, 200, 202, 220 Barthes, R. 10, 104, 105, 109, 120, 122, 127 battery cages for egg-laying hens 297 becoming 274 becoming-socialentrepreneurship 12–13, 264–5, 267, 275–6, 290, 298 as practice 276–87 Beit Issie Shapiro 12, 240–41, 244–59, 294–5, 295–6, 297, 298 enclave 249–56 Belloc, H. 88 Ben and Jerry’s 106 benevolence repertoire 112–14, 116–17, 118–20 Bennett, J. 297 Berglund, K. 138, 173 Bertotti, M. 219 Big Society 9, 75–99 Australia 9, 75, 76, 87–97 UK 9, 75, 83–7, 90–97 Big Society Bank 86 Blair, T. 85 Blond, P. 76, 84–5, 88, 96 bodily acts/experiences 142–3, 153 Boltanski, L. 137–8 books 3–6 Bottici, C. 77, 79, 83 bottom line 239

301

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Social entrepreneurship

Bourdieu, P. 240, 241, 242, 243 Box, R.C. 219 BRAC (formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) 193, 194, 200, 202, 220 Bradach, J.L. 41–2, 44, 215 Braidotti, R. 274–6, 281, 288, 289 brainstorming 150, 153 Brandsen, T. 160 Brown, A.D. 22 Bull, M. 217–18 Burke, E. 87–8 Bush, G.H.W. 212 Bush, G.W. 212 business practices 266, 278–81 business-type models 212–13 Butler, J. 10, 139–40, 145, 154 theory of performativity 140–44 Cabinet Office of the Third Sector (OTS) 34 CAFENICA 195 Calás, M.B. 287, 288 calculation 175 calculative trust 166, 171–2 Calhoun, C. 197 Cameron, D. 9, 75, 84, 85, 88 Cameron, J. 296 Campbell, J. 103–4 Canada 67–8 capabilities 233–5 capitalism compassion, the entrepreneurial self and 186–7 market capitalism 265, 278–80 re-imagining 268–70 values of 195 Cassirer, E. 82, 103, 241, 243 Challand, B. 79 change 118 social see social change Chell, E. 24 Cheney, G. 210 Chi, K.S. 56 children with developmental disabilities see Beit Issie Shapiro Children’s Trust 169 choice 260 citationality 143, 144 citizen-led participation 86, 93

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civil rights 234–5 civil society 79, 87 see also third sector Clinton, B. 212 clothing industry 276–87, 289–90, 295 cognitive validity 202 Cohen, P.S. 104 collaboration 116 public sector–social enterprise 10, 159–81, 184 collective action 216–17 politics of 269 command 119 commissioning 86 communitarian pluralist approach 217–19 community 252–3 Community Business Partnerships 89 Community Childcare Assistance 215 community economies 270, 296 community interest companies (CICs) 29, 31, 33 compacts 85–6 companies limited by guarantee (CLGs) 28, 29, 31, 32 companies limited by share (CLSs) 29, 33 compassion 10–11, 182–8 competing discourses 213–14 compressed ethnography 146–7 Connor, S. 78 consensus 204 conservatism 84–5, 91–2 Conservative Liberal–National coalition (Australia) 75, 76, 87–90 Conservative Party (UK) 212 Conservative–Liberal Democratic coalition 75, 83–7, 89–97 Considine, M. 167 consumer-owned cooperatives 218, 219 contract state see governance contracting out 56–7 contracts government contracts and nonprofit commercial revenue 45–6, 55, 56–7, 69 informal 170 long-term 170–71 pay for performance 86 contractualization 164

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Index ­303

control 184 control–resistance dialectic 165–8 Cook, B. 222 Coole, D. 271–3, 288, 289 cooperatives 218, 219 Cornelius, N. 197–8 corporatism 84–5 corporeality 142–3, 153 Costa, A.L. 160 cotton 277, 280–77 seeds as actants 281–7, 289–90, 295, 297 trajectory 281–5, 289–90 counter-identification 138 counter-narratives 161, 175 public sector–social enterprise collaborations 165–8 counting social enterprises 67–8 UK official statistics 19–20, 23–34, 35–6 creative destruction 185–6 critical emancipatory perspective 278–80 critical friend 160 public sector–social enterprise collaborations 168–70, 174 critique 1–3 as affirmation 2 as creative act 6 five forms of criticalness 6–7 as practice 2 Crocker, D.A. 233–4 cultural dimension 196–7 culture–nature continuums 275, 281–7, 288, 290 Curtis, T. 164 dance analogy 159–60, 161, 167, 174–7, 184 Dart, R. 67–8 Davis, K. 176 day-care centres 245 de Saussure, F. 127, 128 debt cycles 233 decentralization 88–9 Dees, G.J. 66, 220 defamiliarization 275, 281 deliberative democracy 11, 192–3, 198–205, 230–31 capabilities and 233–5

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 303

democracy 7, 11–12, 210–29 deliberative see deliberative democracy democratizing social enterprise 217–21 governance, social enterprise and democratic outcomes 221–3 social enterprise, political participation and 12, 230–36 democratic iterations 198–9 demystification 9, 100–126 from below 105, 110–20, 120–22 ideological 104, 108–10, 120, 129 rational 103, 106–8, 120 denaturalization 104, 108–10, 120, 129 denim 284 Dent, M. 141 dental care 246 Department of Health 24 Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) 19, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34 Derrida, J. 140, 143, 144 developmental disabilities, children with see Beit Issie Shapiro devolution 88–9 Dey, P. 138, 161, 217, 220, 289 dialectic potential, myth as 100, 102, 104–5, 110–20, 120–22 dialogue quality of 173 understanding-focused 201–2 differentiation 242, 253–4 direct opposition 128–9 disability, developmental see Beit Issie Shapiro discourse competing discourses within social entrepreneurship 213–14 discursive instances of social entrepreneurship mythology 129–31 dissensus-oriented 193, 203–4 equal rights to 201 government and shaping 78 principle of 199 and subject 138–9, 143–4, 152–5 discourse ethics 11, 191–209 deliberative democracy 11, 192–3, 198–205

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facilitation of the ideal speech situation 192, 199, 201–4, 205 political and communicative education 192, 199–200, 205 reflexivity 192, 199, 200–201, 205 social entrepreneurship’s values 194–8, 204–5 dissensus-oriented discourse 193, 203–4 distributed agency 272, 286–7, 295 distributism 88, 97 diverse economies 270 ‘doublethink’, mythological 10, 127–33 Douglas, M. 145 Drakopoulou Dodd, S. 108 Driver, S. 218 dualisms 128–9 dues and assessments 45 Duhl, L.J. 239 early intervention 246 ecological posthumanism 274–5 economic dimension 194–6 economic framing 239 economic rights 234–5 ECOTEC 26–8, 29, 34 education higher 44 political and communicative 192, 199–200, 205 Edwards, M. 216, 217 efficiency 115, 116 egalitarian society 219 Egypt 193 Eikenberry, A.M. 42, 110, 215–16 emancipation 113 embodied regime of meaning 153 Emerson, J. 5, 66 emotional responses 182–3 see also compassion employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) 277 empowerment 12, 113, 231, 233, 234 enactments 7, 10–11 compassion 10–11, 182–8 performativity of social entrepreneurship 10, 137–58 social enterprise–public sector collaboration 10, 159–81, 184

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 304

enclaves 248, 249–59, 298 engagement with the other 202–3 enlightened political socialization 199–200 enterprising repertoire 113, 116–17, 118–20 entrepreneurial self 185–7 environmental damage 220, 272 environmental pressures 42–3, 59–60 Enzewar, O. 197, 204 equal rights to discourse 201 equality 114, 119 ethical action, space of 269–70, 288 ethics 272–3, 287–90 ethnographic analysis 145–51 Eversberg, D. 259 evidence 36 symbolic role in policy making 20, 21–2, 35 exclusion 143–4 existence 10 modes of 265 external environment 42–3, 59–60 facilitation of the ideal speech situation 192, 199, 201–4, 205 FairShares Model 218 false explanation, myth as 100, 102, 103, 106–8, 120 family–professional partnerships 251–2 fashion company 276–87, 289–90, 295 Faulkner, D.O. 166 fertilizers 283 field theory 12, 239–63 social space and 240, 241–4, 255, 260 strategic action producing field change 244, 248–60, 295–6 Fishkin, J.S. 234 five forms of criticalness 6–7 Fligstein, N. 243–4 Flood, C. 77 Ford, J. 146 Foster, W. 41–2, 44, 215 Foucault, M. 7, 138, 140, 141, 185, 256 Fraser, N. 232, 234–5 freedom 117 from coercion and constraint 201 Friedman, V. 248

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Index ­305

Frost, S. 271 full democracy 219 functional veil 83 functionalist managerialism 278–80 Gabriel, Y. 5, 163 Gibson-Graham, J.K. 268–70, 288, 289, 296 Giddens, A. 21 global financial crisis 93 globalization 195 Godin, S. 191 Goffman, E. 21 Goldman, E. 176 Goldstein, J.A. 240 good management 115 governance 85–6 shift to 210–11, 211–14 social enterprise, democratic outcomes and 221–3 government contracts 45–6, 55, 56–7, 69 government grant cutbacks 40, 41–2, 43–60, 69 government policy social enterprise growth myth 20, 23, 25–34, 35–6 symbolic role of evidence in policy making 20, 21–2, 35 see also Big Society governmentality 185, 187 Grameen Bank 194, 200, 203, 220 grand narrative 161, 175, 217 public sector–social enterprise collaborations 164–5 Grant, S. 239–40 Great Society programs 41 Grenier, P. 217 growth pro-growth discourses 272–3 of social enterprise see social enterprise growth Guidestar UK 32 Guo, B. 42 Habermas, J. 192, 199–200, 201, 202 habitus 243 Hall, T. 88–9 Harding, N. 146 hardship 117

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Healy, S. 296 heroism 194, 213 mythical 118–19 heterotopia 256 Hewitt, P. 25 higher education 44 Highlander Research and Education Center 220 Hilton, S. 85 Hjorth, D. 6, 214, 217, 240 hoarding 297 Hockerts, K. 6 Hodgson, D. 141 Holocene 265, 291 Honey Care Africa 193 Horkheimer, M. 3 hospitals 44 Howorth, C. 213–14, 219 human re-imagining 273–6 see also posthuman subjectivity human service nonprofits 44–5, 55–8, 59 association of commercial activity with other revenue streams 58 rise in commercial activity 55–7 human trafficking 285 Humphries, M. 239–40 ideal speech situation, facilitation of 192, 199, 201–4, 205 idealization 81–2, 93–5 ideals–practice gap 137–8, 138–9 ideological demystification 104, 108– 10, 120, 129 ideology 7, 9–10, 79 myth as 100, 102, 103–4, 108–10, 119, 120 mythological ‘doublethink’ 10, 127–33 social enterprise and the Big Society 9, 75–99 IFF Research 27, 28–9, 30, 34 IMF structural adjustment programmes 230 impression management 169–70 inclusive playgrounds 247 indirect opposition through reframing 129–32 individual champion 216–17

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industrial and provident societies (IPSs) 28, 29, 33 inequality 219–20 informal contracts 170 information sharing 165, 171–2 institute for training in developmental disabilities 247, 255 institutional theory 21, 42–3, 59–60 institutionalization 249–50, 253, 254 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics of Income (SOI) dataset 43–4 interpretative repertoires 111–20, 121 benevolence 112–14, 116–17, 118–20 enterprising 113, 116–17, 118–20 professionalism 113, 115–16, 118–20 IRS Forms 990 43–4, 45, 46 Israel 240–41, 244–59 iterability 143, 144 iterative renegotiations 204 Jaeggi, R. 3 Jasper, C. 56 Johannisson, B. 172 Journal of Enterprising Communities 5 Journal of Social Entrepreneurship 5 journals, academic 4–5 kairos 6 Kallick, B. 160 Katz, R.A. 105 Kellner, D. 214 Kendall, J. 21 Kenya 193 Kerlin, J.A. 107 Kim, P.H. 170 kindergarten 257–8 Kingdon, J.W. 21 Kiva 203 Kluver, J.D. 42, 215–16 knowledge organization 255–6 Kock, C.E.J. 193, 201, 203–4 Kuhn, T. 70 Kurasawa, F. 200 labels 65 labour 269 Lacan, J. 140, 144 Lakoff, G. 10, 129–32, 296 language 109

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 306

demystification from below 105, 110–20, 120–21 Latour, B. 265, 273, 282, 297 Law, J. 298 Leadbeater, C. 130–31 learners 270, 271 learning to be affected 297 legitimacy 22, 115 LeRoux, K.M. 42 Levi-Strauss, C. 145 Lewin, K. 240, 241, 242, 243 Lewis, J.M. 167 library 255 life space 243 liminal space 176 little narratives 161–2, 217 public sector–social enterprise collaborations 163–4, 168–74, 174–7 local context, understanding 203 local government contracting out 56, 57 localism 89 Lombardo, P. 109 Los Angeles regeneration project 204 Lysenkoism 21 Mair, J. 6 managerialism 164, 165, 167 functionalist 278–80 Marcuse, H. 214 market capitalism 265, 278–80 market fundamentalism 85 market-led development 195 marketization 165–6, 186, 210, 211, 232 negative effects 214–15 of the nonprofit sector 110 shift to governance 211–13 and social inequality 219–20 Martell, L. 218 McAdam, D. 243–4 McCulloch, G. 94 meanings 244, 253–4, 257–9 Medicaid 55 Medicare 55 Meier, K.J. 221–2 message tags 285 meta-narratives 129 Mexico 193

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Index ­307

microcredit 203, 220, 232–3 micro-responsibility 233 Mill, J.S. 218 minimal (shadow) state 210–11, 212, 230 see also governance mistrust 171–2, 184 modes of existence 265 momentary sense of self 152 moral validity 202 movement 175 multimodal materialist methodology 273 myth 9, 100–26 as dialectic potential 100, 102, 104–5, 110–20, 120–22 as false explanation 100, 102, 103, 106–8, 120 as ideology 100, 102, 103–4, 108–10, 119, 120 mapping 101–5 political myth and social enterprise 77–80 myth-busting 7, 8–9, 65–71 nonprofit commercial revenue 8, 40–64 rational demystification 103, 106–8, 120 social enterprise growth myth 8, 19–39 mythical heroism 118–19 mythological ‘doublethink’ 10, 127–33 mythopoeia 77, 96 narrative analysis 10, 159–81 approach 161–4 counter-narratives 161, 165–8, 175 grand narrative 161, 164–5, 175, 217 little narratives 161–2, 163–4, 168–74, 174–7, 217 National Health Service 20 National Survey of Third Sector Organizations (NSTSO) 27, 32–4 nature–culture continuums 275, 281–7, 288, 290 needs 246–7, 253–4 neighbourhood 252–3 Neighbourhood Renewal Unit 25 neo-institutional theory 243 neoliberalism 231, 232, 234

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 307

compassion and 186–7 shift to governance 211–13 and values of social entrepreneurship 194–6, 204–5 New Labour 21, 23, 33–4, 83–4, 85–6, 89, 94 new materialism 271–3, 274, 280 New Public Management 69, 88 ‘newspeak’ 128–9 Newton, E. 145 Nicholls, A. 6, 194 Nickel, P.M. 222 Nietzsche, F. 140 nitrogen runoff 283 nomadic critical theory 274 non-capitalism 268–9, 280 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 230 nonhuman actants 281–7, 289–90, 295, 297 nonprofits commercial revenue 8, 40–64, 65, 69, 107 arts and culture 44, 51–4, 59, 60 association of commercial activity with other revenue streams 48–9, 54, 58 human service 44–5, 55–8, 59 rise in commercial activity 47–8, 51–3, 55–7 contributions to civil society 215–16 norms 143 North of England 162–74 Nussbaum, M. 233, 235 Oakes, L.S. 163 Obama, B. 212 official statistics 19–20, 23–34, 35–6 Ojha, H. 192, 198 Ontario, Canada 67–8 opposition 194 see also resistance organic cotton production 284, 286–7 orphan children, African 182, 183 Orwell, G. 10, 128, 132 other, engagement with the 202–3 O’Toole, L.J. 221–2 OTS (Cabinet Office of the Third Sector) 34 over-arching narratives 79–80

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Page, A. 105 panel analysis 46–7, 49–51, 52, 54, 58 Parekh, B. 197 parent–professional partnerships 251–2 Parkinson, C. 213–14, 219 Parks, R. 144 participation 7, 11–12, 218 citizen-led and the Big Society 86, 93 discourse ethics approach 11, 191–209 social entrepreneurship, democracy and 12, 230–36 partnerships 251–2, 259 Pateman, C. 218 pay for performance contracts 86 performative enactments see enactments performativity 10, 137–58, 214 Butler’s theory of 140–44 research as performative practice 298 of social business events 152–5 Perrini, F. 6, 165, 171, 172 Pestoff, V. 160 philanthropy 86, 89 physics 242 Plan Puebla 193 Plan for Stronger Communities, A 76, 87–8 playgrounds, inclusive 247 political and communicative education 192, 199–200, 205 political rights 234–5 political socialization 199–200 politics of collective action 269 political dimension of social entrepreneurship 197–8 of the subject 269, 271 Pollak, T.H. 107 Popper, K. 103 Porto Alegre 221 possible, the 7, 12–13 Anthropocene context 12–13, 264–93 field theory and relational framing 12, 239–63 new framings and practices of critical research 13, 294–9 postcapitalism 268–70

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 308

posthuman subjectivity 12–13, 264–5, 267, 273–6, 288, 290, 297 in practice 276–87 postmodernism 129 power 152, 197–8 asymmetrical power relations 173 ‘to do’ and ‘over’ 259 practice, critique as 2 pragmatism 114 primarily social objectives 19, 25–6, 27, 28, 30, 32–3, 34 private contributions, decreasing 40, 41–2, 43–60 professional–family partnerships 251–2 professionalism repertoire 113, 115–16, 118–20 program service revenue 45 programmatic approach 6 progressive liberalism 84 progressive solidification 122 Protestant work ethic 109 public entrepreneurship 217, 240 public imagination 79 public sector collaborations with social enterprise 10, 159–81, 184 cutbacks 41, 167 rhetoric 173 public services 169 Big Society and 86, 89, 93, 94 social enterprise growth myth 23, 33 social enterprise and the lack of 195 quality of dialogue 173 quasi-commercial structures and operations 66–7 rational demystification 103, 106–8, 120 reality tests 103, 106–8, 120 recognition 234–5 recycling 285 Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It 84, 85, 88 redistribution 234–5 re-enactment 143 reflexive ethnography 146, 147 reflexivity 192, 199, 200–201, 205 reframing 10, 129–32, 296–7

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regulatory ideal 10, 139 Rehn, A. 21 reinvestment of surplus 19, 25–6, 27, 28, 30, 32–3, 34 relationalism 241 relationality 7, 12–13 Anthropocene context 12–13, 264–93 new framings and practices of critical research 13, 294–9 relational framing of social entrepreneurship 12, 239–63 relational view of the world 294–5 relationships 244, 250–53, 257–9 religious images 151, 154 (re)organizing 267, 287–90 repetition 143, 144, 154 replication 196–7, 232 research (re)searching practices 266–7, 276–87 role of social research 294, 298–9 resistance 165–8, 175, 194 resource dependency theory (RDT) 8, 42, 59, 60, 107 responsibility 278, 280–81 ResPublica 84 resubjectivation 269, 271 (re)theorizing 266, 267–76 capitalism 268–70 the human 273–6 the social 271–3 reverse citation 144 rhetoric, public sector 173–4 Rich, R. 4 Ridley-Duff, R. 217–18 risk-taking 117 Rittelmeyer, H. 88 Robinson, J. 6 Rousseau, J.-J. 218 rules of the game 244, 254–6, 257–9 safe working conditions 284–5 Sako, M. 170 Salamon, L.M. 41 sales of inventory, profit from 45 Sandoval, G. 204 Santamaria, B.A. 88 Sassmannshausen, S.P. 4 scalability 196, 232

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 309

Index ­309 Schumpeter, J. 185 Schwartz, B. 138 scientific ideal 103 Seedco Policy Center 215 seeds see under cotton Sekem 193 Self-Employment Women’s Association 220 self-fulfillment 117 self-interest 214 Sen, A. 233, 235 service model innovation 66–7 shadow (minimal) state 210–11, 212, 230 see also governance sharing information 165, 171–2 show confessions 114 signified 128 signifier 127–8 Simpson, M.L. 210 Singer, P. 297 slavery 285 abolitionism 296–7 Smallbone, D. 166 Smith, M.J. 84, 91–2 social, reimagining the 271–3 social business events 139, 146–56, 184–5 ethnographic study 146–51 performativity of 152–5 social business ideas 150, 154 social change 13, 294, 295–7 discourse ethics approach to participative processes 11, 191–209 process 295–7 role of research in 294, 298–9 social enterprise contested concept 19, 22–3 political myth and 77–80 UK DTI definition 19, 25–6, 32, 34, 35–6 social enterprise growth 65 myth of 8, 19–39, 65, 67, 77–8, 212 political construction of 25–34 shift to governance and 211–14 Social Enterprise Journal 5 social enterprise mapping working group 25 Social Enterprise Unit 25

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social entrepreneurship defining 191, 213 support and opposition 193–4 values of 194–8, 204–5 social investment 86, 89 social justice 197–8 social life 243–4 social objectives 19, 25–6, 27, 28, 30, 32–3, 34 social problems 153–4 social rights 234–5 social space 240, 241–4, 255, 260 social welfare cuts 41, 167 socialization, political 199–200 Sørensen, E. 222 special events, revenue from 45 spiritual images 151, 154 stakeholder participation 198 state minimal 210–11, 212, 230 see also governance voluntary 222 withering welfare state 108–9 state-level contracting out (US) 56–7 Steyaert, C. 6, 160, 161, 176, 217, 220, 256, 289 strategic action fields 243–4 actors and relationships 244, 250–53, 257–9 meanings 244, 253–4, 257–9 rules of the game 244, 254–6, 257–9 strategic action producing field change 244, 248–60, 295–6 structural adjustment programmes 230 Stuchiner, N. 244, 245, 250–51, 254, 255, 257 stylized repetition of acts 142–3 subject, politics of the 269, 271 subjectivity Butler’s theory of performativity 140–44 discourse and 138–9, 143–4, 152–5 posthuman 12–13, 264–5, 267, 273–87, 288, 290, 297 substantialism 241 substantive democracy 219 surplus, reinvestment of 19, 25–6, 27, 28, 30, 32–3, 34 sustainability 280–87, 289–90, 295 Sweeney, F. 176

DEY_9781783474110_t.indd 310

Swiss nonprofit organizations 111–20 Sydow, J. 172 Sykes, I. 248, 250, 254–5, 258 symbolic forms 241 symbolic role of evidence in policy making 20, 21–2, 35 symbolic struggles 257–8 symbolic violence 196 Tax Reform Act 1986 49 Teasdale, S. 138, 219, 220 temptation 81, 82 Big Society and 92–3 Texas school districts 221–2 Thatcherite conservatism 84–5 third sector 79, 86–7, 159, 177 Third Way 21, 23, 83, 85 Thrift, N. 176 top-down solutions 231–2 Torfing, J. 222 trading income mapping social enterprise in the UK 19, 25–6, 27, 28–9, 32–3, 34 nonprofit commercial revenue in the US 8, 40–64, 65, 69, 107 trafficking, human 285 training Beit Issie Shapiro’s training institute in developmental disabilities 247, 255 in safe working conditions 284–5 transactions 268–9 transformative practice, dance as 176 transitional spaces 256 transparency 115–16 trend analysis 46, 47–9, 51–4, 55–8 trust 10, 159–81, 184 Twersky, F. 5, 66 understanding-focused dialogue 201–2 Unilever 106 United Kingdom (UK) 213 Big Society 9, 75, 83–7, 90–97 public sector–social enterprise collaborations in the North of England 162–74 shift to governance 212, 221 social enterprise growth myth 8, 19–39, 67, 77–8, 212 United States (US) 80, 213

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fashion company 276–87, 289–90, 295 nonprofit commercial revenue 8, 40–64, 65, 69, 107 shift to governance 212, 221 Texas school districts 221–2 universalization, principle of 199 unpaid/alternatively paid labour 269 Urry, J. 298 Uzbekistan 283, 284 validity claims 202 values of capitalism 195 of social entrepreneurship 194–8, 204–5 veil politics 76, 80–83, 96, 128–9 aesthetic adornment 80–81, 82, 91–2, 93 and the Big Society 83–95, 96 critical issues 82–3 idealization 81–2, 93–5 temptation 81, 82, 92–3 verbal agreements 170 Volkmann, C. 4

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Index ­311 voluntary state 222 volunteering 87–8, 92, 93, 212 vulnerability 170–71 wage labour 269 Wallace, J. 197–8 Washington Consensus 230 water 283 Weber, M. 70 Weisbrod, B.A. 60 Weitzman, M.S. 59 welfare state 108–9 Welter, F. 166 Whitehead, S. 141 Wigren, C. 173 Willmott, H. 128 Wingo, A.H. 9, 76, 80–82, 83, 91 women’s rights movement 296–7 worker-owned cooperatives 218, 219 ‘Writing Culture’ debate 146 Yunus, M. 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 184, 194, 203 Ziegler, R. 5

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