infonet-economy

In lieu of an abstract, here a brief extract from the introduction:

... in this chapter I ask how individuals targeted by the discourse of entrepreneurship either identify with or resist it. This question is investigated in the realm of development aid, a context in which discussions of entrepreneurship and business savvy have acquired increasing prominence over the last decades. Rendering non-governmental organizations (NGOs) the focal attention of this chapter seems timely in view of how these organizations have stirred controversy with regard to their effectiveness and legitimacy (notably in the realm of development aid), which was followed by suggestions to align them more closely with the principles and values of the private sector. Further, investigating the extent to which the normative desideratum of ‘entrepreneurship’ is received by development NGO practitioners bears critical currency in the way it exposes possible limits and dangers associated with this discourse (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008). However, unlike forms of critique which aspire to challenge the discourse of entrepreneurship from a position of exteriority, for example from the transcendental vantage point of moral philosophy, the present critique is conducted from within the coordinates of the entrepreneurship discourse. Framing it as an ‘immanent critique’ (from Latin immanere, ‘to dwell in, remain in’), I subject the discourse of entrepreneurship to critical scrutiny not via universal judgment of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but by attending to the viewpoints of those being addressed or ‘hailed’ as entrepreneurs.

The concept ‘social entrepreneurship' is virtually proliferating like a virus, elating and inspiring people in such diverse spheres as politics, the media, the non-profit sector as well as academia. Despite the rather young pedigree of the term, social entrepreneurship today is predominantly construed as a positive sign, a genuine ‘hurray word', so to speak. In an effort to gain a deeper sense of its positive, not to say enthusiastic, connotation as well as its historical evolvement, this book endeavors to investigate the social construction of social entrepreneurship in three distinct contexts: business school teaching, management research and development aid. While shedding light on three areas of knowledge production which have been and still are evidently influential in denoting and circulating the meaning of social entrepreneurship, the objective of this book is not only to reveal that social entrepreneurship may be conceived as a power-based reality construction, but to investigate critically the limitations and totalitarian threats related to prevailing enunciations and to ask whether and how the sign ‘social entrepreneurship' could be extended beyond its current confines.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part sheds light on the commodification of social entrepreneurship through management (MBA) education and its determination (and thus delimitation) in the context of management research. The second part is a discursive investigation of development aid practitioners, endeavoring to investigate if and to what extent the lexis of entrepreneurship, and managerialism at large, has come to penetrate the non-governmental sector. The third part suggests novel lines of flight (i.e. meanings) that take into account and counteract the fact that social entrepreneurship is as yet mainly orchestrated by economic rationalities and, by implication, limited in its potentially infinite semantic. Whereas the book trades heavily on philosophy, the three parts also take into account works from other academic traditions, such as, for instance, (social) psychology, (business) ethics and sociology, in order to illuminate and reflect upon social entrepreneurship from various angles and, most importantly, to probe understandings of social entrepreneurship which are new to its hotbed: organization and management science.

RATNER's "Epistemological, Social, and Political Conundrums in Social Constructionism" provides ample illustration of how a grossly negligent, read both limited and limiting, exegesis of social constructionsim has the demonstrable effect of installing the impression of the subject matter forming a homogeneous unity and an utmost negative one at that. The present commentary will show that the irony of RATNER's article is not that it has gotten social constructionism completely wrong but that it conceals that he himself is a (hyperreal) constructionist and that his account might be used for pinpointing how the construction of (hyper)reality works in textual practice. To rebut RATNER's assertion that social constructionist theorizing engenders a relativistic worldview of "everything goes" on the basis of his own account, it will be shown that though his truth is (partly) random, temporary and thus alterable it does have REAL implications (both existent and potential) for those referring to it, in either positive or negative terms. The commentary will close with tentative suggestions for an ethos of reading that seeks to cultivate a sensitivity towards the singular spirit of social constructionist writings as well as the necessity of creative inheriting and hence invention.

Volltext:

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