infonet-economy

In the English third sector, the policy discourse of social enterprise has raised serious concerns. For some critical commentators, encouraging voluntary organizations to adhere to market principles and behave more like mainstream businesses can be understood as a (somewhat perverse) neoliberal response to the problems caused by neoliberalism (Amin et al., 2002; Blackburn & Ram, 2006). Early empirical studies revealed how practitioners resist ‘social enterprise' and the ideological assumptions associated with the term, notably as they pertain to managerialism (Parkinson &Howorth, 2008). Since the early work of Parkinson and Howorth (2008) it would appear that increasing numbers of voluntary organizations in England have come to identify as social enterprises. However at closer inspection many of these organizations seem to exhibit little more than surface level identification, with many not even engaging in ‘trading' (Teasdale et al. 2013).
This raises some important questions as to the interpellative power of discourse: for instance, "to what extent does the discourseof social enterprise regulate the identity and practice of voluntary organizations in determinate ways?", and conversely, "what are the possibilities of resistance for third sector organizations?" Here, we are not so much interested in offering a final answer to these questions, for this will necessarily lead to the conclusion that power and resistance are inseparable, standing in a agonistic relationship of ‘permanent provocation' (Foucault, 1982). Our purpose rather is to advance the theorizing by foregrounding forms of resistance where provocation and struggles are not an issue. We do so by placing performative, temporal and spatial aspects of identification at the heart of the debate on micro-resistance. Concretely, we contend that identification with prevailing norms can nevertheless qualify as resistance in that the enactment of compliance with power's invocation in one space might open up new opportunities for individual and collective action at another moment and in another space.

Our research
To illustrate this double operation of identification (compliance-resistance), we draw upon a case study from Real Times, a longitudinal in-depth study of English third sector organizations (see Macmillan et al. 2010).Concretely, we highlight instances where Anna, a third sector practitioner exhibits surface level compliance with the governmental discourse of social enterprise. Anna, a self-professed social entrepreneur, claims her organization (Beech) is a social enterprise and regularly speaks on the social enterprise "self-congratulation circuit' to help develop the emergent field. These processes of identification with government discourse might initially be seen as conserving the status quo. However, studying Beech from a temporal and spatial perspective, identification took on a new meaning. That is, Anna's acts of identification turned out to be performative imitations of the policy "ideal type' stipulation of social enterprise with the aim of opening up new opportunities for individual and collective action elsewhere, in other spaces. In claiming to run a social enterprise and through her working of the social enterprise self congratulation circuit, new funding opportunities arise for Anna. Somewhat perversely the awards presented to Beech for being a "sustainable social enterprise' (i.e. non-grant dependent) lead to funding bodies keen to be associated with this new phenomena providing unrestricted grant income. It is this grant funding which is used (indirectly) to pursue Beech's more radical (or indeed traditional third sector) agenda around providing a space for people with mental health problems to participate in what is ostensibly a "work integration' social enterprise.

Contribution to the theme
Our paper specifically addresses whether voluntary organizations are able to work in harmony with the sector's values while coping with the new economic reality. Drawing on de Certeau's (1984) work of micro-resistance, we coin the term "tactical mimicry' to conceptualize processes whereby individuals enact organizational identities which at surface level comply line with official stipulations, norms or rules in order to expand opportunities of individual and collective action in other spaces. In concluding, we argue that research at the intersection of power and micro-resistance should refrain from judging the latter exclusively in terms of whether it changes "the sociosymbolic network in which we and our way of life make sense" (Contu, 2008, p. 374). Research based on embedded methodologies which capture spatial and temporal dimensions can better develop understanding of how compliance and identification in one space, though basically leaving intact the constellation of power relations, become a precondition for more radical opportunities in another.

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