Emancipation as Contested Translation: Toward a Dialectic Understanding of Emancipatory Organizing
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
01 September 2013
End Date
31 March 2015
Status
completed
Keywords
Emancipation
dialectics
translation
utopia
social innovation
social innovation
crowdfunding
ethnography
Description
Broader Context: The ongoing economic crisis and the perpetual state of exception this has engendered have garnered a renewed interest in the question of whether and how organizations can contribute to emancipation. In partial response to this, Management and Organization Studies (MOS) have come to elaborate different forms of emancipatory organizing such as bottom of the pyramid ventures, inclusive business, social entrepreneurship or corporate social responsibility. What is conspicuous is that evaluations of these endeavors in terms of their emancipatory potential diverge to the point of incommensurability: where some commentators conceive of, for instance, bottom of the pyramid ventures as paradigmatic cases of emancipation, others deny them any liberating currency whatsoever. Problematization: What unites these antagonistic interpretations is that they both reify emancipation by construing the respective organizations as either wholly authentic or wholly corrupted, whereas they are deeply contradictory. Objective: The goal of this project is to re-conceptualize emancipation through a dialectic approach which places apt heed on the role of utopia and translation. Building on an understanding of utopia as a motivating impulse which sets things in motion, while drawing on Callon's (1986) theory of translation, emancipatory organizing gets construed as a process of contested translation whereby central actors create utopian openings for new forms of being and co-existence by problematizing and redefining particular aspects of the status quo. Dialectic analysis helps us to focus not simply on how utopian articulations are used to mobilize broader networks of allies with similar interests, but particularly on how such utopian impulses are constantly contested. Research Question: How are utopian impulses which aim at creating new possibilities of individual and collective action translated into broader networks and movements? What are the contradictions, tensions and underlying conflicts which come to the fore in such processes of emancipatory organizing? Methods: The dialectics of emancipatory organizing is studied empirically through two initiatives which explicitly aspire to "make a difference". The studies rely on an ethnographic methodology to produce an embedded understanding of the multifaceted processes of translation. Contributions: First, creating a circuit between dialectic thought and the theory of translation enables dereifying emancipation by pinpointing its "produced' character. Hence, conceptually elaborating and empirically studying the concrete ways in which problematizations of existing practices and conditions are enacted, embedded in broader networks, and contested from different sides, makes it possible to foreground the contradictory nature of emancipatory organizing. Second, in light of the paucity of empirical research on emancipation in the realm of MOS, this project contributes to the academic debate by providing an embedded understanding of the messiness and many unintended consequences involved in the struggles around emancipatory organizing.
Member contributor(s)
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
Emancipation
dialectic theory
translation
utopia
social innovation
crowdfunding
Method(s)
Ethnography
case studies
Range
Institute/School
Range (De)
Institut/School
Division(s)
Eprints ID
223101

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Studying crowdfunding through extreme cases: Cursory reflections on the social value creation process of a potato salad project

2016-07-07 , Dey, Pascal , Marti, Laurent , Lehner, Othmar

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Crowdfunding is a fairly novel phenomenon, both in taxonomic as well as in technological terms. Whilst at first mainly used to finance projects in the arts and the broader field of the creative industries (Bradford, 2012), political campaigns (Belleflamme, Lambert, & Schwienbacher, 2010) as well as entrepreneurial start-ups and SMEs (de Buysere, Gajda, Kleverlaan, & Marom, 2012), crowdfunding has meanwhile increasingly been employed as a vehicle for financing social and sustainable ventures or projects (Lehner, 2013; Thorpe, 2012)—which forms the focal attention of this chapter. In general, so-called social purpose crowdfunding forms an alternative means of financing the overall operation of social ventures, or isolated projects or programs (Lehner, 2013, 2014; Lehner & Nicholls, 2014; Lehner, Grabmann, & Ennsgraber, 2014). The main assumption is thereby that social purpose crowdfunding offers project initiators or Social Entrepreneurs a financial remedy under conditions of increasing restrictions on traditional means of funding (Meyskens & Bird, 2015). Simultaneously, social purpose crowdfunding offers attractive invest- ment opportunities to those investors who are more interested in promoting social value than in earning a profit (Meyskens & Bird, 2015). The basic contention the present chapter makes is that despite the almost univocally accepted promise of crowdfunding as an innovative tool for social value creation, relatively little is know about how this emergent technology works, and what kind of contingent effects it produces. This chapter argues that substantially new insights about crowdfunding in general and its rela- tionship to social value creation more specifically can be derived from the investigation of queer cases—a particular type of extreme cases which do not simply deviate from but largely upset and potentially change the very essence of the phenomena under consideration. To attain this goal, we will follow a potato salad crowdfunding campaign, which started as a fairly modest initiative before turning into one of the most prominent crowdfunding projects in the US. The project in question, which was perceived by many as a blatant hoax, challenges the linear “cause and effect” model underlying many conceptualizations of crowdfunding. It also makes us aware that social value creation is not necessarily attributable to the ingenuity of the project initiator or located in the proclaimed goal of a campaign; instead, social value in the case of the analyzed project forms a contingent effect emerging from the specific relations between an initial idea, the distinct agency of the crowdfunding platform, and the backers’ staging of an event. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, we offer an overview of crowdfunding research, with an emphasis on how the crowdfunding process is framed in normative terms. Second, we introduce the concept of queer cases and draw on speech act theory to develop a provisional framework to analyze the infelicitous usages of crowdfunding. Third, we empirically analyze a Kickstarter project by Zack Brown aimed at raising $10 to produce a potato salad. Fourth, Brown’s potato salad project is analyzed in terms of how it breaches existing conditions of felicity. Fifth, we reflect on a more general level on how attentiveness to ostensible misfires and abuses of crowdfunding through queer cases creates an opportunity to experiment with new perspectives on the subject matter. The chapter concludes by calling for prospective research on queer crowdfunding projects which uproots convictions about how and where social value is created.

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Critical perspectives on entrepreneurship : challenging dominant discourses

2017 , Essers, Caroline , Dey, Pascal , Tedmanson, Deirdre , Verduyn, Karen

Entrepreneurship is largely considered to be a positive force, driving venture creation and economic growth. Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurship questions the accepted norms and dominant assumptions of scholarship on the matter, and reveals how they can actually obscure important questions of identity, ideology and inequality. The book’s distinguished authors and editors explore how entrepreneurship study can privilege certain forms of economic action, whilst labelling other, more collective forms of organization and exchange as problematic. Demystifying the archetypal vision of the white, male entrepreneur, this book gives voice to other entrepreneurial subjectivities and engages with the tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities at the heart of the topic. This challenging collection seeks to further the momentum for alternate analyses of the field, and to promote the growing voice of critical entrepreneurship studies. It is a useful tool for researchers, advanced students and policy-makers.

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A critical understanding of entrepreneurship

2017 , Verduyn, Karen , Dey, Pascal , Tedmanson, Deirdre

In lieu of an abstract, here a short extract from the introduction: ... when using the term “critical” in CES (Critical Entrepreneurship Studies), we have in mind research which deliber- ately goes against the grain of functionalism and its deterministic view of human nature, reality and research, with the aim of opening up space to critique the canon of accepted knowledge and to create the conditions for rearticulating entrepreneurship in light of issues pertaining to freedom, emancipation or societal production. We seek to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge to open up new and different understandings that may change society for the bet- ter; we seek to critique in order to create. In this way, CES can be thought of as a double move- ment which critically engages with the mainstream of entrepreneurship only in order to break it open so that novel possibilities, be they practical or conceptual, can take flight. As we write this text, research that challenges the mainstream of entrepreneurship research clearly outnumbers studies which set out to rearticulate entrepreneurship as a society-creating force whose broader effects have emancipatory purchase, not merely economic utility. To carve out the unique poten- tial of CES, we would like to sketch out, if only tangentially, different strands and research tradi- tions which bear relevance for a critical understanding of entrepreneurship.

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Destituent entrepreneurship: disobeying sovereign rule, prefiguring post-capitalist reality

2016-08-23 , Dey, Pascal

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Critical Entrepreneurship Studies: A Manifesto

2017 , Essers, Caroline , Dey, Pascal , Tedmanson, Deirdre , Verduyn, Karen , Essers, Caroline , Dey, Pascal , Tedmanson, Deirdre , Verduyn, Karen

In light of the ongoing dominance of functionalist approaches as well as recent signs of change towards more critical and nuanced perspectives, we offer this book as a collection of critical narratives which render visible diverse examples of non-traditional entrepreneurship as well as usually overshadowed aspects of ‘traditional’ entrepreneurship. The chapters in this book interrogate entrepreneurship from a range of differing perspectives. They each reveal how extant research has tended to privilege entrepreneurship as a distinct field of economic action and an exclusive activity for distinct groups of people, while at the same time illustrating examples of other, more collective and value-based forms of entrepreneurial organising and exchange. Accordingly, the book takes issue with and exposes some of the dominant ideologies, intellectual traditions and prevailing assumptions which bind entrepreneurship within the dictum of profit maximisation and wealth creation (Görling and Rehn 2008; Rindova et al. 2009). At the same time, the book assumes a pro-active stance in seeking to position entrepreneurship as an activity, behaviour or process which can be linked to new ethical and political possibilities. Together, the chapters give voice to unheard stories, places and potentialities of entrepreneurship which are usually left out of existing research (Steyaert and Katz 2004). In this book, entrepreneurship is reconceptualised as a social change activity that moves against the grain of orthodoxy in order to realise spaces of freedom and otherness (Dey and Steyaert 2016; Hjorth 2004; Verduyn et al. 2014; Essers and Tedmanson 2014).

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Registering ideology in the creation of social entrepreneurs: Intermediary organizations, ‘ideal subjects’, and the promise of enjoyment.

2017-06-16 , Dey, Pascal , Lehner, Othmar

Research on social entrepreneurship has taken an increasing interest in issues pertaining to ideology. In contrast to existing research which tends to couch ‘ideology’ in pejorative terms (i.e. something which needs to be overcome), this paper conceives ideology as a key mechanism for rendering social entrepreneurship an object with which people can identify. Specifically, drawing on qualitative research of arguably one of the most prolific social entrepreneurship intermediaries, the global Impact Hub network, we investigate how social entrepreneurship is narrated as an ‘ideal subject’, which signals toward others what it takes to lead a meaningful (working) life. Taking its theoretical cues from the theory of justification advanced by Luc Boltanski and his co-authors, and from recent affect-based theorizing on ideology, our findings indicate that becoming a social entrepreneur is considered not so much a matter of struggle, hardship and perseverance but rather of ‘having fun’. We caution that the promise of enjoyment which pervades portrayals of the social entrepreneur might cultivate a passive attitude of empty ‘pleasure’ which effectively deprives social entrepreneurship of its more radical possibilities. The paper concludes by discussing the broader implications this hedonistic rendition of social entrepreneurship has and suggests a re-politicization of social entrepreneurship through a confronting with what Slavoj Žižek calls the ‘impossible’.

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