Purpose-Responding to recent pleas both to critically analyze and to conceptually advance social entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the political "unconscious" operates in the narration of social entrepreneurship and how it poses a limit to alternative forms of thinking and talking. Design/methodology/approach-To move the field beyond a predominantly monological way of narrating, various genres of narrating social entrepreneurship are identified, critically discussed and illustrated against the backdrop of development aid. Findings-The paper identifies and distinguishes between a grand narrative that incorporates a messianistic script of harmonious social change, counter-narratives that render visible the intertextual relations that interpellate the grand narration of social entrepreneurship and little narratives that probe novel territories by investigating the paradoxes and ambivalences of the social. Practical implications-The paper suggests a minor understanding and non-heroic practice of social entrepreneurship guided by the idea of "messianism without a messiah." Originality/value-The paper suggests critical reflexivity as a way to analyze and multiply the circulating narrations of social entrepreneurship.

This article identifies power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom as neglected but significant elements for understanding the ethics of social entrepreneurship. While the ethics of social entrepreneurship is typically conceptualized in conjunction with innate properties or moral commitments of the individual, we problematize this view based on its presupposition of an essentialist conception of the authentic subject. We offer, based on Foucault's ethical oeuvre, a practice-based alternative which sees ethics as being exercised through a critical and creative dealing with the limits imposed by power, notably as they pertain to the conditioning of the neoliberal subject. To this end, we first draw on prior research which looks at how practitioners of social enterprises engage with government policies that demand that they should act and think more like prototypical entrepreneurs. Instead of simply endorsing the kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity implied in prevailing policies, our results indicate that practitioners are mostly reluctant to identify themselves with the invocation of governmental power, often rejecting the subjectivity offered to them by discourse. Conceiving these acts of resistance as emblematic of how social entrepreneurs practice ethics by retaining a skeptical attitude toward attempts that seek to determine who they should be and how they should live, we introduce three vignettes that illustrate how practices of freedom relate to critique, the care for others, and reflected choice. We conclude that a practice-based approach of ethics can advance our understanding of how social entrepreneurs actively produce conditions of freedom for themselves as well as for others without supposing a 'true self' or a utopian space of liberty beyond power.

Using England as a paradigmatic case of the "enterprising up" of the third sector through social enterprise policies and programs, this article sheds light on resistance as enacted through dramaturgical identification with government strategies. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative research study, which is interpreted via Michel de Certeau"s theory of the everyday, we present the case study of Teak, a charitable regeneration company, to illustrate how its Chief Executive Liam "acted as" a social entrepreneur in order to gain access to important resources. We establish "tactical mimicry" as a sensitizing concept to suggest that third sector practitioners" identification with the normative premises of "social enterprise" is part of a parasitical prosaics geared toward appropriating public money. While tactical mimicry conforms to strategies only in order to exploit them, its ultimate aim is to increase potentials of collective agency outside the direct influence of power. The contribution we make is threefold: first, we extend the recent debate on productive resistance by highlighting how "playing the game" without changing existing relations of power can nevertheless produce largely favorable outcomes. Second, we suggest that recognition of the productive potential of tactical mimicry requires methodologies which pay attention to the spatial and temporal dynamics of resistance. And third, we argue that explaining "social enterprise" without consideration of the non-discursive, mainly financial resources made available to those who identify with it, necessarily risks overlooking a crucial element of the dramaturgical dynamic of discourse .

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to use the attribute "critical" as a sensitizing concept to emphasize entrepreneurship's role in overcoming extant relations of exploitation, domination and oppression. It builds on the premise that entrepreneurship not only brings about new firms, products and services but also new openings for more liberating forms of individual and collective existence. Design/methodology/approach -Honing in on Calas et al.'s (2009) seminal piece on critical entrepreneurship studies, and building on Laclau's (1996) conceptualization of emancipation as intimately related to oppression, the paper explores different interpretations of emancipation and discuss these from a critical understanding of entrepreneurship. The paper then employs these interpretations to introduce and "classify" the five articles in this special issue. Findings -The editorial charts four interpretations of emancipation along two axes (utopiandystopian and heterotopian-paratopian), and relates these to various strands of critical entrepreneurship research. United by a general commitment to positive change, each interpretation champions a different take on what might comprise the emancipatory or oppressive potential of entrepreneurship. Originality/value -As the emancipatory aspect of entrepreneurship has attracted increasing attention among entrepreneurship researchers, the paper formulates a tentative framework for furthering views on the emancipatory aspects of entrepreneurship as a positive phenomenon in critical research -which to date has tended to be preoccupied with the "dark side" of entrepreneurship.

The findings of an international workshop on improving clinical interactions between mental health workers and suicidal patients are reported. Expert clinician-researchers identified common contemporary problems in interviews of suicide attempters. Various videotaped interviews of suicide attempters were critically discussed in relation to expert experience and the existing literature in this area. The working group agreed that current mental health practice often does not take into account the subjective experience of patients attempting suicide, and that contemporary clinical assessments of suicidal behavior are more clinician-centered than patient-centered. The group concluded that clinicians should strive for a shared understanding of the patient's suicidality; and that interviewers should be more aware of the suicidal patient's inner experience of mental pain and loss of self-respect. Collaborative and narrative approaches to the suicidal patient are more promising, enhancing the clinician's ability to empathize and help the patient begin to reestablish a sense of mastery, thereby strengthening the clinical alliance.