Aspiring Minds: ‘A Generation of Entrepreneurs in the Making’

Abstract

This article examines how corporate, state and donor interests have converged in attempts to craft South Africa’s youngsters into an army of entrepreneurs as the last frontier for creating growth in a post-job world. We investigate the apparatus designed to engineer this entrepreneurial revolution and the actors hoping to seed enterprising aspirations in school-age kids. Our ethnographic findings show that while the ideology of entrepreneurial education enrols kids in anticipation of an entrepreneurial future, it falls short of both its enticing promise and its transformative intentions. As enterprise education fails to deliver on the New South African Dream, we argue, the aspirations it propagates withers, generating disaffection rather than a generation of entrepreneurial subjects faithful to the neoliberal creed of making it on your own.

Young People’s Aspirations in an Uncertain World: Taking Control of the Future?

“…Rajak and Dolan (2021) describe how corporations, the South African state, and international donors have come together to run programmes for disadvantaged children and youth to develop in them the dispositions and skills required for entrepreneurial futures. Based on ethnographic research including interviews with those involved in operating four such programmes, the authors highlight how the interests they serve are not those of the children who participate in them.…”