Power as Practice: A Micro-sociological Analysis of the Dynamics of Emancipatory Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This paper contributes to a recent movement to reframe entrepreneurship theory into a more critical and reflexive mode. It builds on the processual notion of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation to theorize a balanced conception of agency and active constraint rooted in the notion of power rituals. We develop a micro-sociological analysis of power rituals that conceives power reproduction and entrenchment as a 'practice-based' activity that focuses on what power holders and subordinates concretely do, think and feel. This makes emotion a key dimension of entrepreneurial agency and redefines constraining barriers to agency in terms of a social process of 'barring'. This novel approach is illustrated using an autobiographical account of a social entrepreneurship project. On the basis of this analysis, a number of insights are provided into the ways in which the power-as-practice approach can inform wider debates in organization studies where the notions of agency and constraint are linked to issues of power and resistance.

Social Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics: Does Social Equal Ethical?

“…This in turn links to work on emancipatory entrepreneurship (Goss et al 2011) which, similarly to the Dey and Steyaert paper, understands the sociological perspective on power through practice. As empirical basis for their work Haugh and Talwar draw on Mahaul, a rural social enterprise in North India which sells traditional handicraft products made by women in rural villages.…”

Power in Management and Organization Science

“…In their study of attempts to change attitudes about forced marriage in the UK, Goss, Jones, Latham and Betta (2011) argue that 'emancipatory entrepreneurship' was indispensable to the way oppositional movements installed a different sense of self towards forced marriage. To demonstrate why, they use the atypical methodology of an autobiographical narrative, Shame (2007), by the activist Jasvinder Sanghera.…”

“…To demonstrate why, they use the atypical methodology of an autobiographical narrative, Shame (2007), by the activist Jasvinder Sanghera. Goss et al (2011) suggest that Sanghera used the anti-forced-marriage movement to mobilize a wide range of alternative identities or 'subject positions' that members of the relevant community might occupy. This allowed the male community to detach themselves from the stereotypical identities that sanctioned coerced wedlock and thus approach the issue from more liberating perspectives.…”

Beyond macro- and micro- emancipation: Rethinking emancipation in organization studies

“…Furthermore, the experience of emancipation is one that many studies have widely reported as something that employees seek and indeed sometimes find in the workplace (Fenwick, 2003). The desire for emancipation from the drudgeries of organizational life is often an important force, which drives many entrepreneurs (Rindova, Barry and Ketchen, 2009;Goss, Jones, Betta and Latham, 2011). Finally, emancipation has appeared as an important normative aspect of research, teaching and public engagements (Wright, 1993).…”