View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Goldsmiths Research Online SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: SOCIALITY, ETHICS AND POLITICS Carolina Bandinelli Supervisors: Dr. Stefanie Petschick Prof. Adam Arvidsson Ph.D. Thesis Centre for Cultural Studies Goldsmihts, University of London London, 2017 1 I, Carolina Bandinelli, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. ………………………………………………………………….. Signed Date 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5) Acknowledgements 7) Abstract 8) Prologue 12) Introduction 33) Chapter I – Social Entrepreneurship: A Literature Search 33) Introduction 34) Social entrepreneurship: a brief overview 38) Social entrepreneurship: a pre-paradigmatic field 41) European and US narratives 44) The European School of Thought: Bureaucracy 47) The Social Innovation School of Thought: Charisma 52) Looking for the social 57) Make Money Doing Good 58) Conclusion 59) Chapter II – Theoretical Framework: The Self at Work in Neoliberal Societies 59) Introduction 61) The ambiguity of entrepreneurship 65) Enterprise and neoliberalism 68) The entrepreneur of the self 70) Entrepreneurs of the self and the death of the collective 72) The self at work 75) Individualisation 77) Individualisation as lived 81) Understanding social entrepreneurs’ subjectivity and regime of truth 85) Sociality, Ethics, and politics 94) Conclusion 96) Chapter III – Methodology: Ethnography as a Process of Subjectivation 90) Introduction 93) Beyond Interviews, towards ethnography 96) The uncertainty of the field(work) 100) Impact Hub as a platform 103) Fieldwork in a network sociality 107) An Ethnography of the self 111) Ethnography as a dialogue 114) Reflexivity and ethical dilemmas 3 117) Ethnography as a process of subjectivation 120) Conclusion 122) Chapter IV – The Sociality of Social Entrepreneurs 122) Introduction 125) The performative context 126) Sociality at work 129) The rise of coworking spaces: the social back to work 133) Impact Hub: a place where to meet 137) Compulsory friendship and opportunism 140) Sociality ot be learnt 144) The production of the self 146) Conclusion 148) Chapter V – The Individualised Ethics of Social Entrepreneurs 148) Introduction 149) Ethics 152) Individualised ethics 157) Changing the world? A matter of the self 160) Social entrepreneurship as a hermeneutic of the self 166) Private wealth and ethical feelings 170) The ethical neutrality of entrepreneurial means 174) Conclusion 175) Chapter VI – The Experiential Post-Politics of Social Entrepreneurs 175) Introduction 178) Politics 180) The political passion of social entrepreneurs 184) Experiential a-systemic politics 188) Individuals of the World Unite! 191) Entrepreneurship as a method 195) Solutionism and neoliberalism 198) Social entrepreneurship as a post-political phenomenon 203) Conclusion 204) Conclusion 221) Bibliography 135) Fig 1 and Fig 2. Photos taken by the author 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Six years have passed since I began my doctorate, and I would not have made it without the emotional support and intellectual inspiration I received from many people. In the most difficult phases of the research I imagined myself writing this acknowledgement, a moment of sweetness tinged with a hint of nostalgia. Now that moment has come, and I am glad. I want to begin by thanking Angela McRobbie, who suggested doing a Ph.D., and whose inputs have contributed to shaping this thesis since its very early phases. I also wish to thank Sian Prime: engaging in a dialogue with her was crucial to understand the topic of this research. There is a person without whom I couldn’t have endured all the ups and downs of these years: he is Adam Arvidsson. And I want to deeply thank Stefanie Petschick, she has given me the guidance I needed and got me to this point in a professional yet sympathetic way. Writing a thesis is made up of endless days sitting behind a desk, struggling. For most of those days I was not alone: Paolo Ruffino has been by my side, as a dear friend and peer. With him, boredom and fatigue became something to laugh about, something memorable and special. Certainly, the best moments of my Ph.D. have been those where I could engage in deep dialogues, and mix high theory with pop culture and sheer nonsense. For these moments, I thank Alessandro Gandini and Alberto Cossu: friends, colleagues, super heroes and spiritual guides. There is another super hero and spiritual guide, the most important person in my life: my brother Arturo Bandinelli. He has experienced with me every tiny step of this journey, and I bet he is happier than me now that it is over! I want to thank all my friends, especially my guardian angel Nino, my Socia Giuditta and my brother Luca, who, at times, reminded me that a Ph.D. thesis isn’t the only thing in life! Finally, I thank my mother and father, because they have always told me: “Write! Carolina, write!” 5 For Beatrice and Zoe 6 ABSTRACT Social entrepreneurship is a growing cultural phenomenon that involves a variety of actors – politicians, academics, business men and women, private citizens - across a range of interconnected fields – e.g. social work, sustainable development, the sharing economy and technological innovation. Notwithstanding its heterogeneous manifestations, social entrepreneurship is characterised by the attempt to re-embed social and ethical dimensions within the individualised conduct of the entrepreneur of the self. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how this process is thought of and negotiated on a subjective level by young social entrepreneurs in London and Milan. Based on an understanding of social entrepreneurs as individuals who perceive work as a means for self-expression, I contextualise this enquiry within the field of cultural studies on the changing nature of labour in neoliberal societies. This thesis draws on an 18-month period of multi-sited and reflexive fieldwork that involved recorded interviews, participant observation and action research. Combining thick ethnographic descriptions and theoretical analysis, I focus on social entrepreneurs’ understanding of sociality, ethics, and politics, in so far as they are intertwined with the discourses and practices of entrepreneurship. My argument develops in three stages: to begin with, I show that social entrepreneurs engage in opportunistic and compulsory sociality; then, I dwell on social entrepreneurs’ individualised form of ethics; finally, I contend that social entrepreneurs enact and embody a post-political subjectivity. This subjectivity is defined by discourses and actions whose scope and significance are restrained within the bounds of individuals’ experience and influence. What remains inevitably excluded from this conception of politics is the possibility to of formulating a structural analysis of social issues. In this respect, my research may be regarded as a study on how the neoliberal subject par excellence – the entrepreneur of the self – attempts to retrieve and reclaim her political and ethical agency, and what the implications and limits of this endeavour are. 7 PROLOGUE One warm day in July, in a smart café in Milan, I am waiting for Veronica, an independent fashion designer. She finally arrives. She wears a long grey linen dress. Coral polish on her nails. She tells me she wants to make clothes following a different “philosophy”: she does not want to exploit cheap labour forces in developing countries. She neither wants to save on the quality of the materials, nor she wants to follow the aesthetic rules dictated by mainstream fashion. Rather, she wants to do “things differently”, producing garments that “last over time”. Sipping her piping hot double espresso, she vaguely hints at the “economic, moral and environmental” crisis and declares that “things must change”. The details of the auspicated “change” remain mostly obscure, but the desire to tackle some of the backlashes of neoliberal capitalism is expressed enthusiastically. Joanna, a Danish woman who lives in London, reveals a similar attitude: she wants to create a fashion collection involving the community. “People need to feel actively part of the brand” she explains “after all, fashion is such an intimate thing… we need to change the mode of production and include ordinary people, as many people as possible!” Joanna lives in a newly re-decorated flat in Shoreditch, one of the most hipster boroughs of London. Next to her house there’s a Wholefood shop where a loaf of bread costs about three pounds. On the other side, there’s a brand-new bar that serves ‘organic cocktails’ in antique tea pots, and plays vinyl records. In her minimalist living room there is a canvas she is about to complete: “I need to express my creative potential” she says, probably to offer an explanation for the painting paraphernalia spread on the wooden floor. Pouring red wine into a big stem glass, Joanna tells me about her career projects: “I had been working for the big names, you know? But what’s the point in working for someone else?” Of course, the question is rhetoric. “So I quit my job and decided to set up my enterprise… I needed to do something I believe in, something to improve the world, at least a bit!” she utters persuasively, just before proposing a movie night. 8 Alfredo is the same age as Veronica and Joanna, he is Italian and lives in North London. He dresses in a casual-sport styles. He loves nature, hiking, and mountain biking. He is trying to change the world too. In Italy, he worked for a major bank, he earned a very good salary, and was living with his girlfriend of ten years. He was ready to settle down. But he ditched everything. He could not stand working for people who did not share his “values”. He felt “depressed”. “I needed to change”, he tells me over a pint of pale ale: “I wanted to do something to change how things are, I wanted to have an impact!”.