The crisis of capitalism associated with the global financial meltdown of 2008 has continued to have repercussions. The UK’s Brexit vote, the rise of the right wing parties in Europe and the election of Donald Trump are widely held to be indicative of the economic and social malaise associated with growing inequality and erosion of democracy (Brown, 2016). Against this backdrop social enterprise has been offered as a solution to the social and economic problems created by neoliberalism, and at the same time charged with propping up the neoliberal status quo (Nicholls and Teasdale, 2016). We view the entrepreneur as a key player in neoliberalism, and suggest that the myth of the heroic entrepreneur is pivotal in reinforcing neoliberal hegemony within social enterprise.
Through a focus on the heroism of (social) entrepreneurship, this paper considers how the economic rationality of neoliberalism within UK social enterprise conflicts with accepted social and solidarity economy (SSE) aims and values. In other words, how the individualistic, economistic, competitive ideals of entrepreneurship dominant in society and popular culture (Hall, Massey and Rustin, 2015), collide and intermix with collective, humanistic, inclusive, values of solidarity. Social enterprises can be theorized as mixed goal organizations between the state and market, which work as a complement of them (Nyssens 2006), Alternatively they are theorized as made up of two equally important dimensions, social and economic, part of a tripolar economic structure that includes the market, government and the SSE, each pole having its own rationality and governance (Laville and Salmon, 2015). We adopt a substantivist economic framework to look into this distinction, and understand the influence of hegemonic neoliberal thinking in the context of socio-political history of social economy organizations grounded in different places.
Case studies of two SSE enterprises in London and Liverpool are drawn upon to highlight how local economic, societal and political histories create complex iterations of social and solidarity economy organizations. We draw on ethnographic research comprising participant observation and in-depth interviews with key staff to understand their actions, motivations for, and understanding of social enterprise, taking account of the reasons behind organizational establishment and continued operation. Adopting a substantivist approach influenced by the work of Karl Polanyi (1944), we consider the development of these social enterprises in relation to local political and state structures, economic, community and personal (family) histories, our focus being how these intersect and interrelate with views of social and solidarity enterprise and the dominant conception of heroic entrepreneurship.
Drawing on the concept of performativity, we argue that although SSE organizations superficially reject neoliberal discourse, they navigate through it reproducing neoliberalism within their enactment of social enterprise (Muellerleile 2013). Organizations are created within a mix hegemonic and counter-hegemonic rationality (McMurtry, 2013), and our case studies demonstrate how the resulting tension is constitutive of SSE in the UK. Our findings reveal that while social enterprises frequently discuss their organization and local economic goals in substantive terms that fit with the aims of the SSE, their views also conform to formalistic interpretations of entrepreneurship underpinned by neoliberal individualism. We identify this as a root of the conflict, contributing to the debate on how normative understanding of the economy conflicts with the social and solidarity economy and how this is influenced by different contextual histories.
References
Brown, W., (2016), Sacrificial Citizenship: Neoliberalism, Human Capital, and Austerity Politics. Constellations, 23(1), pp.3-14.
Hall, S., Massey, D., & Rustin, M. (2015). After Neoliberalism? Lawrence & Wishart.
Laville, J. L., & Salmon, A. (2015). 8 Rethinking the relationship between governance and democracy. Civil Society, the Third Sector and Social Enterprise: Governance and Democracy, 200, 145.
McMurtry (2015) Prometheus, Trojan Horse or Frankenstein? The Social and Solidarity Economy as Community Creation, Market Wedge, or State Monster, in Utting, P. (Ed.). (2015). Social and solidarity economy: beyond the fringe. London: Zed Books.
Muellerleile, Chris. Turning financial markets inside out: Polanyi, performativity and disembeddedness. Environment and Planning A 45.7 (2013): 1625-1642.
Nicholls, A., & Teasdale, S. (2016). Neoliberalism by stealth? Exploring continuity and change within the UK social enterprise policy paradigm. Policy & Politics.
Nyssens, M. (2006). Social enterprise. At the crossroads of market, public policies and civil society. London and New York: Routledge.
Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our time. 2nd ed., Boston, MA. Beacon Press.
9. Social and solidarity economy, civil society and social movements
