It's not you: it's me! Breaking up social entrepreneurship identity

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship (SE), as a field of practice that is widely endorsed and supported by political institutions, has come a long way in ‘mainstreaming from the margins’ in recent decades. Yet SE exists in a state of highly contested discourse, i.e. capable of forging social cohesion as well as shattering existing boundaries between state and society. Difficult and ambiguous to agreeably define, the optimistic rush to (re)invent and promote SE has faded somewhat as politicians, citizens and social entrepreneurs try to suitably reframe SE in a post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) environment. In the United Kingdom, political support has been maintained because SE offers a way to engage so-called 'third sector' organisations more efficiently with state processes and requirements (Office of the Third Sector, 2009, Aiken and Bode, 2009, Kelly, 2007, Haugh and Kitson, 2007). General publics have been both interested but also sceptical about SE - how is it different to the work done by voluntary and community organizations? What does one 'look' like and what are the benefits at local levels of social action? While we might expect that these questions have been already suitably answered, recent research shows that they have not (Steyaert and Dey, 2010, Curtis, 2008, Haugh, 2012). Instead of theorizing SE as a conceptual whole, I adopt a critical view which tolerates both the contradictory multiplicities in SE identities, and the centrality of fractured power relations in the SE construct and its discourses (Tomlinson and Schwabenland, 2010, Sharp and Richardson, 2001). In doing so, I draw from some key research dealing with SE identity, especially that which centres on articulation of the self and the suppressed-self (Jones et al., 2008, Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Following this, I develop an account of the contemporary importance of conceptual 'fault-lines' in SE discourse, which bears testament to the diverse histories and cultural legacies that have produced socially enterprising organizations. Building on this, I seek to further problematize SE discourse with reference to the current critical turn in SE research, especially in terms of the type of power relations in discourse. This assists current knowledge by acknowledging the necessary incompleteness of the SE idea and identities, and shows that political discourse overlooks this reality, creating a false consensus that SE offers a 'whole' solution. Indeed, I argue that it is perhaps less than necessary for a full ‘mainstreaming’ of SE when there seems to still be a great deal of value inhabiting the margins where corporations and the state cannot make sustainable impact.