Enterprising activism and
entrepreneurial behaviours in inner
urban low-income communities
Tackling spatial inequalities
September 10th 2015
Sheffield
Alan Southern
Regeneration Out Enterprise In
• Entrepreneurship – dominated by a
neoliberal narrative
• Regeneration, part of an older language of
intervention
• Entrepreneurship and enterprise fits with
post-austerity politics better
• Need to challenge this interpretation
• A ‘manifesto’ for enterprise in low income
communities
Drive for Economic Growth
• Entrepreneurship – a universal activity for
all, or for the elite?
“What makes a successful entrepreneur?
… high IQ, lots of education, abundant
self-esteem and wealthy parents all
contribute… we also find that smart
teenagers who engage in illicit activities
are more likely to become successful
entrepreneurs” Levine and Rubinstein
(undated)
Drive for Economic Growth
• The gallant and heroic entrepreneur vis a
vis the bureaucratic inflexibility of the state
• A hegemonic discourse to encourage and
nudge people towards self employment
and business start up
• A shift in local governance to enable more
entrepreneurship (LEPs and city-region
devolution)
Being entrepreneurial enough
• Tackling inequality, spatial or otherwise,
has fell to the entrepreneur
• The more abstract city-region
entrepreneurial growth offers the benefit of
trickle down
• At the community level, the question is can
you deploy your entrepreneurial
capabilities to ensure an normal income?
Being entrepreneurial enough
• A shift from you’re not entrepreneurial
enough to we’re all entrepreneurs now
• Entrepreneurial behaviour not simply about
starting up a business but about the
individual taking responsibility for her or his
ability to act as producer and consumer
based on life choices and competencies
within a particular set of values
• The ‘entrepreneur of the self’ has become a
bedrock assumption in a neoliberal
explanation of contemporary society
What could or should be done?
• A hegemonic project to overcome, are there
alternatives to offer?
• An opportunity to provide something that can
draw on the history of collective experiences
in low income communities?
• The basis of a ‘manifesto’ for enterprising
activism and entrepreneurial behaviours in
low-income communities?
• Something from which to capture both
political and economic development in a
period of intense inequality?
A framework for a manifesto
Take Back Work
• Agitate for social
principle and value in
the workplace
Take back governance
• Strengthen local
democracy
• Collectivism a
principle for new
enterprise
Take back assets
• Ownership and
stewardship
• Access, benefit,
responsibility
Take back enterprise
• Space to address the
survival-surplus nexus
• Create the space for
communities to shape
enterprise
Summary
• Challenge the neoliberal dominance of economic
growth pursued through a hegemonic narrative of
entrepreneurship
• Reject the way the entrepreneur of the self places
responsibility for structural problems at door of low
income communities
• Interdependency of work, governance, assets and
enterprise in context of community (history and
place), i.e. agitate
• Shape the forms of enterprise and entrepreneurial
activity through self-employment, social enterprise,
workers cooperatives, i.e. performative