Social Enterprises in Postcolonial Economies: Articulating Neoliberalism in Practice for a Public Economic Geography

Abstract

Social enterprises are primarily seen as entities that further neoliberal hegemony based on dominant Western idioms of the economy and development. Consequentially, the layers of meanings emerging from the varied publics and rationalities that entrepreneurial approaches must reckon with and negotiate within postcolonial economies are obscured in theorizing the field. In responding to the call for a public-centered economic geography, in this article, I argue that the realities of social enterprise practice in postcolonial economies show relationalities between neoliberal and non-neoliberal rationalities. Spotlighting vignettes from my research on mediating social enterprises in India and South Africa, the article aims to initiate discussions on how neoliberalism can be serviced for diverse, reformist, and possibly progressive ends. When understood through concrete tensions and contradictions of practice, the varied ends of neoliberal rationalities challenge established conceptualizations of social enterprises, development, and, subsequently, the economy. Specifically, it enables us to reinscribe the economy as a relational, embedded, and context-dependent category with individualized and collective experiences, opening the possibilities to engage with public experiences of development interventions such as social enterprises instead of relying on dominant universalized conceptualizations.

社会企业是基于经济和发展的西方话术、旨在进一步推动新自由主义霸权的实体。因此, 该领域的理论化, 掩盖了后殖民经济的创业所必须考虑和商榷的公众和理性价值。我回应了以公众为中心的经济地理学呼吁。认为, 后殖民经济的社会企业实践, 表明了新自由主义理性和非新自由主义理性之间的关系。本文侧重我对印度和南非社会企业的研究插曲, 讨论了如何使得新自由主义服务于多样性的、改革性的和发展的目标。从实践中的紧张关系和矛盾来看, 新自由主义理性的不同结果挑战了社会企业、发展和经济的现有观念。它将经济重新定义为关系型、嵌入型和情境型, 并具备个体化的集体经验。这为考虑干预发展的公共经验(例如, 社会企业)、不依赖于主导的普世概念, 提供了可能性。

Las empresas sociales son vistas primariamente como entidades que impulsan la hegemonía neoliberal a partir de los modismos occidentales de la economía y el desarrollo. Consecuentemente, las capas de significado que surgen de los diversos públicos y racionalidades con los que los enfoques empresariales deben contar y negociar en las economías poscoloniales quedan oscurecidos en la teorización del campo. Al responder al clamor por una geografía económica que se centre en el público, arguyo en este artículo que las realidades de las prácticas de la empresa social en las economías poscoloniales muestran las relacionalidades entre las racionalidades neoliberales y no neoliberales. Trayendo a cuento viñetas desde mi investigación sobre empresas sociales mediadoras en la India y Sudáfrica, el artículo intenta iniciar la discusión sobre cómo puede el neoliberalismo utilizarse para diversos propósitos, reformistas y quizás progresistas. Cuando se les entiende a través de tensiones y contradicciones concretas de la práctica, los diversos fines de las racionalidades neoliberales retan las conceptualizaciones establecidas de las empresas sociales, el desarrollo y, subsecuentemente, de la economía. Específicamente, nos da la oportunidad de reinscribir la economía como una categoría relacional, incrustada y dependiente del contexto, con experiencias individualizadas y colectivas, abriendo las posibilidades de comprometerse con experiencias públicas de intervenciones del desarrollo, como las empresas sociales, en vez de confiar en las dominantes conceptualizaciones universalizadas.

关键词:

• 新自由主义霸权
• 后殖民发展
• 后殖民经济
• 公众经济地理
• 社会企业

Palabras clave:

• desarrollo poscolonial
• economías poscoloniales
• emprendimiento social
• geografía económica pública
• hegemonía neoliberal

Key Words:

• neoliberal hegemony
• postcolonial development
• postcolonial economies
• public economic geography
• social entrepreneurship

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Priti Narayan and Emily Rosenman for organizing the discussion on a public economic geography for the twenty-first century and for including my contribution. I also thank an anonymous referee for their incisive feedback on the article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Name of organization and individual has been changed in accordance with the ethical considerations of ethnographic research.

2 In the context of application of entrepreneurial approaches to address the empowerment of marginalized women in developing countries, critics like Rankin (2013) have argued that such approaches reduce politically rich concepts like empowerment to measurable social outcomes. Jenkins (2011) called this depoliticization of development. Linking depoliticization to social change, Jenkins (2011, 304) defined it as a process by which both development concepts and practices become delinked from an engagement with political agendas for social change and become embedded in broader processes of professionalization and bureaucratization of development.

3 Name of organization and individual has been changed in accordance with the ethical considerations of ethnographic research.

Additional information

Funding

The research included in the article was supported by the Doctoral Fellowship (2017–2019) of the Faculty of Science, University of Cape Town.

Notes on contributors

Vrinda Chopra

VRINDA CHOPRA is a Senior Writing Fellow at Ashoka University, India, 131029. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include neoliberalism in development practice, social entrepreneurship, and the role of reflexivity and researcher positionality in understanding postcolonial economies.