Reclaiming the space of entrepreneurship in society: geographical, discursive and social dimensions

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore and to reflect upon the implications of how to conceive entrepreneurship when considered as a societal rather than an economic phenomenon. To conceive and reclaim the space in which entrepreneurship is seen at work in society, we point at the geographical, discursive and social dimensions from where we develop three crucial and connected questions that can reconstruct the future research agendas of entrepreneurship studies and that can guide us towards a geopolitics of everyday entrepreneurship: what spaces/discourses/stakeholders have we privileged in the study of entrepreneurship and what other spaces/discourses/stakeholders could we consider?

Keywords:

• political spaces
• geography
• discourse
• everydayness
• social interaction

Acknowledgements

As editors of this Special Issue, we would like to thank the many reviewers who have helped us to sort out and instigate the innovative potential and overall quality of the manuscripts we received: Leo Paul Dana, David Deeds, Alex Stewart, Dean Shepherd, Patricia Greene, Page West, Benson Honig, Benyamin Lichtenstein, Saras Sarasvarthy, Barbara Bird, Larry Cox, Harold Welsch, Charles Hofer, Denny Dennis, Raymond Saner, Joan Gillman, Lene Foss, Peter Dobers, Bart Van Looy, Snejina Michailova, Daniel Hjorth and Saara Taalas. We would like to thank ESBRI and, especially, Magnus Aronsson, for hosting Jerry Katz in Stockholm, at which time and place the idea for this Special Issue was generated. Pascal Dey, University of St Gallen, contributed greatly with the literature search and constructive comments.

Notes

Notes

1. The distinction of place and space by de Certeau (1984), where the creation of space, or spacing, is close to Deleuze and Guattari’s deterritorializing (1987: 423), bringing ‘connections to bear against the great conjunction of the apparatuses of capture or domination’.