Managing the dance of enchantment: An ethnography of social entrepreneurship events

Abstract

This article sheds light on public performances as important yet neglected sites for social entrepreneurship’s discursive expansion as a fashionable model for social transformation. It approaches the strategic considerations behind presentations aimed at ‘enchanting’ social entrepreneurship through sophisticated investments in spiritual, aesthetic and bodily involvement, and the impressive staging of Muhammad Yunus as a global hero. On a first analytical layer, these ethnographic insights broaden the explanatory basis for social entrepreneurship’s rising popularity. In academic literature, its recent prominence is either accepted as a given fact or critically explored through the theoretical lens of language effects, while modes of conviction that invest in the ‘extra-textual’ are largely ignored. Addressing this gap, the article portrays how organisational actors charged presentations with aesthetic significance, emotional fervour, spiritual dynamism and sensual pleasure to produce holistic experiences that allow people to connect the concept of social entrepreneurship to a felt sense of being-in-the-world. On a second layer, the analysis problematises the enchantment debate’s tendency to construct a secular–spiritual binary, that is, to perceive enchantment as arising either from powerful acts of managerial manipulation or from a deeply human desire to fill a religious void. Complicating this distinction, the article frames enchantment work in the social entrepreneurship field as an ambiguous ‘dance’ between the secular and the sacred—a paradoxical activity of amalgamating neo-rational considerations with the spiritualised pursuit of a global vision.

Spirituality and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Magical Thinking in Future-Oriented Sensemaking

“…The role of spirituality in entrepreneurial cognition has drawn increasing interest among entrepreneurship scholars (e.g. Balog, Baker, & Walker, 2014; Dana, 2009; Dodd & Gotsis, 2007; Mauksch, 2017). Entrepreneurs engage in activities reminiscent of spirituality as they focus on deep personal commitment and meaning (Balog et al, 2014) and confront obstacles, often with scant social support from friends and family.…”

Can the Dalit woman speak? How ‘intersectionality’ helps advance postcolonial organization studies

“…As the strike broke out on 5 September 2015 in the high ranges of the Munnar tea plantation owned by the Kanan Devan Hills Plantation Company (P) Limited (KDHPCL) in Kerala, I travelled to the site, with the objective of conducting an on-the-spot ethnography of the struggle/event. This was at variance with the practice adopted by the otherwise rich ethnographic tradition in organization scholarship (see Decker, 2014; Jaumier, 2017; Kapferer, 2010; Marcus and Fisher, 1986; Mauksch, 2017). While the research participants get accustomed to the ethnographer over the period of study, the on-the-spot ethnographer observes firsthand the ‘diagnostic events’ as referred to by Moore (1987: 730).…”

Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India

“…The public, high‐intensity nature of pitching is noteworthy because it involves performing an entrepreneurial self. In her ethnography of social entrepreneurial events, Mauksch (, 137) described how entrepreneurial presentations unfold like a “sensual and spiritual performance” in which “discursive repertoires of anecdotal reasoning, statistical evidencing, heroic stories and managerial rationality are weaved into holistic presentations engaging bodily realms of emotion and affect.” The ability to construct this story is in itself a hallmark of an entrepreneur, as opposed to simply any CEO or corporate professional. The public nature of the pitching also made the performance high stakes because both success and failure are equated with something bigger than the start‐up idea itself.…”