Theorizing Entrepreneurship for the Future: Stories from Global Frontiers

by Joost Beuving

Overview

Presenting a new interpretation of entrepreneurial behaviour, this book focuses on how entrepreneurs consider the future, looking at their social practices, language and rituals through which they neutralize or smoothen future unknowns. The study theorizes entrepreneurial behaviour as ‘future-work’: the social practices, language and rituals through which entrepreneurs neutralize or smoothen future unknowns. The study is grounded in ethnographic case material from global frontiers: second-hand car dealers in West Africa; exporters of fresh fish from Lake Victoria, East Africa; farmed fish entrepreneurs in Greece; and investment bankers in Financial America. It targets students and scholars from the social sciences and economics, and it has theoretical and practical implications.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805390046
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	06/09/2023
Series:	Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy , #11
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Joost Beuving is a lecturer and senior researcher in economic anthropology, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud UniversityNijmegen. He is the co-author of Doing Qualitative Research: The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry with Geert de Vries (Amsterdam UniversityPress, 2015).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Prologue
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Problem of the Future in Studying Entrepreneurship

Chapter 1. Time and Entrepreneurship in Social Theory: Barth, Schumpeter and Keynes
Chapter 2. The Social Construction of Individualism: Fish Entrepreneurs on Lake Victoria, Uganda
Chapter 3. Profitmaking and Dreaming of Fortunes: Second-hand Car Dealers in Cotonou, Benin
Chapter 4. Telling Stories with Numbers: The Social Life of Investment Bankers
Chapter 5. The Relevance of the Policy Context: Aquaculture Entrepreneurs in Greece

Conclusion

Epilogue
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

“I think this is an excellent accomplishment. It makes an important theoretical contribution to the understanding of entrepreneurship, on the basis of comparing and contrasting grounded case studies, taken from the author’s own decades-long ethnographic research trajectory and, in one case, from an intelligent reading of a prominent stockbroker’s life. Readers will relish the clarity, the accessible writing style and the stimulating diversity of case studies.” • Christoph Brumann, Max Planck Institute in Halle

From the Publisher