Nordicum-Mediterraneum (Jun 2014)
Social Entrepreneurship and Capitalist Crisis
Abstract
The paper discusses the relation between social entrepreneurship and capitalism. In the wake of the crisis erupting in 2008, the political attention to social entrepreneurship has intensified and social entrepreneurship and social innovation has been presented as possible solutions to a number of societal problems. By linking different theoretical trends of social entrepreneurship to Boltanski and Chiapello’s three spirits of capitalism the paper elucidates different variations of social entrepreneurship. It argues that whereas classic entrepreneurship is theoretically closely connected to capitalism and seen by innovation theory as the major driving force of economic development, social entrepreneurship is sometimes linked to non-capitalist understandings of the economy and as part of a capitalist-critical movement.
