Economic Discourse and Social Entrepreneurship. Transformation projects, media engagement and social mobilization in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

The present work approaches social entrepreneurship from the perspective of its discursive dimension and its relationship with different projects for the Brazilian nation, which were previously emerging from the economic field. The social entrepreneur is an agent that brings together two historical tendencies: the understanding that entrepreneurial practices rely on a "creative destruction" spirit (Schumpeter, 1942) and the belief on role of the third sector, the so-called non-profit organizations, acting for the "common good". From a critical perspective, we are to discuss this conjunction full of paradoxes and conflicts. We have witnessed, in the contemporary Brazilian context, the emergence of social entrepreneurship projects based on digital media, following the logic of the connectionist world brought by Boltanski and Chiapello (2009). We analyze social entrepreneurship projects that incite mobilization of young people through digital media, projecting a future under the leadership of that field (Bourdieu, 2009). Our theoretical framework recovers the entrepreneurial culture and the spirit of capitalism, the economic ideology based on the utopian vision of the "entrepreneurial society" (Drucker, 2011) and the concepts of economy and market (Karl Polanyi). Our method of analysis is based on Fairclough's approach to (2001) critical discourse.

Keywords

• discorso economico
• economic discourse
• social entrepreneurship
• communication and consumption
• discourse analysis
• economy
• contemporary brazil