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RATNERs Beitrag "Epistemologische, soziale und politische Rätsel des Sozialen Konstruktionismus" steht exemplarisch dafür, wie eine limitierte und damit limitierende Auslegung des Sozialen Konstruktionismus den Eindruck erwecken kann, dass es sich hierbei um eine homogene – und dabei zutiefst negative – Einheit handele. Mit meinem Beitrag unternehme ich den Versuch, aufzeigen, dass die Ironie von RATNERs Artikel nicht darin zu finden ist, dass er den Sozialen Konstruktionismus falsch interpretiert, sondern dass er kaschiert, dass RATNER selbst als (hyper-realer) Konstruktionist in Erscheinung tritt. RATNERs Darstellung bietet sich dazu an, so das Argument, die textuelle Konstruktion von (Hyper-) Realität in situ zu studieren. Um die Behauptung, dass der Soziale Konstruktionismus die Möglichkeit von Wahrheit grundsätzlich ablehne, auf der Basis von RATNERs eigenem Beitrag zu widerlegen, wird gezeigt, dass sein Wahrheitsspruch – obwohl (teilweise) arbiträr und damit grundsätzlich veränderbar – durchaus reale Implikationen (sowohl evident wie auch potenziell) hat für all diejenigen, die sich darauf beziehen (sei dies in negativer oder affirmativer Weise). Der Kommentar schließt mit Überlegungen zu einem Ethos des Lesens, das sich von RATNERs Deutungspraxis dahingehend abgrenzt, dass eine Sensibilisierung für die Singularität und Diversität sozial konstruktionistischer Texte angestrebt wird. Ebenfalls betont wird durch das Ethos die Bedeutung von Kreativität und Imagination im Umgang mit dem Erbe des Sozialen Konstruktionismus. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0801474 ; RATNER's "Epistemological, Social, and Political Conundrums in Social Constructionism" provides ample illustration of how a grossly negligent, read both limited and limiting, exegesis of social constructionism has the demonstrable effect of installing the impression of the subject matter forming a homogeneous unity and an utmost negative one at that. The present commentary will show that the irony of RATNER's article is not that it has gotten social ...

RATNERs Beitrag "Epistemologische, soziale und politische Rätsel des Sozialen Konstruktionismus" steht exemplarisch dafür, wie eine limitierte und damit limitierende Auslegung des Sozialen Konstruktionismus den Eindruck erwecken kann, dass es sich hierbei um eine homogene – und dabei zutiefst negative – Einheit handele. Mit meinem Beitrag unternehme ich den Versuch, aufzeigen, dass die Ironie von RATNERs Artikel nicht darin zu finden ist, dass er den Sozialen Konstruktionismus falsch interpretiert, sondern dass er kaschiert, dass RATNER selbst als (hyper-realer) Konstruktionist in Erscheinung tritt. RATNERs Darstellung bietet sich dazu an, so das Argument, die textuelle Konstruktion von (Hyper-) Realität in situ zu studieren. Um die Behauptung, dass der Soziale Konstruktionismus die Möglichkeit von Wahrheit grundsätzlich ablehne, auf der Basis von RATNERs eigenem Beitrag zu widerlegen, wird gezeigt, dass sein Wahrheitsspruch – obwohl (teilweise) arbiträr und damit grundsätzlich veränderbar – durchaus reale Implikationen (sowohl evident wie auch potenziell) hat für all diejenigen, die sich darauf beziehen (sei dies in negativer oder affirmativer Weise). Der Kommentar schließt mit Überlegungen zu einem Ethos des Lesens, das sich von RATNERs Deutungspraxis dahingehend abgrenzt, dass eine Sensibilisierung für die Singularität und Diversität sozial konstruktionistischer Texte angestrebt wird. Ebenfalls betont wird durch das Ethos die Bedeutung von Kreativität und Imagination im Umgang mit dem Erbe des Sozialen Konstruktionismus.

Social enterprises play an increasing role in providing employment opportunities for disabled people. This paper examines the implications of social enterprises' market-based approach to disability inclusion, which is characterized by viewing disability as an asset rather than a limitation. Taking our inspiration from critical disability scholars who have pointed out that inclusion agendas produce disability as a distinct social reality, we use a performative lens to examine how social enterprises variously "do disability," for instance, by defining where the potentials of disabled people lie and how best to promote them. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Magic Fingers, a Nepal-based enterprise that employs blind people as massage therapists, we identify entrepreneurial "doings" of disability that were guided by ideals of empowerment but that ultimately produced new and subtle forms of exclusion. By closely examining the case organization's founding phase, as well as its practices of advertising, recruitment, and day-to-day management, we show how Magic Fingers commodified disability in novel ways, reinforced the notion of disability as a negative condition that must be "overcome" through work, and introduced new market-oriented evaluative distinctions between "more able" and "less able" disabled individuals. By exploring and evaluating these effects, this paper draws attention to the ways in which social enterprises, while challenging deficit-oriented representations of disability, can paradoxically solidify disability as something profoundly "other."

In the context of recurrent economic crises, 'alternative' models of economic organising such as social enterprise offer compelling examples of utopian imageries of a better future 'to come'. Social enterprise qua utopia implies not only that alternative ways of being and co-existence are desirable, but that there is often a disjuncture between the desirable futures such utopian imaginaries project and the extent to which they are actualised or even actualisable in practice. The UK, which has long been considered the most conducive environment for social enterprise activity, offers a fertile ground to study this tension between utopian imagination and empirical actualization. Drawing from three large-scale research projects focusing on the social economy in Scotland and the North of England, this paper explores the link between social enterprise as a political program and as lived material practices unfolding under conditions of extreme resource scarcity caused by austerity measures. Our findings reveal that whatever utopian impulse social enterprise might contain, it is constituted, in the last instance, in the movement between ideas and everyday life, i.e. the aggregate of mundane practices, routines and experiences. Attentiveness to the precariousness instigated through austerity measures, such as social budget cuts, the key contribution this paper makes is to jettison approaches that treat social enterprise as a context-independent and totalizing ideal that divorces its utopian potential from the everyday practices through which this potential is being realized.

This article makes a case for paying greater attention to how informal relationships between government officials and civil society practitioners impact processes of public value creation. Drawing on data from a five‐year qualitative longitudinal study, we illuminate how civil society practitioners deviate from the formal objectives of social enterprise policies in order to create what they see as having public value. Through a process of theory elaboration, we demonstrate how government officials' wilful ignorance of, or informal collaboration in, such deviance, precipitates forms of public value that are consistent with wider political objectives. Our analysis adds nuance and granularity to the debate on public value by drawing attention to the arcane ways it may be informally negotiated and created outside of the public sphere. This opens up new empirical and theoretical opportunities for understanding how deviance and ignorance might be symbiotically related in processes of public value creation."

This article makes a case for paying greater attention to how informal relationships between government officials and civil society practitioners impact processes of public value creation. Drawing on data from a five-year qualitative longitudinal study, we illuminate how civil society practitioners deviate from the formal objectives of social enterprise policies in order to create what they see as having public value. Through a process of theory elaboration, we demonstrate how government officials' wilful ignorance of, or informal collaboration in, such deviance, precipitates forms of public value that are consistent with wider political objectives. Our analysis adds nuance and granularity to the debate on public value by drawing attention to the arcane ways it may be informally negotiated and created outside of the public sphere. This opens up new empirical and theoretical opportunities for understanding how deviance and ignorance might be symbiotically related in processes of public value creation."

Research on social entrepreneurship has taken an increasing interest in issues pertaining to ideology. In contrast to existing research which tends to couch 'ideol- ogy' in pejorative terms (i.e., something which needs to be overcome), this paper conceives ideology as a key mech- anism for rendering social entrepreneurship an object with which people can identify. Specifically, drawing on qualitative research of arguably one of the most prolific social entrepreneurship intermediaries, the global Impact Hub network, we investigate how social entrepreneurship is narrated as an 'ideal subject,' which signals toward others what it takes to lead a meaningful (working) life. Taking its theoretical cues from the theory of justification advanced by Boltanski and Chiapello, and Thévenot's recent affect-based theorizing on ideology, our findings indicate that becoming a social entrepreneur is considered not so much a matter of struggle, hardship, and perseverance but rather of 'having fun.' We caution that the promise of enjoyment which pervades portrayals of the social entre- preneur might cultivate a passive attitude of empty 'plea- sure' which effectively deprives social entrepreneurship of its more radical possibilities. The paper concludes by discussing the broader implications this hedonistic rendi- tion of social entrepreneurship has and suggests a re- politicization of social entrepreneurship through a confronting with what Slavoj Zizˇek calls the 'impossible.'

This article identifies power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom as neglected but significant elements for understanding the ethics of social entrepreneurship. While the ethics of social entrepreneurship is typically conceptualized in conjunction with innate properties or moral commitments of the individual, we problematize this view based on its presupposition of an essentialist conception of the authentic subject. We offer, based on Foucault's ethical oeuvre, a practice-based alternative which sees ethics as being exercised through a critical and creative dealing with the limits imposed by power, notably as they pertain to the conditioning of the neoliberal subject. To this end, we first draw on prior research which looks at how practitioners of social enterprises engage with government policies that demand that they should act and think more like prototypical entrepreneurs. Instead of simply endorsing the kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity implied in prevailing policies, our results indicate that practitioners are mostly reluctant to identify themselves with the invocation of governmental power, often rejecting the subjectivity offered to them by discourse. Conceiving these acts of resistance as emblematic of how social entrepreneurs practice ethics by retaining a skeptical attitude toward attempts that seek to determine who they should be and how they should live, we introduce three vignettes that illustrate how practices of freedom relate to critique, the care for others, and reflected choice. We conclude that a practice-based approach of ethics can advance our understanding of how social entrepreneurs actively produce conditions of freedom for themselves as well as for others without supposing a 'true self' or a utopian space of liberty beyond power.

Using England as a paradigmatic case of the 'enterprising up' of the third sector through social enterprise policies and programs, this article sheds light on practitioners' resistance as enacted through dramaturgical identification with government strategies. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative research study, which is interpreted via Michel de Certeau's theory of the prosaic of the everyday, we present the case study of Teak, a charitable regeneration company, to illustrate how its Chief Executive Liam 'acted as' a social entrepreneur in order to gain access to important resources. Specifically, we establish 'tactical mimicry' as a sensitizing concept to suggest that third sector practitioners' public identification with the normative premises of 'social enterprise' is part of a parasitical engagement with governmental power geared toward appropriating public money. While tactical mimicry conforms to governmental strategies only in order to exploit them, its ultimate aim is to increase potential for collective agency outside the direct influence of power. The contribution we make is threefold: first, we extend the recent debate on 'productive resistance' by highlighting how 'playing the game' without changing existing relations of power can nevertheless produce largely favorable outcomes. Second, we suggest that recognition of the potentiality of tactical mimicry requires methodologies that pay attention to the spatial and temporal dynamics of resistance. Finally, we argue that explaining the normalizing power of 'social enterprise' without consideration of the non-discursive, mainly financial resources made available to those who identify with it, necessarily risks overlooking a crucial element of the dramaturgical dynamic of discourse.

Using England as a paradigmatic case of the 'enterprising up' of the third sector through social enterprise policies and programs, this article sheds light on practitioners' resistance as enacted through dramaturgical identification with government strategies. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative research study, which is interpreted via Michel de Certeau's theory of the prosaic of the everyday, we present the case study of Teak, a charitable regeneration company, to illustrate how its Chief Executive Liam 'acted as' a social entrepreneur in order to gain access to important resources. Specifically, we establish 'tactical mimicry' as a sensitizing concept to suggest that third sector practitioners' public identification with the normative premises of 'social enterprise' is part of a parasitical engagement with governmental power geared toward appropriating public money. While tactical mimicry conforms to governmental strategies only in order to exploit them, its ultimate aim is to increase potential for collective agency outside the direct influence of power. The contribution we make is threefold: first, we extend the recent debate on 'productive resistance' by highlighting how 'playing the game' without changing existing relations of power can nevertheless produce largely favorable outcomes. Second, we suggest that recognition of the potentiality of tactical mimicry requires methodologies that pay attention to the spatial and temporal dynamics of resistance. Finally, we argue that explaining the normalizing power of 'social enterprise' without consideration of the non-discursive, mainly financial resources made available to those who identify with it, necessarily risks overlooking a crucial element of the dramaturgical dynamic of discourse.

This paper argues that current management education works primarily with an instrumental, reified and fragmented conception of knowledge that ignores the connection between knowing and passion. To propose a learning process that is less dispassionate and disembodied and that conceives of knowledge as invention, we first exemplify the current crises of (management) education and reflect on its implied concepts of knowledge and learning along Lyotard's principle of `performativity'. We further probe the relationship between passion and knowledge through Derrida's idea of the `unconditional university' and illustrate its merit for both critical reflection and affirmative invention. Instead of a nostalgic re-evocation of ancient pedagogies, we reflect critically upon the possibilities of a deconstruction-based pedagogy in contemporary management education and propose Serres' figure of the `troubadour of knowledge' as a conceptual persona that can guide us in developing learning practices that incorporate and combine the value of critique and invention.