Lifestyle entrepreneurship as a political act: contextualized entrepreneurship

Although entrepreneuring seems to offer many business opportunities, we know surprisingly little about why people end up with the businesses they do, and what role personal ideology plays in the process of business creation. To address these questions, our study explores the contextualized entrepreneurship of two gastronomic entrepreneurs who have chosen to set up their ventures in the periphery of southern Sweden. To understand entrepreneurs and the appeal of their enterprises, we argue for the need to focus on both the professional and the personal situation of the entrepreneur. Running a firm is, for many entrepreneurs, a lifestyle choice. It therefore makes sense to emphasize the relation between not only the venture and the context but also the individual entrepreneur and the context; the purpose of this study is to explore the role lifestyle choice plays in the venture creation process. Qualitative research methods, combining extensive media-related document analysis with semi-structured interviews,...