Female social entrepreneurship as a discursive struggle

We analyse a process of female social entrepreneurship involving the establishment of a new enterprise within a cultural environment traditionally regarded as hostile towards this form of female endeavour. Our argument relates to the process of how social entrepreneurial endeavour can displace the strong bond of conventionality epitomised by a dominant discourse, driven by a bypassed shame reaction to the withdrawal of interactional deference. In doing this we adopt an overtly constructionist approach to analyse the process of entrepreneurship in terms of a discursive struggle that challenges the status quo and operates at the boundaries of convention and received wisdom. INTRODUCTION In this article we attempt to advance the theoretical integrity of the emerging field of social entrepreneurship. Jones, Latham, and Betta (2008) report that the rather sparse field of academic articles in peer-reviewed journals can be categorised in four distinct topic areas: the meaning and conceptualisation of social entrepreneurship; the difference between business entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship; the characteristics, motivations, and personal values of social entrepreneurs; and the activities of social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship has traditionally been regarded as different from business entrepreneurship by stressing the generation of social value, rather than private or shareholder profit, as its central driving mission (Austin, Stevenson, and Wei-Skillern, 2006). Hockerts (2006) states that social entrepreneurs can be individual citizens, community activists, or civil servants, stretching across the continuum from Mahatma Gandhi to Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. But this still leaves wide discretion for the concept of social entrepreneurship. As a nascent field of academic inquiry, social entrepreneurship remains under-researched, extremely broad, and bedevilled by a plethora of definitions (Austin, 2006; Wei-Skillern, Austin, Leonard, and Stevenson, 2007). For example, the fifteen chapters that comprise the text reader edited by Mair, Robinson, and Hockerts (2006) contain ten different definitions of social entrepreneurship. Similar diversity is also found in text readers edited by Nicholls (2006), Perrini (2006), and Steyaert and Hjorth (2006). The vast majority of accounts of social entrepreneurship are contained in journalistic and professional sources, including internet websites (Johnson, 2000). As such, the entire field of social entrepreneurship remains under-theorised. Our purpose in this article is to analyse the antecedents of the establishment of social entrepreneurial ventures. We are particularly interested in social entrepreneurial ventures that are established in hostile environments. Our inspiration for this research was provided by a case study of a pioneering social entrepreneur (Jasvinder Sanghera) who established the first community-based project in UK (Karma Nirvava) offering advocacy, support, and advice to female victims of forced marriage and family-honour shamings and violence. This case study involves a process of female social entrepreneurship involving the establishment of a new organisation within a cultural environment traditionally regarded as hostile towards this form of female endeavour. We advance two research questions: what factor(s) constitute the driving energy behind this form of social entrepreneurship; and what strategies can be employed to pave the way for the establishment of the venture? We argue that social entrepreneurial endeavour is rooted in the objective of challenging and displacing the strong AGSE 2009