Rethinking the space of ethics in social entrepreneurship: Power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom’

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

Enacting entrepreneurship research in a pioneering, provocative and participative way: on the work of Bengt Johannisson

Bengt Johannisson received the International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research in 2008. In this essay we present and evaluate his work over the last four decades in three of its dimensions: pioneering, provocative and participative. While his research interests and themes range widely, early on he resisted the individualization of entrepreneurship studies and instead emphasized that entrepreneurship is a social practice that must be contextualized, localized and situated. In so doing, he uses such concepts as networks, industrial districts, regions and local communities. Making interpretive studies possible in a European context, his conceptual and methodological approach documents how future studies of entrepreneurship can be enacted as a reflexive, participative practice where methods of research, intervention and debate become blurre

Qualifying Otherness

The diversity domain seems currently in a struggle, having critical debates about the future direction of diversity studies as well as diversity programs and actions. It seems to have neglected theoretical reflections on notions of ‘diversity,’ ‘difference,’ or the ‘other.’ The purpose of this paper is to think theoretically about diversity, arguing that it is the thinking itself that has to become different and that a different thinking will make a difference in addressing policies and actions. The main point we try to make is that diversity is not a matter of constructing identities but of a moving alterity. We will depart from the current debates in diversity management, in which we identify mainly four issues: a narrow or broad definition of diversity, a stable or dynamic conception of identity, the role of power, and the importance of the socio-historical context. With the discussion of these four issues, we will try to indicate the implicit ‘theoretical’ choices prioritizing the concept of ‘identity’, turning the issues of diversity into a managing of individuals and ‘their’ identities. Rather than pursuing the route of identity, we try to explore another route, paving a possible way of conceiving the other from the position of the other and not from fixed norms and possibilities. We therefor turn to the concept of ‘alterity.’ The aim of the paper is then to develop an alterity-thinking by connecting and relating to the philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari, and Serres; the writings of Collins on the Black-feminist standpoint, and recent political studies on democracy. The qualifications that we connect and associate to alterity, are: its relation to an ontology of becoming, its crossing out of the identifiable into becoming anonymous, its dependence on safe, social-cultural spaces, and on open, empty public spaces. To conclude, we reflect on the different ways in which this alterity-thinking is related to the four critical issues of the diversity literature and discuss its qualifications as possible conditions for what we might sum up as an ‘alterity politics.

Coupled land surface/hydrologic/atmospheric models

The topics covered include the following: prototype land cover characteristics data base for the conterminous United States; surface evapotranspiration effects on cumulus convection and implications for mesoscale models; the use of complex treatment of surface hydrology and thermodynamics within a mesoscale model and some related issues; initialization of soil-water content for regional-scale atmospheric prediction models; impact of surface properties on dryline and MCS evolution; a numerical simulation of heavy precipitation over the complex topography of California; representing mesoscale fluxes induced by landscape discontinuities in global climate models; emphasizing the role of subgrid-scale heterogeneity in surface-air interaction; and problems with modeling and measuring biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of energy, water, and carbon on large scales

Modulation of the Erwinia ligand-gated ion channel (ELIC) and the 5-HT3 receptor via a common vestibule site.

Pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs) or Cys-loop receptors are involved in fast synaptic signaling in the nervous system. Allosteric modulators bind to sites that are remote from the neurotransmitter binding site, but modify coupling of ligand binding to channel opening. In this study, we developed nanobodies (single domain antibodies), which are functionally active as allosteric modulators, and solved co-crystal structures of the prokaryote (Erwinia) channel ELIC bound either to a positive or a negative allosteric modulator. The allosteric nanobody binding sites partially overlap with those of small molecule modulators, including a vestibule binding site that is not accessible in some pLGICs. Using mutagenesis, we extrapolate the functional importance of the vestibule binding site to the human 5-HT3 receptor, suggesting a common mechanism of modulation in this protein and ELIC. Thus we identify key elements of allosteric binding sites, and extend drug design possibilities in pLGICs with an accessible vestibule site

How different can differences be(come)?: Interpretative repertoires of diversity concepts in Swiss-based organizations

This study looks at how global ideas of diversity are practiced in Swiss-based organizations at a time when related social interventions vary widely: how do those interventions enable or foreclose varieties of difference? Using a discourse psychological analysis, we identify four interpretative repertoires that professionals and participants draw upon to make sense of interventions: luxury, emergency, interest, and inclusion. Examining the consequences these repertoires have for constructing difference, we show that their use often impedes the processes of inscribing differences into the overall organization. We conclude that the way diversity travels is strongly impacted by the political negotiation through which the standard image of the “ideal worker” can be challenged and other images can be infused into a more hybrid organization