Men Against the Wall: Graffiti(ed) Masculinities

This paper invokes the categories of the masculine that have been discursively constructed in the historical and social context of hip hop and graffiti culture. The production and performance of graffiti(ed) masculinities are the result of a complex mix that samples notions of class, race, violence, space, commodification, gender, resistance, and violence. Graffiti culture embodies the colonizer’s ideals of a masculinity that is dangerous, aggressive and takes risks, while giving men a medium with which to tell their stories and allowing them to express their emotions. The article argues that graffiti(ed) masculinities are composed of seemingly disparate and complex components that shadow the masculine ideals of the colonizer, of hegemonic masculinity, as well as borrowing from notions of subordinate and resistive masculinities

Barefoot entrepreneurs

This paper makes a contribution to critical entrepreneurship studies through exploring 'barefoot’ entrepreneur[ing], i.e., the entrepreneurial practices and narratives of individuals who live primarily in marginal, poor and excluded places and contexts. Drawing on Max-Neef’s barefoot economics and a methodology based on the authoring and sharing of microstorias, the article asks how agents in deprived areas of Chile, Argentina, Zimbabwe and Ghana undertake entrepreneur[ing] from the margins or ‘periphery’. The paper challenges us to seek better explanations for how these individuals apply their entrepreneurial practices, discourses, (social) creativity, and novel organisational skills to maintain communal, organisational, familial and personal wellbeing. We conclude that their imaginary, their narratives, and their overcoming of very real challenges as we encounter them through these microstorias, question the predominant conceptualisation of entrepreneurship. We are emboldened to think again about ‘who is the entrepreneur?’ (Gartner, 1988) and what really are the principles and values that should be associated with the concept, the organisation, and the identities of agents involved