IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/entreg/v19y2007i6p499-525.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Entrepreneurship, discourses and conscientization in processes of regional development

Author

Listed:
  • Karin Berglund
  • Anders W. Johansson

Abstract

This paper is based upon a regional development project in a ‘vulnerable’ Swedish region consisting of three municipalities. At a first glance, this is a region in decline that is lacking in entrepreneurial initiatives. During a crucial time period the project ‘Diversity in Entrepreneurship’ (DiE) was launched to help the region to become more entrepreneurial and inclusive. An underlying logic was built into the project, which is associated with the critical pedagogy of Paolo Freire. From a Freirean perspective regions lacking in entrepreneurship could be reconsidered emphasizing that the entrepreneurial initiatives are always there–latent–however restrained by certain discourses; in this case a dominant enterprise discourse. Above all the enterprise discourse suppresses the ability for particular groups in society to view themselves as entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce Freire's critical pedagogical perspective to entrepreneurship and regional development. An episode illustrating how the enterprise discourse suppresses an equality discourse, introduced by way of the DiE-project, makes the point of departure for discussing the process of ‘conscientization’, which refers to a type of learning that is focused on perceiving and exposing contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality (Freire 1970). Some key Freirean ideas or concepts are explained, first as they were expressed by Freire and then applied to entrepreneurship and regional development. It is then discussed how these concepts found their expressions in the project. The critical pedagogic perspective not only emphasizes an entrepreneurial potential in every individual, but it also gives an idea of what kind of processes could release entrepreneurial initiatives among those who do not view themselves as entrepreneurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Karin Berglund & Anders W. Johansson, 2007. "Entrepreneurship, discourses and conscientization in processes of regional development," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(6), pages 499-525.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:19:y:2007:i:6:p:499-525
    DOI: 10.1080/08985620701671833
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985620701671833
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08985620701671833?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bengt Johannisson & Elisabeth Sundin, 2011. "Societal Entrepreneurship as a Lever to Sustainable Local and Regional Development - the Case of the ALV Theme park," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1454, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Alexandros Kakouris & Panagiotis Georgiadis, 2016. "Analysing entrepreneurship education: a bibliometric survey pattern," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Pettersson, Katarina & Ahl, Helene & Berglund, Karin & Tillmar, Malin, 2017. "In the name of women? Feminist readings of policies for women’s entrepreneurship in Scandinavia," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 50-63.
    4. Siqueira, Ana Cristina O. & Honig, Benson & Mariano, Sandra & Moraes, Joysi & Cunha, Robson Moreira, 2023. "Creating economic, social, and environmental change through entrepreneurship: An entrepreneurial autonomy perspective informed by Paulo Freire," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    5. Chris Steyaert & Hans Landström, 2011. "Enacting entrepreneurship research in a pioneering, provocative and participative way: on the work of Bengt Johannisson," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 123-134, February.
    6. Virva Salmivaara & Ewald Kibler, 2020. "“Rhetoric Mix†of Argumentations: How Policy Rhetoric Conveys Meaning of Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 44(4), pages 700-732, July.
    7. Michela Loi & Alain Fayolle & Marco van Gelderen & Elen Riot & Deema Refai & David Higgins & Radi Haloub & Marcus Alexandre Yshikawa Salusse & Erwan Lamy & Caroline Verzat & Fabrice Cavarretta, 2022. "Entrepreneurship Education at the Crossroads: Challenging Taken-for-Granted Assumptions and Opening New Perspectives," Post-Print hal-03983114, HAL.
    8. Helene Ahl & Karin Berglund & Katarina Pettersson & Malin Tillmar, 2016. "From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism, entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 369-392, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:19:y:2007:i:6:p:499-525. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TEPN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.