Bourdieuian approaches to the geography of entrepreneurial cultures

Culture has emerged as an important concept within the entrepreneurship literature to help explain differences in the nature of the entrepreneurship process observed between regions, industries and socio-cultural groups. Despite voluminous research on the topic, theories about how culture affects the entrepreneurship process remain underdeveloped. Without a framework to connect culture with everyday entrepreneurial practices and strategies, it is difficult to critically compare the role of culture between multiple contexts. Such a framework is necessary when examining the influence of local cultures on entrepreneurship, given the diverse ways they can influence economic activities. This paper introduces a Bourdieuian perspective on entrepreneurial culture that can be used to explain how particular entrepreneurial cultures emerge within regions, influence the local entrepreneurship process and evolve in the face of internal and external developments. Building on existing work on Bourdieu and entrepreneurship, this paper argues that entrepreneurship research must carefully consider how the concept of culture is used if it is to be a useful factor in explaining the heterogeneous geography of entrepreneurship we observe in the modern economy.