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Oral Presentation Session
Reviewed by: Society for the Anthropology of Work
Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students
Primary Theme: Labor
Secondary Theme: Resilience
When feminist political theorist Wendy Brown (2015) launched her critique against neoliberalism and its stealth revolution to undo democracy, she defined neoliberalism as “a peculiar form of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms”, reducing human beings to market actors and every field of activity to a market (17). Viewed from this perspective, the recent rise in popularity and significance of terms and practices in the social sphere, such as social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and community empowerment in privately owned businesses—all of which stress novel approaches to social needs—seems highly suspicious (Nicholls 2006). In response, grounded anthropological researches, specifically feminist ethnographies, have contested generalities that render neoliberal social transformation always and everywhere the same (Freeman 2014; Muehlebach 2011; Ong 2006; Shever 2008).
Inspired by these efforts to look into “actually existing neoliberalism”, this panel seeks to offer nuanced understanding of the lived experience of social innovation/entrepreneurship in the neoliberal age. Is the innovative integration of business management and social mission just another example of the neoliberal logic that has eclipsed the boundaries between the public, private, and nonprofit domains of life? What possibilities, if any, could be offered for the socially disadvantaged? What practices of resistance, resilience, and adaptation have surfaced? What specific reconfiguration of gender relations have been facilitated? What intricate correlations between state, market, and the social sector could be discerned?
Specifically, this panel explores the intersection of social innovation and social marginalization through the lens of “culture”. It looks at the ways in which socially peripheralized groups across the world have utilized various forms of work to effect their presence in mainstream society—as demonstration of their resilient negotiations of and resistance against marginalization. Innovatively evoking variously defined notions of “culture” have been especially central to these negotiations. Examples include Turkish migrants’ incorporation of “Turkish culture” in their affective labor that constitutes part of Berlin’s sociable “neighborhood culture”; economic development initiatives in the U.S. marketing idealized images of Appalachian coal miner work ethic; Japanese worker cooperatives responding to demands from outside the market; retired women mobilizing innovative community building through retrieving the traditional culture of Cantonese embroidery in China; marital migrants teaching multiculturalism in South Korea through commodification of their culture; and the commercialization of a cultural resource-based social enterprise in Ecuador.
This panel integrates a wide range of socially innovative practices that traverse and bring into contact the public, private and social, from businesses that promote social values and cultural diversity, to social enterprises that nurture community sense of belonging, and to the gradual commercialization of social enterprises. It offers a spectrum of critical discussions that intersect anthropological interests in work, civil society, social marginalization, culture, gender, and neoliberal governance.
Anlam Filiz
Visiting Assistant Professor
Emory University
Anlam Filiz
Visiting Assistant Professor
Emory University
Lauren Hayes
University of California, Davis
Robert Marshall
Professor Emeritus
Western Washington University
Shunyuan Zhang
Assistant Professor
Trinity College
Shunyuan Zhang
Assistant Professor
Trinity College
Suyun Choi
Emory Univesrity
Suyun Choi
Emory Univesrity
Christopher Jarrett
The University of Texas at San Antonio