An anthropological perspective on contextualizing entrepreneurship

Michiel Verver () and Juliette Koning ()
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Michiel Verver: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Juliette Koning: School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University

Small Business Economics, 2024, vol. 62, issue 2, No 10, 649-665

Abstract: Abstract This paper develops an anthropological perspective on contextualizing entrepreneurship. We argue that interconnectedness is the quintessence of such a perspective and takes the form of (1) sociocultural ties between people; (2) interrelationships between micro, meso, and macro levels; and (3) connections between the past and the present. We illustrate this perspective through our research among ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, identifying three kinds of sociocultural ties among the ethnic Chinese (kinship, spiritual, and patron-client ties) and positioning these ties in the historical and contemporary experiences of Chinese migration, settlement, and business venturing. In doing so, we show that an anthropological perspective broadens the empirical scope (including developing countries, minority groups, and “everyday” entrepreneurship), the methodological scope (employing ethnographic methods), and the conceptual scope (considering sociocultural ties at the interpersonal level) of entrepreneurship research. The contribution lies in operationalizing and theorizing context: we operationalize context through interconnectedness – comprising our three forms as well as ethnographic methodology to examine these – and theorize interconnectedness by elaborating how entrepreneurs “do” context through enacting the sociocultural ties that “embody” this context, while considering the micro-meso-macro and past-present connections that have engendered these ties. Our anthropological perspective presents a fine-grained and holistic analytical framework for contextualizing entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Anthropology; Interconnectedness; Kinship; Spirituality; Patronage; Ethnic Chinese entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F54 L14 L26 N45 O53 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-023-00774-2

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