Provoking identities: entrepreneurship and emerging identity positions in rural development
Karin Berglund,
Johan Gaddefors and
Monica Lindgren
Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2016, vol. 28, issue 1-2, 76-96
Abstract:
This article discusses entrepreneurship in a depleted community in transition. The purpose is to develop knowledge about how discourses are used in the positioning of identity in regional development. The concept positioning illustrates how identities are provoked, challenged, negotiated and moved into identity positions that break away from the idea of imitating successful and wealthy regions; instead, locality, place and history emerge as important resources from where local actors obtain agency and recognize new opportunities. Ethnographic data of a single case were collected over a six-year period between 2005 and 2010. The longitudinal nature of the study made it possible to incorporate how local stakeholders took on new identity positions, while handling their inspiration as well as their frustration. Results show how rural change was conditioned by discourses and how entrepreneurship challenged and reframed dominating structures through interaction between entrepreneurship and community. Four discourses, expressed as dichotomies available to people in this depleted community, illustrate the interactive process of positioning: change vs. traditions, rational vs. irrational, spectacular vs. mundane and individual vs. collective. The results support research emphasizing perspectives that acknowledge interaction between entrepreneurship and context as well as discursive aspects of regional development.
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985626.2015.1109002 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:entreg:v:28:y:2016:i:1-2:p:76-96
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TEPN20
DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2015.1109002
Access Statistics for this article
Entrepreneurship & Regional Development is currently edited by Professor Alistair Anderson
More articles in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().