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- Berglund, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Consumption of entrepreneurs, consumption of entrepreneurship : Bloggers, influencers and socialites in a post-feminist economy
- 2018
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the wake of the neoliberal turn, discourses on the ‘the women entrepreneur’ who starts up and manages her own company, has been stretched to include ‘the entrepreneurial women’, who affirms already achieved gender equality and thus find feminist activism less necessary to pursue (McRobbie, 2004; Gill, 2007). Entrepreneurship emphasis onindividualism, choice, and empowerment offers women postfeminist subject positions (Lewis, 2014). Wo/men’s independence has turned into an entrepreneurial class achievement (Gill, 2014), which is attained through consumption and a critical gaze on the self (Tasker & Negra, 2007). It has been reported that women’s magazines have dropped feminist content and nowadays offer women space for both self-revaluation and self-actualization (McRobbie, 2004, 2009, 2011, HolmerNadesan& Trethewey, 2000; Bröckling, 2010) Boundaries become blurred, including the male/female division, whilst the autonomous male subject of liberal polity (‘the economic man’) is turned into an invisible template (Hekman2004). In this paper, we study this emerging terrain by turning to popular bloggers’ sites asking what kind of subject positions that are promoted. Our empirical data consist of blog posts, podcasts, social media interactions and interviews with a number of professional Swedish bloggers/influencers/entrepreneurs, both male and female. What is common for all these entrepreneurs is that they have built up thriving and multi-faceted businesses around their personas – centering on a constant sharing of their personal lives in combination with positioning themselves as socialites and experts on matters such as fashion, interior decoration, media trends, travel – and entrepreneurship. The base – usually a blog site or a weekly podcast – has been expanded by all sorts of other activities; e.g., book publishing, TV shows, stage performances, beauty products, clothing lines and magazines.Feminism is an integrated part of all this, but in a ‘girlpower-ish’ sense where women can be independent and successful by their own making. In one sense, their subject positioning signifies a departure from the ethos of usefulness and discipline of classic neoliberalism (cfBerglund et al, 2017); they are to be admired because of their consumption, they are to be consumed themselves as signifiers of effectiveness, success, style and family happiness. But they are also avid promoters of classic entrepreneurial virtues; their lifestyles are within reach if you work hard, consume the right products and services, care for your career and your family at the same time. It is subject positions void of structural aspects of society (such as class), void of political conflict and void of problematisationof consumption in relation to sustainability issues.Our empirical examples are clearly related to recent claims that the neoliberal turn have unearthed the entrepreneurial “active, freely choosing, self-reinventing subject of postfeminism”(Gill and Scharff, 2011, p. 7). This subject may however take different shapes whereby it is more suitable to talk about how entrepreneurship discourses underpin a reconfiguration of femininity, thus offering women a variety of ‘outfits’. What these subjects share, except expecting undisputed economic freedom, is the wish (or need) to continuously self-actualise and transform, take responsibility, exercise (often conflicting) choices, in a world without radical or upsetting politics (Lewis et al, 2017). The entrepreneurial subject of neoliberalism and the self-fashioning postfeminist subject breed each other.
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| 3. |
- Berglund, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Provoking identities : entrepreneurship and emerging identity positions in rural development
- 2016
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Ingår i: Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0898-5626 .- 1464-5114. ; 28:1-2, s. 76-96
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)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.
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| 5. |
- Berglund, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Responsibilising the next generation : Fostering the enterprising self through de-mobilising gender
- 2017
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Ingår i: Organization. - : Sage Publications. - 1350-5084 .- 1461-7323. ; 34:6, s. 892-915
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, our interest is in what subjectivities are fostered among schoolchildren through the recent introduction of entrepreneurship initiatives in primary and secondary school. The educational terrain is but one example where entrepreneurship has been discursively transformed during recent decades from the notion of starting businesses into a general approach to life itself in the advancement of neoliberal societies. The inherently elitist and excluding position of the entrepreneurial subject is now offered to all and sundry. While entrepreneurship pedagogy is explicitly intended to be gender neutral and inclusive of all such identities traditionally suppressed in the entrepreneurship discourse, we ask what kind of enterprising selves are mobilised and de-mobilised here. Second, in what way are these seemingly ‘gender-neutral’ enterprising selves gendered? Our analysis of three recent and dominating entrepreneurial initiatives in the Swedish school system emphasises the need for activation, performativity and responsibility. The analysis also shows that gender is indeed silenced in these initiatives but is at the same time productive through being subtly present in the promotion of a ‘neo-masculine’, active, technology-oriented and responsible subject. Entrepreneurship is presented as being equally available for all and something everyone should aspire to, yet the initiatives still sustain the suppression and marginalisation of women and femininities. The initiatives specifically promote a responsible and adaptive masculine subject position while notions of rebellious entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurial domestic positions are mobilised out of the picture.
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| 8. |
- Mårell, Lena, et al.
(författare)
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"Struggle to obtain redress" : women's experiences of living with symptoms attributed to dental restorative materials and/or electromagnetic fields
- 2016
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Ingår i: International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1748-2623 .- 1748-2631. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of illness and the encounters with health care professionals among women who attributed their symptoms and illness to either dental restorative materials and/or electromagnetic fields, despite the fact that research on health effects from dental fillings or electricity has failed to substantiate the reported symptoms. Thirteen women (aged 37-63 years) were invited to the study and a qualitative approach was chosen as the study design, and data were collected using semi-structured interviews. The analysis was conducted with a constant comparative method, according to Grounded Theory. The analysis of the results can be described with the core category, "Struggle to obtain redress," the two categories, "Stricken with illness" and "A blot in the protocol," and five subcategories. The core category represents the women's fight for approval and arose in the conflict between their experience of developing a severe illness and the doctors' or dentists' rejection of the symptoms as a disease, which made the women feel like malingerers. The informants experienced better support and confirmation from alternative medicine practitioners. However, sick-leave certificates from alternative medicine practitioners were not approved and this led to a continuous cycle of visits in the health care system. To avoid conflicting encounters, it is important for caregivers to listen to the patient's explanatory models and experience of illness, even if a medical answer cannot be given.
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