To Be an Entrepreneur

Qermezi Huang Julia

Description

In To Be an Entrepreneur, Julia Qermezi Huang focuses on Bangladesh's iAgent social-enterprise model, the set of economic processes that animate the delivery of this model, and the implications for women's empowerment. The book offers new ethnographic approaches that reincorporate relational economics into the study of social enterprise. It details the tactics, dilemmas, compromises, aspirations, and unexpected possibilities that digital social enterprise opens up for women entrepreneurs, and reveals the implications of policy models promoting women's empowerment: the failure of focusing on individual autonomy and independence.While describing the historical and incomplete transition of Bangladesh's development models from their roots in a patronage-based moral economy to a market-based social-enterprise arrangement, Huang concludes that market-driven interventions fail to grasp the sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which poverty and gender inequality are embedded and sustained.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Entrepreneurship
• Anthropology
• Bangladesh

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501748745
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

TOBEAN ENTREPRENEUR

TOBEAN ENTREPRENEUR SocialEnterpriseandDisruptive Development in Bangladesh

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

JuliaQermeziHuang

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Huang, Julia, author. Title:Tobeanentrepreneur:socialenterpriseanddisruptivedevelopmentin Bangladesh / Julia Qermezi Huang. Description:Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,2020.|Includesblbiacloirgpaih references and index. Identifiers:LCCN2019030757(print)|LCCN2019030758(ebook)| ISBN78159droc(ah281710478197NSBI|r)verepap(155947105abkc)| ISBN9781501748738(ep)buSI|9NB518774014587pd(f) Subjects: LCSH: Women in development—Bangladesh. |Businesswomen— Bangladesh. | Social entrepreneurship—Bangladesh. | Poorwomen— Bangladesh. | Ethnology—Bangladesh. Classification:LCCHQ1240.5.B3H732020(print)|LCCHQ1240.5.B3(ebook) | DDC 305.48/2095492—dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019030757 LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019030758

Cover photo by Julia Qermezi Huang. Villagers weigh in on the entrepreneur’s services in northwestern Bangladesh, May 16, 2013.

FortheiAgents andtheirfutures

Contents

IPar t

ListofFiguresandIllustrations Acknowledgments ListofAbbreviations NoteonStyle Prologue:DigitalFirstResponders

Introduction:DisruptiveDevelopmentinBangladesh

DISRUPTING ETHICAL MODELS

iAgent Megh’s Story 1.  Women’s Work: The Arena of Disruption 2.  Digital Technology: The Problems of (and Solutions to) Connectivity

Par t II UNSETTLING ENTREPRENEURSHIP iAgent Deepti’s Story 3.  The Making and Unmaking of Entrepreneurs 4.  A Diversified Basket of Services

IIIPar t  RECONFIGURING CLASS RELATIONS iAgent Ayrin’s Story 5.  MiddleClass Projects and the Development Moral Economy 6.  The Ambiguous Figures of Social Enterprise

Conclusion:TheTimeofSocialEnterprise

ListofKeyPeople GlossaryofNonEnglishWords Notes References Index

ix xi xv xvii xix

1

49

57

93

117

127

155

181

189

222

249

261 263 265 273 289

FiguresandIllustrations

1.  Organigram of the iAgent hierarchy with key interlocutors 2.  iAgent pilot model: Foundationfunded NGO structure with training costs and equipment for iAgents donated (implemented in LalpurUpazila, at the NGO Atno Bishash and one other location)  3.  iAgent scaleup model: Multitier commercial licensing structure with formal loan advanced to iAgents (implemented in AmirhatUpazila, at the NGO ACRU and nine other locations) 4.  An iAgent considers whether or not to visit yet one more village before returning home  5.  An iAgent speaks with a “wrongnumber” friend while waiting for participants to join her group session 6.  Long journeys between villages for iAgent work provide ample time away from the gaze (and earshot) of relatives 7.  New iAgents learn how to operate cameras  8.  New iAgents are instructed on how to stand and what to say while taking people’s photographs 9.  An iAgent sets up an information session about breastfeeding for housewives. Young boys join in, attracted by the spectacle 10.  An iAgent measures a woman’s blood pressure with a digital monitor 11.  An iAgent’s tutoring session is interrupted by a man requesting his weight be measured 12.  Women often do not know their mobile phone numbers by recall (while men, who more regularly share their contact details, seem to take pride in rattling off their numbers from memory). This woman shows an iAgent her number (written on the inside cover of a torn schoolbook) so that she can be registered for Aponjon

ix

36

37

39

60

103

105

132

133

160

163

164

168