Biography & Abstract
Amira Benali
Amira is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University in Denmark. She holds a PhD in socioeconomics from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Her work focus on gender, social justice, poverty and alternative economies in the context of Tourism and management. Her current project focuses on the experiences of subaltern women with social entrepreneurship in Tunisia.
Social entrepreneurship as an alternative form of political organizing in post-revolution Tunisia
The political dimension is rarely addressed in the entrepreneurship literature despite clear links between social entrepreneurship, political and social change. In this article, we take interest in the Arab post-revolutionary context where activism has been studied mainly in the form of political activism including participation in protests, political engagement, or civil society projects. We investigate how ventures in the social and solidarity economy in Tunisia can constitute alternatives to conventional forms of political organizing and activism, beyond reviving the economy. We connect the experiences of entrepreneurs to macro-level data about the social, economic, historical and political context, following the Extended Case Method. We delineate four profiles: activists disillusioned by other historical forms of political organizing; activists embracing the entrepreneurial ethos; entrepreneurs seeking to impact politics via economic activity; and chancers who see a business interest in adopting a political stance on social change.