ABC Research in Progress Seminars (ABC-RIPS)

Lured to cities for employment and relief from rural deprivation, nearly two billion urban inhabitants across the globe struggle to sustain an existence in environs where space is scarce, exorbitant, and often ghastly. With institutional voids, incomplete markets, and ineffectual policies conspiring to marginalize this quarter of humanity, market-based responses become an intriguing alternative. Bringing entrepreneurship scholarship into dialogue with the spatial theories of Lefebvre, Foucault, and Soja, we propose the concept of “entrepreneurial production of space,” in which space is treated as the target, substance, and product of entrepreneurial action. We then ask: How does the “entrepreneurial production of space” bring about alternative social arrangements that deliver reproducible benefits to society? Through a research design comprising two urban ethnographies in China— one of a rooftop migrant enclave and the other of a junkyard village —  and the use of sketching as a process of spatial reflection, we identify novel mechanisms through which entrepreneurs actively engage socio-spatial relations to create and capture value and, in doing so, unlock alternative social possibilities for marginalized populations. Our study thus responds to recent calls to employ diverse perspectives and methods, particularly for the sake of spotlighting the lived experiences of historically marginalized individuals.

For further information or access to full text, please contact presenter Adam Frost: af [dot] bhl [at] cbs [dot] dk (af[dot]bhl[at]cbs[dot]dk)

The paper reports on on-going ethnographic research in the food and agriculture industry that shows how different forms of organization produce different quality food. We explore the connections and relations to which we must attend in order to understand the craft of food. It begins in a restaurant where the first author started working as a sous-chef in 2019. With a particular approach to ethnography developed specifically for this project the research was able to help forge connections that take us beyond and outside the immediate pass and kitchen ‘prep’ area where the chefs are located. Food seems to require a certain mode of attention. The grain present in the sourdough bread being served as part of the tasting menu, for example, is the product of a long cycle of mediating elements that takes us from seed test laboratories and experimentation through to dominant agro-ecology practices and the quality of soil to which these practices give rise. To build relations with these elements demands a craft of ethnographic practice that is in danger of being erased in the mass production industrial methods of knowledge production that increasingly prevail in business and management studies.

This paper contributes to the study of alternative organizations by theorizing the emerging concept of slow organizations. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Dals Långed, Sweden, we explore how a community of craft makers reshapes public spaces to create common value through practices rooted in craft. Positioned as a material counter-narrative to dominant AI discourses, craft embodies a development logic that values resilience, sustainability, and creativity over acceleration and accumulation. 

We argue that craft not only serves as an alternative mode of production, emphasizing quality, tradition, and community, but also as a prefigurative social movement fostering care for the environment and society. In Dals Långed, craft-making emerges as a form of resistance to fast-paced capitalism, aligning with seasonal rhythms and embracing a slow approach to organizing. Through vignettes that reflect the temporal and spatial dynamics of these practices, we analyze the interplay of craft, community, and nature in shaping public spaces and alternative organizational forms. 

Our contributions are threefold. First, we introduce the concept of slow organizations as a form of alternative organizational practice. Second, we theorize a shift from public value to common good, underpinned by aesthetic practices of care and solidarity. Third, we propose craft ethnography as a creative and embodied methodological approach for social sciences. This work highlights the potential of slow practices to foster existential sustainability, challenging dominant growth-driven capitalist models and advancing a more-than-human perspective in organizational studies.