Speculative Futures at the Bottom of the Pyramid

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Main author: Dolan, Catherine
Other authors: Rajak, Dinah
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-25605
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description Celebrated as creative, flexible catalysts of inclusive capitalism, urban youth are central to bottom‐of‐the‐pyramid (BoP) models of development, which set out to repurpose the jobless as entrepreneurs in the making. We explore the multiple (at times conflicting) temporalities – the practices, technologies, and representations of time – which figure in a BoP initiative offering entrepreneurial opportunities to unemployed youth in Nairobi's slums: from the invocation of clock‐time discipline to the professional time of entrepreneurial subjectivities and the enchantments of the not‐yet. But the appeal of BoP, we suggest, does not turn either on the here‐and‐now of survival or on an impossible pipe dream of prosperity, but rather resides firmly in the medium term: a foreseeable future of modest desires, which nonetheless remain tantalizingly just out of reach for most. By examining how these temporal conflicts play out in attempts to fashion a cadre of self‐willed, aspiring entrepreneurs, we reveal the limits to entrepreneurial agency, and the contradictions inherent in the mission of (self‐)empowerment through enterprise upon which the ideology of inclusive markets is built.
format Journal Article
author Dolan, Catherine
author_facet Dolan, Catherine
Rajak, Dinah
authorStr Dolan, Catherine
author_letter Dolan, Catherine
author2 Rajak, Dinah
author2Str Rajak, Dinah
title Speculative Futures at the Bottom of the Pyramid
publisher Wiley
publishDate 2018
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/25605/

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