Author: Adam Fish
With anthropology leaning its trendy shoulder onto social media
and new economy corporations one would think the two trends would come together
around a case study of software social entrepreneurs. A profitable avenue open
to anthropological investigation would be their accounting practices—how they
measure more-than-profit earnings.
This research is in the emergent field of ethonomics–the
discipline of defining and prioritization motivations within creative
industries. Ethonomics,
the guiding principle behind social capitalism, evolved capitalism, moral
marketeering, and venture philanthropy, is possible with digital economies of
scale, flexible labor, social media networks, user-generated content,
transformations in corporate management, and a deep sense of moral
universalism. Each of the two words of the last point, moral and universalism,
is open to a cultural critique on the grounds of its anti-cultural relativity
and also how accounting is performed on a corporate imaginaire of morality.
Where would an anthropologist begin to study how para-economic value is
accounted for in an adroitly late-capitalistic corporate context?
With many social entrepreneurs trudging along well below profit
margins what really defines success in these emergent corporations? I should
but I am not going to go into ”blended value accounting,” the theory developed
by social entrepreneurship theorist Alex Nicholls of
Said Business School at Oxford, but it is enough to say that metrics are
being developed within the UK to measure success of social enterprises. What
can anthropology contribute that business theory cannot? What are the varieties
of quantitative and qualitative accounting within this genus of social
entrepreneur? How do the ideal versus the actual, the observed versus the
reflexively practiced, accountings of success vary? Is this visionary production
or vaporware? Is philanthropic hype used to pump up the employees, to headhunt
for the best activist entrepreneurs of the future? Is it just corporate
greenwashing or an authentic re-direction of the corporate mission on the
post-global recession Earth? I go big about social entrepreneurs as a general
anthropological category to describe the simultaneity of market and mission
motivation. As cultural producers and consumers we are all social
entrepreneurs.
With our libraries full of histories of capitalism and critical
accounts of post-colonial development there is certainly a place for
anthropology in this debate. The leading edge of the classification of social
entrepreneurs in business is Zahra
et al. (2009) who developed
three types of social entrepreneur: Social Bricoleur, Social Constructionist,
and Social Engineer. This article builds off of business writing from the 1930s
and 1940s and never once mentions the internet and the epochal shifts its
created within philanthropy. What follows is my typology of social
entrepreneurs (SE).
This typology of social entrepreneurs include these seven
categories of those who make profits while philanthropically providing
materials, services, foundations, virtual services, information, or cultural
spaces. Here it goes. These include material social entrepreneurs or (MSEs)
that provide shelter, food, medicine, or clothing. An organization like Tom’s Shoes, who for every pair
purchased gives one pair to an unshod person in the developing world, is an
example of an innovative MSE. Material SEs gifts things. Invisible
Children’s Mend project (you
cynical visual anthropologists see video into here)
provides the resources for impoverished people to make objects with markets in
the West. Mend is a service social entrepreneur (SSE). Current
TV, a media corporation started by Al Gore with the goals of democratizing
media production and providing the space for dialogue about democracy, is an
example of an SSE. Another SSE is Witness, a non-profit that trains
videographers in conflict zones.
Whole Foods is a SSE because it caters to conscious consumerism.
Service SEs do not provide funds or things but distribution, markets, and
practices. In its most dynamic form SSEs provides skills for self-empowerment.
Foundation social entrepreneurs (FSE) are major corporations’ charitable
foundations. Google’s google.org and
Ford Motor’sFord Foundation are examples of FSE. The Ford
Foundation grants more than $16 billion for the promotion of democracy and the
reduction of global injustice. Google.org has provided over $100 million for
global health, clean energy, and IT development. Omidyar Network, founded by
eBay creators, is a FSE and invests in VSEs like Creative
Commons and CSEs like Linden
Labs.Brave New Films, a political
media production and distribution company, is an example of an information
social entrepreneur (ISE). Information SEs focus on making or aggregating
advocacy media. Unlike Witness, Brave New Films does not teach production
practices.
A virtual social entrepreneur (VSE) is Causecast,
a non-profit/for-profit internet hybrid that provides digital tools for cause
advocacy. Virtual SEs provide freedoms and platforms. They include the
non-profit organization kiva.org, which uses the internet to administer
microfinance loans, as well as Creative Commons and Mozilla, which are
profitable practice and theory organizations advocating for liberty,
innovation, and the internet. Like Brave New Films, Causecast is responsible
for an online information network that connects political publics, but
Causecast provides tools.
Digital social entrepreneur (DSEs) consists of those corporations
that are for-profit but provide social media that can be used for political
organizing. The political engagement of DSE can be intended or unintended
consequences of for-profit activities. Linden Labs, founders of Second Life,
Facebook, and Google’s YouTube subsidiary are examples of DSEs. The communities
of film activists that meet on their sites make Current TV a DSE as well as a
SSE.
Adam Fish researches the
intersections of culture, power, and technology. He focuses on how media
corporations and political movements imagine themselves and the social and
political relevancies of the internet and television. Adam investigates
America-based cable television networks attempting to balance neoliberalism,
federal policy, and social media in their pursuit of profit, social justice,
and improvements of the public sphere. This focus on applied anthropology was
developed in over ten years as an indigenous and federal archaeologist. Fish
also works for public anthropology through television and film production. You
can see his television documentaries at mediacultures.org and follow him on
Twitter @mediacultures.
To contact Adam Fish and access more of his works:
UCLA Department of Anthropology, 310.745.6976
@mediacultures, documentaries: mediacultures.org/docs
This material is provided courtesy of the author, who retains full rights to the material.
This material is provided courtesy of the author, who retains full rights to the material.