Emancipation and/or oppression? Conceptualizing dimensions of criticality in entrepreneurship studies

Purpose: This editorial essay uses the attribute ‘critical' as a sensitizing concept to emphasize entrepreneurship's role in overcoming extant relations of exploitation, domination and oppression. It builds on the premise that entrepreneurship not only brings about new firms, products and services but also new openings for more liberating forms of individual and collective existence.

Design: Honing in on Calas et al's (2009) seminal piece on Critical Entrepreneurship Studies, and building on Laclau's (1996) conceptualization of emancipation as intimately related to oppression, we explore different interpretations of emancipation and discuss these from a critical understanding of entrepreneurship. We then employ these interpretations to introduce and ‘classify' the five articles in this special issue.

Findings: The editorial charts four interpretations of emancipation along two axes (utopian-dystopian and heterotopian-paratopian), and relates these to various strands of critical entrepreneurship research. United by a general commitment to positive change, each interpretation champions a different take on what might comprise the emancipatory or oppressive potential of entrepreneurship.

Social Implications: Whereas research on entrepreneurship is still firmly dominated by functionalist approaches which tend to equate entrepreneurship primarily with its economic function, this essay challenges the concept of entrepreneurship as neutral by exploring both its destructive and empowering potential.

Originality/value: As the emancipatory aspect of entrepreneurship has attracted increasing attention among entrepreneurship researchers, we formulate a tentative framework for furthering views on the emancipatory aspects of entrepreneurship as a positive phenomenon in critical research - which to date has tended to be preoccupied with the "dark side' of entrepreneurship.