Aspiring Minds: ‘A Generation of Entrepreneurs in the Making’

Rajak, Dinah; Dolan, Catherine

Abstract

This article examines how corporate, state and donor interests have converged in attempts to craft South Africa’s youngsters into an army of entrepreneurs as the last frontier for creating growth in a post-job world. We investigate the apparatus designed to engineer this entrepreneurial revolution and the actors hoping to seed enterprising aspirations in school-age kids. Our ethnographic findings show that while the ideology of entrepreneurial education enrols kids in anticipation of an entrepreneurial future, it falls short of both its enticing promise and its transformative intentions. As enterprise education fails to deliver on the New South African Dream, we argue, the aspirations it propagates withers, generating disaffection rather than a generation of entrepreneurial subjects faithful to the neoliberal creed of making it on your own.

Citation

Rajak, D., & Dolan, C. (2022). Aspiring Minds: ‘A Generation of Entrepreneurs in the Making’. Sociological Research Online, 27(4), 803-822. https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211042905

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 3, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Nov 30, 2021
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Aug 15, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 15, 2021
• Journal: Sociological Research Online
• Electronic ISSN: 1360-7804
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 803-822
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211042905
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13607804211042905