Speculative Futures at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Dolan, Catherine; Rajak, Dinah

Abstract

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.

Citation

Dolan, C., & Rajak, D. (2018). Speculative Futures at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(2), 233-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12808

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 16, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 23, 2018
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 5, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 5, 2018
• Journal: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• Print ISSN: 1359-0987
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9655
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 233-255
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12808