The importance of being privileged: Digital entrepreneurship as a class project

Murray, Grant; Carter, Chris; Spence, Crawford

Abstract

Established professional occupations can become the preserve of elites when fitting in is driven by class-based criteria. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship has been proposed as a means by which people may emancipate themselves from societal constraints. We interrogate digital entrepreneurship’s meritocratic foundations by way of a 36-month ethnography of a start-up incubator. Attending to the dispositions of digital entrepreneurs, we reveal they use cultural tastes and manners to create the incubator as a place where members of the privileged class can reinvent themselves at their leisure, all the while adopting the meritocratic mythologies of digital entrepreneurship to disavow their own privilege. This opens up a two-fold contribution to the study of professions and occupations. Firstly, we demonstrate how professional and occupational roles are epiphenomenal to class positioning. Secondly, the parallels between the legitimating discourses of entrepreneurs and more established professional jurisdictions attest to a community that is in the process of professionalization.

Citation

Murray, G., Carter, C., & Spence, C. (2024). The importance of being privileged: Digital entrepreneurship as a class project. Journal of Professions and Organization, 11(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joae001

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 6, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Feb 2, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-02
• Deposit Date: Jan 15, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 7, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Professions and Organization
• Print ISSN: 2051-8803
• Electronic ISSN: 2051-8811
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-15
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jpo/joae001
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2146681