On 2 November, I was given the opportunity to participate in a panel debate – a ‘book lunch’ (very droll!) – for anthropologist Richard Pfeilstetter’s recent (2022) book ‘The Anthropology of Entrepreneurship.’ Thank you Richard for the invitation and to Kirsty Osborne and the University of St Andrews Entrepreneurship Centre for organizing. I ended up writing a review of sorts. Richard felt it was worth sharing, so here it is (in a slightly tidier form).
“Thank you everyone for the opportunity to participate in this discussion, to Kirsty for organizing. I found Richard’s book simultaneously engaging, challenging, stimulating and at times infuriating. For an outsider to anthropology the book provided an engaging and swift tour of the strange history of entrepreneurship studies in anthropology. The source of my infuriation was simply that the tour is, for an outsider, sometimes a little too swift. Richard has managed to cram so much into a slim volume. So much, but at times, and necessarily, never quite enough.
Richard’s argument centres on a call for anthropology to take entrepreneurship seriously. He is bothered that anthropological scholarship often dismisses anthropology as a native term, something that doesn’t need to be explored reflexively, but just can be deployed in situ. Hence, he suggests, the willingness of much contemporary anthropology to regard entrepreneurship as part of a programme of social coercion and behavioural adjustment on the part of neoliberal elites.
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Philip Roscoe 