The Art of Performing Affectation: Manufacturing and Branding an Enterprising Self by Chinese E-Commerce Traders

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linliang Qian
Keyword(s):  
Enterprising Self

Negotiating Paternalism and the Enterprising Self in Taiwanese Talent Shows

2013 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miaoju Jian
Keyword(s):  
Reality Tv ◽  
The Self ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
Enterprising Self

Talent shows have rocketed to popularity in Taiwan in recent years, as demonstrated in the high rating programs, One Million Star (超級星光大道) and Super Idol (超級偶像). This article focuses on the Taiwan talent show phenomenon as an exemplar of today's contradictory and exploitable reality TV ‘celebrity economy’. Through the oft-repeated assertion of ‘yes, teacher’ (謝謝老師), Taiwan's talent shows manage to combine a globalising self-enterprising ethos of neo-liberal labour conditions with a Confucian-patriarchal culture. Within this context, powerful judges become mentors, with obedient contestants positioned as their apprentices. This article scrutinises the interdependence between this power-laden relationship in the talent shows and the self-enterprising practices of Taiwan's entertainment industry. It argues that, rather than democratising the TV empire, these shows have, paradoxically, contributed to the revival and consolidation of the previously presumed to be outmoded figure of the ‘star authority’.

Responsibilising the next generation: Fostering the enterprising self through de-mobilising gender

Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 892-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Berglund ◽  
Monica Lindgren ◽  
Johann Packendorff
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
School System ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Recent Introduction ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
Enterprising Self ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Swedish School ◽  
Primary And Secondary School

In this article, our interest is in what subjectivities are fostered among schoolchildren through the recent introduction of entrepreneurship initiatives in primary and secondary school. The educational terrain is but one example where entrepreneurship has been discursively transformed during recent decades from the notion of starting businesses into a general approach to life itself in the advancement of neoliberal societies. The inherently elitist and excluding position of the entrepreneurial subject is now offered to all and sundry. While entrepreneurship pedagogy is explicitly intended to be gender neutral and inclusive of all such identities traditionally suppressed in the entrepreneurship discourse, we ask what kind of enterprising selves are mobilised and de-mobilised here. Second, in what way are these seemingly ‘gender-neutral’ enterprising selves gendered? Our analysis of three recent and dominating entrepreneurial initiatives in the Swedish school system emphasises the need for activation, performativity and responsibility. The analysis also shows that gender is indeed silenced in these initiatives but is at the same time productive through being subtly present in the promotion of a ‘neo-masculine’, active, technology-oriented and responsible subject. Entrepreneurship is presented as being equally available for all and something everyone should aspire to, yet the initiatives still sustain the suppression and marginalisation of women and femininities. The initiatives specifically promote a responsible and adaptive masculine subject position while notions of rebellious entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurial domestic positions are mobilised out of the picture.

scholarly journals ‘Choose, collect, manage, win!’: Neoliberalism, enterprising culture and risk society in video game covers

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 607-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercè Oliva ◽  
Óliver Pérez-Latorre ◽  
Reinald Besalú
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Video Game ◽  
The United States ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Enterprising Self ◽  
The Relationship

This article aims to identify the relationship between video games and neoliberal values. To fulfil this aim, it analyses the covers of the 20 top-selling video games in the United States each year from 2010 to 2014 (a total of 80 different games). Video game covers are a type of paratext, that is, texts that accompany another text to promote it and to guide its reading. Thus, video game covers choose and highlight some of the games’ features over others, and by doing that they construct a discourse. In this article, it is argued that regardless of genre, the covers analysed convey and promote neoliberal values, such as freedom and choice, entrepreneurship, consumption and accumulation of goods, customization, novelty, individualism and meritocracy. This promotion of neoliberal values is combined with an appeal to the concerns of ‘risk society’. Thus, the covers of the top-selling video games play on fears linked to the new context created by the economic crisis while at the same time legitimizing the neoliberal ideal of the ‘enterprising self’ as a model for dealing with it.

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