Dear Social Enterprise…
When the economy married civil society at the turn of the millennium, it was love across the divide and we were all invited to the reception.
Their first child, Social Enterprise, was born soon afterwards and, now in their early 20’s, Social Enterprise loves both parents but doesn’t want to become either of them. Social Enterprise wants to be themselves; be who they really are.
Social Enterprise doesn’t want to be ‘business as usual’ or be ‘charity as usual’; wants to socialise the capital as much as capitalise the social; wants a civil economy as well as a civil society.
Social Enterprise doesn’t like ‘the good old days’, when companies made profits and charities fixed the collateral damage and, even though they’ve seen their parents get a little more like one another: adding a dash of social conscience to commercial capitalism; and a sprinkling of commercial trading to a charitable mission; Social Enterprise wonders if they can be different to them both.
Social Enterprise doesn’t want to be like its parents’ friends either. Friends like higher education, healthcare, legal aid, adoption services and so many others who seem to be possessed by market logic but have lost something of their humanity. Or friends like Big Charity, who receives something like 80% of their funding from government, which has been making Social Enterprise wonder when charity is not charity but a branch of the state? At 85%? Or 90%?
Social Enterprise is finding it hard to find role models.
Maybe it’s something about values that makes it confusing? Commercial capitalism is individualistic, contractual, transactional and good for ‘me’; it expects a product or a service at an agreed price. Civil society is collective, mutual, relational, and good for ‘us’; it offers empathy, friendship and unconditional support.
Social Enterprise doesn’t like the idea of being trapped by the binary choices of one’s parents and has noticed that an increasingly binary world doesn’t seem a very nice place to be. What about dispensing with that, being imaginative, perhaps being more like a friend from another country? Grameen Bank maybe?
Grameen Bank, the child of Muhammad Yunus, from a Muslim background, provides micro-loans to women in Bangladesh who have no collateral. Grameen is neither business-as-usual nor charity-as-usual, not only because there is no collateral for the loan, but because the loan is given to women in a culture where only men are deemed worthy recipients of loans. And 90% of the bank is owned by the women receiving the money.
As a role model, Grameen is neither side of the old binary boundaries, but a new imagination of the future; made by breaking out of the moral and institutional logic of traditional philanthropy and charity on the one hand, and mainstream economics and business practice on the other.
Binary boundaries. That’s something else that Social Enterprise has been thinking about. Troubled by being forced to choose a side, Social Enterprise is living on the boundary of the economy and society, and has noticed it moving…monetising more of society, and that feels uncomfortable. Who decided that the answer to market failure was more markets anyway? Could it be that Social Enterprise might unwittingly become an apologist for marketizing society? Social Enterprise wants to counter that, not be complicit in it, but there doesn’t even seem to be the ethical and moral vocabulary to ask whether a market should be created, and if so, what kind?
It’s not easy living on a boundary. The social won’t look after itself just because we look after the enterprise. That’s the mistake that so many people make about Social Enterprise, and that hurts. They forget that social isn’t just a synonym for need, or beneficiaries, but it’s a modus operandi, a togetherness, a method of collective action that involves people, and because it involves people, it involves politics. If social enterprise is all enterprise and no social, perhaps alleviating the symptoms of some social problems will get more efficient (or perhaps not), but if it does nothing to change the deep structures of society, that’s not enough for Social Enterprise.
Could it be that Social Enterprise could be other? Neither reduced to taking the edge off rampant markets, nor picking up the pieces after the fact, nor being a half-way-house that is somehow not as good, or as bad, as either.
Perhaps, if it’s our imagination that is broken, then identifying as other might work? Could Social Enterprise create a different, humanised, market by acting differently within the existing market? Be a little more mutual, relational, giving and reciprocal within the economy, not simply react to its deficiencies? Social Enterprise wants to be who they are. Be the change they want to see in the world. Social Enterprise is feeling hopeful, optimistic, and confused.
Maybe Social Enterprise shouldn’t be looking backwards through the family tree at all. Maybe looking forwards to the children of Social Enterprise is the way to go? Act like the future is here already? A little like the transfer of wealth from the old generation to the new, it’ll be new values that change the world. Maybe, if you’re Social Enterprise, trying to change your parents is just a recipe for discord and dispute.
Maybe, with a little new imagination, Social Enterprise would be happier by being different, being other, being themselves.
With our thanks to Mark Sampson, one of the Curiosity Society’s board members, for inspiring these ideas through his PhD.
