As poverty and unemployment rates rose in small towns in the United States following the economic crisis, austerity measures decreased access to social programs for the most vulnerable populations. At the same time, investors and small business owners, concerned that the growing power of large-scale global corporations threatened these communities, responded by encouraging businesses to put long-term solutions to environmental destruction and economic decline above short-term profit. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the northeastern United States, this article demonstrates how different class-inflected economic development trends come together to shape response to economic decline. In this small town, social and environmental entrepreneurialism led to a rethinking of the role of businesses, but also tempered conflicts about the future of the region and encouraged a business-centric understanding of economic problems and solutions. The result is that poverty and the decline in social programs are addressed indirectly or are relegated to individual or cultural problems.
ArgentNTontsMJonesR, et al. (2013)
A creativity-led rural renaissance? Amenity-led migration, the creative turn and the uneven development of rural Australia. Applied Geography44: 88–98.
2.
AtasoySMcConnonJCJGabeT (2007) The economic impact and importance of microbusinesses to the New England economy.
REP Staff Paper #560, Department of Resource Economics and Policy, University of Maine. Available at: https://umaine.edu/soe/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/2009/06/soestaffpaper560.pdf (accessed 20 June 2016).
3.
BarhamJTroppDEnterlineK, et al. (2012) Regional food hub resource guide. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, April, p.92.
4.
BeveridgeRGuyS (2005)
The rise of the eco-preneur and the messy world of environmental innovation. Local Environment10(6): 665–676.
5.
Brookings Institution (2006) Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places.
Washington, DC:
The Brookings Institution.
6.
BrooksCManzaJ (2013)
A broken public? Americans’ responses to the great recession. American Sociological Review78: 727–748.
7.
CahnPS (2008)
Consuming class: Multilevel marketers in neoliberal Mexico. Cultural Anthropology23(3): 429–452.
8.
CarbonellaA (2014) Labor in place/capitalism in space: The making and unmaking of a local working class on Maine’s ‘paper plantation’. In: KasmirSCarbonellaA (eds) Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor.
New York, NY/Oxford:
Berghahn Books, pp.77–122.
9.
CollinsJL (2017) The politics of value : Three movements to change how we think about the economy. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
10.
DunkTW (2002)
Remaking the working class: Experience, class consciousness, and the industrial adjustment process. American Ethnologist29(4): 878–900.
11.
FergusonJ (1994) The anti-politics machine: ‘Development,’ depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
FloraJLSharpJFloraC, et al. (1997)
Entrepreneurial social infrastructure and locally initiated economic development in the nonmetropolitan United States. The Sociological Quarterly38(4): 623–645.
14.
FloridaR (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.
New York, NY:
Basic Books.
15.
FosterRJ (2014)
Corporations as partners: ‘Connected Capitalism’ and The Coca-Cola Company. Political and Legal Anthropology Review37(2): 246–258.
16.
Freire-GibbLCNielsenK (2013)
Entrepreneurship within urban and rural areas: Creative people and social networks. Regional Studies48(1): 139–153.
17.
GabeTFloridaRMellanderC (2013)
The creative class and the crisis. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society6(1): 37–53.
18.
GagnéNO (2011)
Eating local in a U.S. city: Reconstructing ‘community’-a third place-in a global neoliberal economy. American Ethnologist38(2): 281–293.
19.
GillR (2012)
‘If you’re struggling to survive day-to-day’: Class optimism and contradiction in entrepreneurial discourse. Organization21(1): 50–67.
20.
GoldsteinDM (2001) Microenterprise training programs, neoliberal common sense, and the discourses of self-esteem. In: GoodeJMaskovskyJ (eds) The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Power, Politics, and Impoverished People in the United States.
New York/London:
New York University Press, pp.236–272.
21.
GordonK (2011)
What is important to me is my business, nothing more: Neoliberalism, ideology and the work of selling in highland Bolivia. Anthropology of Work ReviewXXXII(1): 30–39.
22.
GustersonH (2017)
From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the rise of nationalist populism. American Ethnologist44(2): 209–214.
23.
HarveyD (1989)
From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography71(1): 3–17.
24.
Herbert-CheshireLHigginsV (2004)
From risky to responsible: Expert knowledge and the governing of community-led rural development. Journal of Rural Studies20(3): 289–302.
25.
JungYNewmanA (2014)
An edible moral economy in the motor city: Food politics and urban governance in Detroit. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture14(1): 22–31.
26.
KingfisherCMaskovskyJ (2008)
The limits of neoliberalism. Critique of Anthropology28(2): 115–126.
27.
LaferG (2002) The Job Training Charade.
Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
28.
LiTM (2007)
Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society36(2): 263–293.
29.
LiTM (2015)
Governing rural Indonesia: Convergence on the project system. Critical Policy Studies 10(1): 79–94.
30.
LippmannS (2009)
Local labor market dynamics and self-employment in rural New England. Sociological Spectrum29(3): 371–400.
31.
McGoeyL (2012)
Philanthrocapitalism and its critics. Poetics40(2): 185–199.
32.
McGranahanDWojanT (2007)
Recasting the creative class to examine growth processes in rural and urban counties. Regional Studies41(2): 197–216.
33.
McGranahanDAWojanTRLambertDM (2010)
The rural growth trifecta: Outdoor amenities, creative class and entrepreneurial context. Journal of Economic Geography11(3): 529–557.
34.
MacleodG (2002)
From urban entrepreneurialism to a ‘Revanchist City’? On the spatial injustices of Glasgow’s renaissance. Antipode34(3): 602–624.
35.
MorgenSGonzalesL (2008)
The neoliberal American dream as daydream: Counter-hegemonic perspectives on welfare restructuring in the United States. Critique of Anthropology28(2): 219–236.
36.
MorgenSMaskovskyJ (2003)
The anthropology of welfare ‘Reform’: New perspectives on U.S. urban poverty in the post-welfare era. Annual Review of Anthropology32(1): 315–338.
37.
MurrayMDunnL (1995)
Capacity building for rural development in the United States. Journal of Rural Studies11(1): 89–97.
38.
PeckJ (2014)
Pushing austerity: State failure, municipal bankruptcy and the crises of fiscal federalism in the USA. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society7(1): 17–44.
39.
PeredoAMChrismanJJ (2006)
Toward a theory of community-based enterprise. Academy of Management Review31(2): 309–328.
40.
PhillipsR (2016)
Impact investing and community development. Maine Policy Review25(1): 63–71.
41.
Pied C (2011) Small town populism and the rise of anti-government politics. Ethnology 50(1): 17–41.
42.
Pied C (2017) The problem people and the hard workers: Whiteness and small town response to economic decline. Identities. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2017.1349357.
43.
PrenticeR (2017)
Microenterprise development, industrial labour and the seductions of precarity.Critique of Anthropology 37(2): 201–222.
44.
RajakD (2011)
Theatres of virtue: Collaboration, consensus and the social life of corporate social responsibility. Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology60(August): 9–20.
45.
RobinsonKLDassieWChristyRD (2004)
Entrepreneurship and small business development as a rural development strategy. Southern Rural Sociology20(2): 1–23.
46.
RoseN (1992) Governing the enterprising self. In: Heelas P and Morris P (eds) The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate. London: Routledge, pp.141–164.
47.
SchwittayA (2011a)
The financial inclusion assemblage: Subjects, technics, rationalities. Critique of Anthropology31(4): 381–401.
48.
SchwittayA (2011b)
The marketization of poverty. Current Anthropology52(S3): S71–S82.
49.
SenDMajumderS (2015)
Narratives of risk and poor rural women’s (dis)-engagements with microcredit-based development in Eastern India. Critique of Anthropology35(2): 121–141.
50.
ShawE (2013)
The impact of post-recession state revenue reductions on Maine’s municipalities. Maine Policy Review22(2): 34–41.
51.
Slow Money Institute (n.d.) Home Page. Available at: https://slowmoney.org/ (accessed 10 July 2017).
52.
StolbergSG (2016) Beyond coal: imagining Appalachia’s future. New York Times, 17 August.
53.
StrierR (2010)
Women, poverty, and the microenterprise: Context and discourse. Gender, Work & Organization17(2): 195–218.
54.
SukariehM (2016)
On class, culture, and the creation of the neoliberal subject: The case of Jordan. Anthropological Quarterly89(4): 1201–1225.
WilsonA (1999)
The empire of direct sales and the making of Thai entrepreneurs. Critique of Anthropology19(4): 401–422.
58.
WilsonDKeilR (2008)
The real creative class. Social and Cultural Geography9(8): 841–847.
59.
WinTS (2014)
Marketing the entrepreneurial artist in the innovation age : Aesthetic labor, artistic subjectivity, and the creative industries. Anthropology of Work ReviewXXXV(1): 2–13.
