New Framings and Practices of Critical Research

Jenny Cameron

This essay reflects on two chapters on the theme of 'social entrepreneurship, relationality and the possible.' The essay explores how these chapters take a relational view of the world by featuring the importance of the relationships between people, and between people and ‘things’. What emerges from the two chapters are insights into social entrepreneurship as a social change practice not so much for finding accommodations in what is already present but for shifting the frame of what is thinkable and doable. The two chapters document strategies for social change while also recognising that social change is an unpredictable and uneven process that involves responding to the unexpected. The chapters also invite reflection on the contribution of social research to the social change process by demonstrating how social research can be oriented towards ushering in the new, an orientation that is captured in the notion of research as a performative practice.

Suggested citation

Cameron, J., 2018, ‘New Framings and Practices of Critical Research’, in P. Dey and C. Steyaert (eds). Social Entrepreneurship: An Affirmative Critique, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, Chapter 16 (294-300).