Hegemonic discourses on entrepreneurship as an ideological mechanism for the reproduction of capital

Abstract

Pointed to as a means of insertion into increasingly competitive labour markets, entrepreneurship has become an ideology of the ‘new capitalist spirit’ that needs to be questioned. Our prime objective here is to identify what orders of discourse are emerging from existing entrepreneurial discourse within Junior Enterprises in Brazil, assuming that, the interdiscursive relations regarding this subject do ideologically contribute to the construction of the contemporary capitalist enterprise as the only possible model for the generation of wealth in society. We carried out a qualitative survey that was epistemologically orientated by interpretivism, and methodologically orientated by critical discourse analysis. In addition, 60 interviews were carried out with students and professors, which allowed the identification of three orders of discourse: (1) a consensus regarding the centrality of companies in terms of thinking and acting of a given individual in the world; (2) the exemplarity of the neoliberal capitalist entrepreneurial model and (3) the absence of feasible alternatives for the contemporary capitalism model. The conclusions problematize the hegemonic discourses on entrepreneurship suggesting that high education has been less of a human emancipation tool and more of a capital reproduction mechanism.