Social and Cultural Capital: Enhancing Emancipatory Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This research explores and analyzes Māori entrepreneurs in the screen industry, and identifies ways their life histories and experiences, culture and identity combine to shape their entrepreneurial intent. Evidence was found demonstrating that these factors combine to enrich their cultural and social capital, which, in turn enhances their desire for emancipation through entrepreneurial endeavor. The paper makes a contribution to the entrepreneurship literature because it brings together the small but growing body of Indigenous entrepreneurship literature, and focuses on a study that looks, in-depth, at individual Indigenous entrepreneurs, exploring their social and cultural contexts in a comprehensive and rigorous manner. From such research and theory building, it is hoped that other oppressed peoples, Indigenous or otherwise, may draw on entrepreneurship as a means to break free from their oppression, to restore and rebuild their cultures, better define and enhance their identities, and to create organizations that are more meaningful for themselves and their communities.