What Colour ‘Success’? Distorting Value in Studies of Ethnic Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The study of ethnic entrepreneurship has tended to take as unproblematic what we mean by ‘success’ and ‘failure’. Hence, some groups are defined as success stories. Recently, for example, in Britain, South Asian immigrants were said to be a ‘success’: they had a ‘Jewish future’. The perennial debate both in Europe and in the United States is why Black people have been a ‘failure’ as entrepreneurs. This is even debated by Black people themselves. The present paper sets out to deconstruct notions of success and failure by probing the narrow economistic models of value on which they are based. It argues that only by understanding the organisation of mass cultural production, on the one hand, and relativity of cultural value, on the other, can we arrive at a more subtle understanding of what motivates ethnic entrepreneurs. In the light of this, I argue, even posing the question of success and failure is false. It leads research and writing on ethnic entrepreneurs into blind alleys while creating damaging – and unfounded – invidious stereotypes of different ethnic groups.