Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis
研究质疑数字创业能解放弱势群体的说法，通过分析英国女性数字创业者的案例，揭示社会地位和结构性条件对创业成功的影响。
Digital entrepreneurship is presented in popular discourse as a means to empowerment and greater economic participation for under-resourced and socially marginalised people. However, this emancipatory rhetoric relies on a flat ontology that does not sufficiently consider the enabling conditions needed for successful digital enterprise activity. To empirically illustrate this argument, we examine three paired cases of UK women digital entrepreneurs, operating in similar sectors but occupying contrasting social positionalities. The cases are comparatively analysed through an intersectional feminist lens using a critical realist methodological framework. By examining the relationships between digital entrepreneurship, social positionality, and structural and agential enabling conditions, we interrogate the notion of digital entrepreneurship as an emancipatory phenomenon producing liberated workers.