Entrepreneurship as in(ter)vention: Reconsidering the conceptual politics of method in entrepreneurship studies

In this article, I look into Bengt Johannisson's experiments with enactive research in the so-called Anamorphosis Project. This methodological experiment was based on the assumption that to understand entrepreneurship, researchers themselves must enact an entrepreneurial process and reflect upon it by engaging in auto-ethnography. By connecting aesthetics and politics, this experiment guides us in seeing methodologies as more than just tools – actually as in(ter)ventions or inventive forms of intervening vis-à-vis societal or community issues. By conceptualizing the performance of scholarship as involving practices of enacting and engaging, I suggest entrepreneurship scholars to take into account the ontological politics of method and to anticipate what can be called methodological experimentation. Drawing upon non-representational theory and actor-network theory, I flesh out the notion of in(ter)vention by emphasizing both its performative and participative dimension.