At the Intersection of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Movements: The Case of Egypt and the Arab Spring

With a history of civic associations turned political, and an ongoing sociopolitical transformation in Egypt, social entrepreneurship (SE) has proliferated as an alternative to traditional forms of civic engagement such as charities on one hand and open activism on the other. Yet, situated between a desire for change, and the overpowering state and market logics, SE has been both limited and shaped by neoliberal and local-authoritarian visions. Using Egypt as the case, this study combines in-depth interviews with civil society practitioners, and field observation at an SE incubator, to examine how SE came to embody a desire for change using publicly sanctioned logics, all while enacting practices that preserve/revitalize a social movement in abeyance. By examining SE as part of a larger phenomenon in this particular moment of transition, this timely research allows us to investigate a link between social movements and SE not as two separate phenomena but as different ways of approaching the same thing: creating social transformation.