SCI Seminar Series - Professor David C Gibbs - Rethinking Green Entrepreneurship - Fluid Narratives of the Green Economy
| Dates: | 29 June 2016 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Sustainable Consumption Institute |
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| Speaker: | Professor David C Gibbs |
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Professor David C Gibbs, Professor of Human Geography, University of Hull, will be giving the SCI Seminar on the 29 June 2016, entitled 'Rethinking Green Entrepreneurship - Fluid Narratives of the Green Economy' the seminar will be in the Alumni Classroom, Ground Floor, Alliance Manchester Business School between 4.00 - 5.30 pm. Coffee and registration from 3.45 pm.
Abstract
Green entrepreneurs have been seen as key drivers for a transition to a green economy. However, there has been limited in-depth qualitative empirical research with green entrepreneurs to date, focusing instead on typologies categorising certain ‘types’ of green entrepreneur. Moreover, the literature rarely situates such individual activities within broader concepts such as the green economy. In contrast, I suggest that current discourses of the green economy are important in contextualising the ways that green entrepreneurs make sense of themselves and their businesses. Green entrepreneurs are thus negotiating varying tensions between their business activities, environmental philosophies, and wider contexts at the intersection between the green economy and the mainstream economy.
Drawing on evidence from 55 interviews, I explore the narratives employed by green entrepreneurs to situate themselves within/outwith the wider green economy – the recursive framing of mainstream and niche ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions and politics at play in the development of the green economy. This offers a new and more dynamic view of the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur, rather than relying on the fixed categories espoused in previous typologies. I conclude that it is important that policy makers recognise the complex and contentious nature of green entrepreneurship, and that it is essential to view the green economy as a diverse constellation of myriad actors rather than corporate reinventions of business as usual.
David Gibbs is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Hull. His main research interests are in the field of local and regional economic development, with a focus on the environmental implications of such developments. He has published widely from this work in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Geoforum, Regional Studies, and Local Environment, as well as several book chapters. He is the author of the books Government Policy and Industrial Change (1989), Local Economic Development and the Environment (2002) and The Sustainable Development Paradox (2007). Recent research projects include: Low Carbon Shipping: A Systems Approach, funded by EPSRC, Low Carbon Supply Chains, funded through the Centre for Low Carbon Futures and Green Entrepreneurs: Transition to a Sustainable Economy, funded by the University of Hull. He has acted as an expert advisor and consultant to the European Commission’s DG REGIO on climate change and cohesion policy, the OECD on green jobs and the Local Government Association on sustainable economic development.
Speaker
Professor David C Gibbs
Role: Professor of Human Geography
Organisation: University of Hull
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Alumni Conference Room
Manchester Business School West
Manchester
