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The purpose of this paper is to discuss researcher subjectivity in social entrepreneurship ethnographies. Previous research has highlighted a need for alternatives to the heroic representations of social entrepreneurship. Ethnographic methods have been mentioned as a relevant direction to create such emerging understandings.

This paper shows what followed from a decision of a researcher to do an ethnography of a co-working cooperative established for social innovation. Based on the notion of “working the hyphens” in previous research, further developed by other scholars as “working within hyphen-spaces”, the position of the researcher shifted during the research process between a distant outsider and an engaged insider. In addition, a new hyphen-space of hopefulness – hopelessness emerged based on fieldwork.

The shifting positions are manifested in the entanglement of stories of the researcher and the people met during the fieldwork in the hyphen-spaces of insiderness – outsiderness, engagement – distance and hopefulness – hopelessness. The stories reveal how for some the co-working space was a place for hope while for others it caused distress and even burnout.

The ethnographic understanding of social enterprises go beyond heroic representations, which affects how the phenomenon is represented in academic and public discussions.

This study concludes that despite its failure in the form of a bankruptcy, the co-working cooperative succeeded in enabling “social innovation” in the form of hope and personal development – also for the researcher.

This study contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature in showing how ethnographic fieldwork and acknowledging researcher subjectivity bring up alternative representations of social entrepreneurship. The entangled stories of participants and researchers can be a powerful way to reveal situated understandings.

As a critical and intimate form of inquiry, ethnography remains close to lived realities and equips scholars with a unique methodological angle on social phenomena. This paper aims to explore the potential gains from an increased use of ethnography in social enterprise studies.

The authors develop the argument through a set of dualistic themes, namely, the socio-economic dichotomy and the discourse/practice divide as predominant critical lenses through which social enterprise is currently examined, and suggest shifts from visible leaders to invisible collectives and from case study-based monologues to dialogic ethnography.

Ethnography sheds new light on at least four neglected aspects. Studying social enterprises ethnographically complicates simple reductions to socio-economic tensions, by enriching the set of differences through which practitioners make sense of their work-world. Ethnography provides a tool for unravelling how practitioners engage with discourse(s) of power, thus marking the concrete results of intervention (to some degree at least) as unplannable, and yet effective. Ethnographic examples signal the merits of moving beyond leaders towards more collective representations and in-depth accounts of (self-)development. Reflexive ethnographies demonstrate the heuristic value of accepting the self as an inevitable part of research and exemplify insights won through a thoroughly bodily and emotional commitment to sharing the life world of others.

The present volume collects original ethnographic research of social enterprises. The editorial develops the first consistent account of the merits of studying social enterprises ethnographically.