The embodiment of neoliberalism: exploring the roots and limits of the calculation of arbitrage in the entrepreneurial function

How has neoliberalism achieved its sway? We address this question by tracing an alternative history of the economic theorization of ‘entrepreneurship’ that reveals the extent to which sociological transformation is attendant upon the construction, dissemination and change of the concepts of economy. Surveying the theoretical works of luminaries such as Kirzner, Mises and Simmel and reading them alongside ethnographies of the practices that instantiate a neo-liberal world we see the ways in which entrepreneurship is fashioned, realized and ramified and, in so doing, reveal new fault lines for exploitation by those who would rather seek to escape its pernicious embrace. For it is the notion of entrepreneurship that enables both the functioning of an apparently objective market to best deploy societal resources and the continuing capture of the benefits of such by a privileged elite who seemingly bear its mark in the most vivid of terms. By unpacking entrepreneurship we unpack the market, which is a vital first step in any attempt to trammel its seemingly inevitable and unstoppable march through an otherwise undefended social.