How is social inequality reproduced through day-to-day practices? In this commentary, we use the geographical context of Mexico City to argue that social inequality is maintained by “class work” of elites. Specifically, we discuss how (1) urban planning crystallizes class boundaries, (2) private school education reproduces them, and (3) tipping prevents their disruption.

The perplexing relationship between two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, has been the subject of much speculation within academic circles. For Arendt, Heidegger was at once, her mentor, her lover, and her friend. In this paper, we juxtapose Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil against her relationship with Heidegger in an effort to consider the question: How does corporeality inform theorizing? In answering this question, we repudiate the conventional reading of the banality (...) of evil, which attributes the theory to Arendt’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann during the latter’s criminal trial for the actions that he perpetrated in the operation of the Holocaust. Instead, we argue that the theory is, more compellingly, reflective of Arendt’s deeply personal attempts at making sense of Heidegger’s decision to affiliate himself with the German Nazi Party in the years preceding, and during, the Second World War. Through this revisionist account of the banality of evil, we animate the idea that theorizing is the discursive corollary, and belongs within the phenomenological parameters, of corporeality. Finally, we contend that any constructive understanding of how corporeality informs theorizing will only be realized, when there is a collapsing of the seemingly impervious philosophical boundaries that demarcate between ontology and epistemology. (shrink)

This article underscores the need for entrepreneurship research in extreme contexts to conceptualize the idiosyncrasies of the geopolitical dynamics under which entrepreneurs operate, and to consider the ethical implications emanating thereof. Undertaking such a task will illuminate the contextual challenges that local entrepreneurs must routinely placate, or otherwise navigate, to survive. Drawing on rich qualitative data from the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank, this paper demonstrates one avenue by which to capture the nuances of an extreme context in (...) relation to its effects on the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, it shows how data collected at myriad institutional sites—from actors that are not only directly, but also tangentially, connected to entrepreneurship in the local market—can effectively unveil the vicissitudes of the extreme context. This article further contends that a comprehensive and a holistic understanding of the extreme context will move toward revealing the nature of political embeddedness of entrepreneurs in their institutionally unstable environment—a concern that is especially conspicuous in geopolitical areas that would qualify as being extreme. (shrink)