A Bourdieuan Relational Perspective forEntrepreneurship Researchby Ahu Tatli, Joana Vassilopoulou, Mustafa Özbilgin, Cynthia Forson, andNatasha Slutskaya

In this paper, we illustrate the possibilities a relational perspective offers for overcoming thedominant dichotomies (e.g., qualitative versus quantitative, agency versus structure) that exist inthe study of entrepreneurial phenomena. Relational perspective is an approach to research thatallows the exploration of a phenomenon, such as entrepreneurship, as irreducibly interconnectedsets of relationships. We demonstrate how Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts may be mobilized to offer anexemplary toolkit for a relational perspective in entrepreneurship research.

IntroductionResponding to calls to break with the

dichotomous traditions that ail research inentrepreneurship, we offer relational perspec-tives to advance entrepreneurship researchthrough methodological and ontological plu-ralism. A relational perspective can be definedas an approach which frames and studiessocial phenomena as dynamically evolving,gaining meaning and shape in a web ofcomplex relationships in its situated context(Kyriakidou and Özbilgin 2006). Relationalmethod is a cardinal principal of analysis thatlocates meanings of phenomena not in them-selves but in their contrastive relations (Swartz1997). In the relational research inquiry, thecenter of investigation is the dynamic space of

interconnections, interdependencies, and inter-relations (Buber 1970; Somers 1998).

A number of scholars have appealed fornew more integrated developments in the fieldof entrepreneurship (Davidsson, Low, andWright 2001). For example, drawing upon“evolutionary approach” in entrepreneurshipstudies, Aldrich and Martinez (2001) demon-strate that there is a tendency in the field todevelop distinct approaches into a “club”without much interaction with other entrepre-neurial researchers. This often results in hin-dering further development of the discipline. Ina similar mode to Aldrich and Martinez (2001),Davidsson, Low, and Wright (2001) see entre-preneurship as a discipline that might be bestinformed by multiple theories, approaches, andframeworks relating together. The paper

Ahu Tatli is senior lecturer in International HRM in the School of Business and Management at the QueenMary University of London.

Joana Vassilopoulou is teaching fellow in International Business in Brunel Business School at BrunelUniversity.

Mustafa Özbilgin is professor of HRM and Organisational Behaviour in Brunel Business School at BrunelUniversity.

Cynthia Forson is head of the Department of Management, Leadership and Organisation in theHertfordshire Business School at the University of Hertfordshire.

Natasha Slutskaya is lecturer in Brunel Business School at Brunel University.Address correspondence to: A. Tatli, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of

London, Mile End, London E1 4NS, UK. E-mail: a.tatli@qmul.ac.uk.

Journal of Small Business Management 2014 ••(••), pp. ••–••

doi: 10.1111/jsbm.12122

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responds to this call and offers new possibili-ties of reworking and enhancing the linksbetween distinct approaches by positioningentrepreneurial phenomena as produced byirreducibly intersubjective meanings, relationalproperties, and interdependent patterns andprocesses. We use French sociologist PierreBourdieu’s concepts for framing a relationalperspective in researching entrepreneurship.The contribution of this paper is to demonstratethe usefulness of the Bourdieuan relational per-spective for research on entrepreneurship.

Relational perspectives have emerged as areaction to assumptions of positivism and arbi-trary separation between research objects, sub-jects, and themes. Relational approaches alsostand in opposition to individualistic and func-tionalist methodologies that collapse agencyand structure relative to one another (e.g.,Wheeler 2000). The aim of relational perspec-tives is therefore to expose different levels ofattachment to, or detachment from, economicand socio-cultural resources and structures. Indoing so, relational perspectives shed light onthe different degrees of agency and choiceexercised by individuals in their attempts toengage with or influence the world aroundthem. Therefore, relationality urges that socialphenomena are placed in their situated contextgenerated through the interdependence ofagency, structure, and action (Kyriakidou andÖzbilgin 2006). However, due to the domina-tion of reductionism and positivism, relationalmethodology is not yet widely used in entre-preneurship research.

The key premise of our paper is that applyinga relational perspective helps us to transcend theobjective–subjective divide in research and tocapture the space, the history of, and the inter-play between layered social phenomena(Özbilgin and Tatli 2005). A relational perspec-tive is potentially capable of overcoming distinc-tive and commonplace dichotomies in thescholarly field of entrepreneurship betweenqualitative versus quantitative research andagentic versus structuralist approaches. There-fore, the relational link between agency andstructure, and subjective and objective domainsof social reality provides a basis for theoretical,methodological, and empirical innovation inentrepreneurship research. In what follows, wefirst locate our study in the paradigm wars in thefield of entrepreneurship and identify twodichotomies that dominate entrepreneurshipresearch. We explain how these dichotomies

could be overcome through Bourdieuan-inspired relationality. Then, fundamental prin-ciples of relational approaches are introducedwith particular attention to the relevance ofBourdieu’s social theory. Third, we discuss theways in which a Bourdieuan relational perspec-tive could be utilized in research on entrepre-neurship. Finally, we conclude and offer futureresearch directions.

What Ails EntrepreneurshipResearch? Paradigm Wars toDominant Dichotomies

In this paper, we offer a relational perspec-tive in order to add a middle-range approach tothe repertoire of perspectives in entrepreneur-ship research, which is afflicted by the hostiledivide between positivist and constructionistparadigms. The argument that a polarization ofresearch paradigms leads to a reductionistapproach to organization studies is not a newone. Indeed, Deetz (1996) has argued that inspite of its value in providing legitimacy fordifferent ways of researching, Burrell andMorgan’s (1979) typology of paradigms for theanalysis of social and organizational theory,which identified the essential assumptions inresearch paradigms and developed a four-wayparadigmatic matrix, has led to a reifying ofresearch approaches and the reinforcement ofthe subject–object dualism (see also recentreview by Shepherd and Challenger 2013).Deetz (1996) then argues for a more nuancedunderstanding of research orientations andtraditions—one that is at once pluralistic andcomplementary.

In small business and entrepreneurshipresearch, the focus has been on paradigmcommensurability. Mathys-Watkins and Lowe(2005) argued that an interpretive frameworkcan be employed in entrepreneurship studies toeliminate paradigmatic boundaries and permitparadigms to interpret each other and soprovide a more textured approach to under-standing entrepreneurship. Seymour (2006), onthe other hand, explores the implications ofalternative research philosophies and arguesthat the separation of objective and subjectivemeaning is appallingly deficient for the study ofentrepreneurship concepts, which he argues arequite complex. Following calls for pluralism inthe field of entrepreneurship, we are proposingrelational perspective based on Bourdieuantheorization as one such option. The relational

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method can contribute to the field in threedistinct ways. First, it accounts for the broadestpossible range of factors that shape both entre-preneurial behavior and institutional practicesrather than delimiting a precise area of explora-tion (Wright 2009). Second, it offers theoreticaland pragmatic opportunities to grasp theparadoxical relationship between reproductionand transformation. Third, it refuses to establishboundaries among diverse approaches andframeworks—boundaries that might leadto inflation or devaluation of individualapproaches.

The development of theory and method isan important factor for the legitimization of theentrepreneurship field (Busenitz et al. 2003).We explore the dominant dichotomies thataffect the field of entrepreneurship and stunttheory development. Positivism and construc-tionism are the two main paradigms in entre-preneurship scholarship, positivism being thestronger paradigm in this field of research. Thedominance of positivist paradigm in entrepre-neurship is seen by some scholars as problem-atic. For example, Lindgren and Packendorff(2009) argue that the vast majority of entrepre-neurship literature does not articulate assump-tions such as ontology, epistemology andideology, which leads to a preference in favorof established positivistic concepts and meth-odologies. Some scholars argue that theorizingin entrepreneurship research seems to beagreed upon, with only little reference to basicphilosophical assumptions (Aldrich and Baker1997; Grant and Perren 2002; Pittaway 2005).Consequently, as Davidsson, Low, and Wright(2001) succinctly put it, much time and spaceare devoted to fitting new research to the exist-ing research conventions rather than dealingwith more fundamental questions about theunderlying view of reality, knowledge, and ide-ology of the dominant positivist approaches.

Entrepreneurship as a scholarly field is char-acterized by the unceasing tension betweentwo paradigms: positivism and social construc-tionism. This tension, in turn, generated anumber of dichotomies that shaped the ontolo-gies, epistemologies, and methodologies ofentrepreneurship research. However, wewould like to offer a caveat here that we do notsee the connection between positivism andconstructionism and the resulting choices ofmethod and technique in a linear way. In fact,the relationship between the paradigms andmethods is complex rather than simplistic

(Shepherd and Challenger 2013). Although weshy away from simplistic approximations ofpositivism and constructionism with a uniqueset of methodologies, we explain that strugglesfor domination among scholars who subscribeto either of these two paradigms are respon-sible for the emergence of some false dichoto-mies in methodological choices in the field ofentrepreneurship.

The resulting frames of reference are dual-istic in terms of methodological (qualitativeversus quantitative) and ontological (structureversus agency) choices. Although we recognizethat the direct association between paradigm,methods, and ontology does not reflect the truecomplexity of the relationship between thesethree, quantitative and structuralist orientationis generally associated with a positivist para-digm, whereas the qualitative and agentic ori-entation is with social constructionism. Due totheir methodological and ontological signifi-cance, we have chosen to focus on two distinctdichotomies, yet it should be noted that there isa plethora of other prevailing disagreementswithin the extant entrepreneurship literature.For example, the divisions around economicversus social drivers (e.g., an overwhelmingfocus on opportunity exploitation and wealthaccumulation as the motivator of entrepreneur-ial activity at the expense of a pursuit of socialwelfare goals) as well as gender (e.g., genderblindness or hypermasculine imagining ofentrepreneurship) are among the significant ail-ments that entrepreneurship research suffersfrom. However, due to space limitations, wefocus on the dichotomies of qualitative versusquantitative, and structure versus agency. Notonly do these two dichotomies lend themselveswell to the exploration of methodological andontological limitations in the current literature,but also, a Bourdieuan relational perspectiveoffers a viable alternative to overcoming theseparadigmatic dichotomies. The next two sec-tions provide an overview of the dichotomiesbetween quantitative and qualitative research,and structure and agency.

Dichotomy of Qualitative versusQuantitative Research

Although the connection between paradig-matic divisions and methodological choices isnot unproblematic and straightforward, there isan unspoken tendency in social sciences toassociate a positivist paradigm with quantita-tive methods, and constructionism with

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qualitative research methods (Guba andLincoln 1994), and entrepreneurship is noexception in that sense. Positivist epistemologypresumes that an independency could beachieved between the researcher and theresearched phenomenon. Hence, the research-er’s role is to objectively observe and measuresocial structures. These measurements areoften carried out through the collection ofnumerical data. Yet situating the quantitativedata at the center of generating the knowledgeof social phenomena is criticized by entrepre-neurship scholars such as Gartner and Birley(2002, p. 388):

[T]he study of entrepreneurship involvesthe process of identifying and under-standing the behavior of the “outliers” inthe community—the entrepreneurs. Tous, the “numbers” do not seem to add upto what would seem to be a coherentstory of what we believe to be the natureof entrepreneurship, as experienced.

One of the main lines of reasoning for aconstructionist perspective in entrepreneurshipresearch is that entrepreneurship can only beunderstood in understanding the social interac-tion between individuals by which entrepre-neurship is constructed (Chell 2000; Chell andPittaway 1998; Downing 2005; DrakopoulouDodd and Anderson 2007; Fletcher 2006;Hosking and Hjorth 2004; Karatas-Özkan andChell 2010; Steyaert 1997). Furthermore,Lindgren and Packendorff (2009) state thatunlike their positivist counterparts, social con-structionist researchers are careful to beexplicit about the ontological and epistemologi-cal assumptions that inform their work.

It is worth noting that entrepreneurshipresearch draws on both quantitative and quali-tative methods, and the boundary conditionsbetween the use of these methods across posi-tivist and constructionist paradigms are morecomplicated than what some commentatorswould like to make us believe. Nevertheless,the use of quantitative research designs domi-nates the field due to the positivist orthodoxyin the field (Gartner and Birley 2002). Forexample, in their review of 416 journal articlespublished between 1989 and 1999, in ninetop-tier journals, Chandler and Lyon (2001)found that only 18 percent of the empiricalstudies employed qualitative methods. More-over, Chandler and Lyon’s review showed that

research methods in qualitative studies lackedbreadth because only qualitative methodsemployed in these studies were case studiesand content analysis of documents. Dominantpositivist research based on quantitativemethods such as large-scale surveys producescausal explanations of events and generaliza-tion of research findings to larger populations.Yet human behavior varies between times andplaces, and the traditional deductiveapproaches to entrepreneurship research areflawed in their ability to address the nature andcharacteristics of enterprises and the insights ofindividuals who manage them (Hill andMcGowan 1999; Hofer and Bygrave 1992).

Coviello and Jones (2004) reviewed 55empirical papers, which were publishedbetween 1989 and 2002, in the field of interna-tional entrepreneurship. Only 11 out of the 55reviewed studies drew on qualitative methods,five of these 11 integrated qualitative and quan-titative approaches, and the remaining studiesdrew on quantitative methods. A further inter-esting finding is that international entrepre-neurship research mostly draws only on onemethod when collecting data, such as eitherquantitative, aggregate-level data or qualitativedata for one specific context. Some scholarsadvocate the combination of quantitative andqualitative research methods in the field ofentrepreneurship research (Coviello and Jones2004; Hoang and Antoncic 2003; Ritchie andLam 2006). In fact, a number of entrepreneur-ship scholars have recently argued that thepersistent deployment of established researchmethods has not helped advancing the theoryin entrepreneurship research (Alvarez andBarney 2004; McKelvey 2004; Shane 2000; Vande Ven and Engleman 2004). Although callswere made to overcome the dichotomy of thetwo paradigms of positivism and construction-ism and the therewith-connected use of quan-titative or qualitative methods, a dichotomybetween these two paradigms and two sets ofmethodologies continues to dominate entrepre-neurship research.

Dichotomy of Structure versus AgencyAnother key dichotomy that shapes the

entrepreneurship scholarship is that ofbetween structure and agency. Similar to thedichotomy of qualitative versus quantitative,the dichotomy between agency and structure isrooted in the fundamental paradigmatic divi-sion between positivism and constructionism

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but again in a complex rather than simplisticway. What we describe here is the generalpattern of association between this dichotomyand paradigmatic division in entrepreneurshipresearch. Grant and Perren (2002) have foundthat most research in entrepreneurship, whichis based on the positivist paradigm, assumesthat the social world is made up of concreteexternal structures and these structures areunderstood, affected, and reacted by people insimilar ways. The agency of entrepreneurs ishence understood in a way that allows gener-alizing human behavior. However, agency is aconcept that often evades definition. Efforts todefine and frame agency have engaged scholarsfrom all disciplines of social sciences. Agency ismostly defined either based solely on the indi-vidual or the context, generating static andsimplified understanding of how and whypeople act in the ways they do. For example,many studies on entrepreneurial start-ups focuson individual choice and entrepreneurial strat-egies for resource acquisition sidelining impor-tance of structural factors in shaping individualmotivations and entrepreneurial behavior.Early work by economists highlighted entrepre-neurs as being motivated by financial gain asrecompense for their personal traits in risktaking (Casson 1982; Kirzner 1973; Knight1921) and innovation (Schumpeter 1934). Morerecent work on personality traits has suggestedthat motivations for enterprise creation mayalso be underpinned by individual beliefsystems and intrinsic values (Ageev, Gratchev,and Hisrich 1995; Herron and Sapienza 1992),such as a responsible attitude (Korhonena,Komulainena, and Rätya 2012) as well as emo-tions (Miller et al. 2012).

Consequently, from a psychological and per-sonality perspective, individual entrepreneurialtraits determine the degree of choice displayedby entrepreneurs in the venture creationdecision, thereby reducing entrepreneurialdecision-making to individual agency. Inlinking early socialization experiences to thepersonality of the entrepreneur psychodynamicperspectives, Malach-Pines and Özbilgin (2010)have also focused on the entrepreneurial per-sonality that is able to take advantage of theavailability of resources pursuant to his/herdesire to set up a business irrespective of thestructures within which these social actionsoccur (see also Ndofor and Priem 2005).Mauthner and Doucet (2000, p. 125) argue thatthe relational ontology is in essence a strong

critique of liberal individualist approaches thattreat individuals as isolated from the contextwithin which there are embedded:

The ontological image which has pre-dominated in liberal political thoughtand the Western philosophical traditionis that of a separate, self-sufficient, inde-pendent and rational “self” or “indi-vidual.” In contrast, the “relational”ontology posits the notion of “selves-in-relation” . . . or “relational-being” . . . , aview of human beings as embedded in acomplex web of intimate and largersocial relations, . . . and a differentunderstanding of human nature andinteraction so that people are viewed asinterdependent rather than dependent.

Recent debates brought forward more rela-tional conceptions of agency at the intersectionof structure and action (Tatli and Özbilgin2009). In the field of entrepreneurship, Chell(1985), Du Gay (1994), and Gartner (1985) ini-tiated calls to explore the contextuality andrelationality of entrepreneurial activity. Therehave been attempts to merge agency and itsstructural context in the entrepreneurship lit-erature (Aldrich and Martinez 2002). Theembeddedness approach in entrepreneurshipresearch (e.g., see Kloosterman, Van Der Leun,and Rath 1999) has emerged as an attempt athighlighting the interplay between structuraland agentic analyses. Nevertheless, very rarelydoes it capture the dynamism in both agencyand structure and the interdependenciesbetween them. The majority of the multilevelresearch in entrepreneurship either emphasizesthe dynamism in the choices individuals makewithin the structures (e.g., Cooper 1981; Dyer1994) or engages with the mutability of theenvironment (e.g., Kloosterman 2010). Further-more, attempts at overcoming the dichotomybetween agency and structure remain rare. Inthe mainstream entrepreneurship scholarship,a dualistic approach continues to persist, andthe agency of entrepreneurs is seen as indepen-dent from the structures within which theiragency is embedded. According to Lindgrenand Packendorff (2009, p. 28), entrepreneursand their social interactions are reduced intosimplistic models of psychological traits, ratio-nal decision-making, and economic exchange,and the entrepreneurial enterprises are rarelyconsidered in research until they become

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registered firms and thus visible in official sta-tistics. When successful, this research arrives atclear conclusions about correlations and cause–effect relations in a much-simplified world,conclusions that allegedly make it possible topredict and stimulate the entrepreneurial homoeconomicus into further bold endeavors.

Not only is the agency of entrepreneurs seenas independent from the structures but also asindependent from its very own context. Onemajor problem with the dominant methodolo-gies used in entrepreneurship research is thatthey fail to consider the spatial and temporalcontexts within which entrepreneurs and theentrepreneurial issues are embedded.

The remainder of this paper, therefore, isdevoted to first explaining what we mean by arelational perspective and then providing aBourdieuan relational perspective for researchin entrepreneurship.

What Is a RelationalPerspective?

Relationality is by no means new in socialscience research. In fact, relational approacheshave attracted interest in multiple social sciencedisciplines such as sociology (e.g., Emirbayer1997), anthropology (e.g., Storrie 2003), psy-chology (e.g., Kwon 2001), geography (e.g.,Sunley 2008), and organization studies (e.g.,Bradbury and Lichtenstein 2000). The roots ofrelational perspectives can be traced back to thephilosophical works of Marx, Weber, andHeidegger (see Weberman 2001). However, DeSaussure (1966), a semiologist, has made themost significant impact in this field by suggest-ing that the meanings of sounds and words arerelationally structured and constructed ratherthan being essential properties. The routes ofthe relational philosophy are sometimes tracedback to Martin Buber (1970) who accounted forrelationality as “the space between,” signifyingthe interdependence between the self and theother. Somers (1998, pp. 766–767) argues thatrelational ontology can offer a fundamental revi-sion to how and where we focus our research:

[W]e and our social world are not angelic,existing out of time and space, but livingbreathing, changing, dying creaturesand entities, embedded in time andconstituted—not merely engaged—inrelationships . . . A relational pragmatistontology takes the basic units of socialanalysis to be neither individual entities

(agent, actor, person, firm) nor structuralwholes (society, order, social structure)but relational processes of interactionbetween and among identities.

The relational ontology that puts the focuson the interplays, interrelations, and interac-tions has prepared the foundation for method-ological innovations that can trace, assess,examine, and analyze the reality of relationalityin social settings. Kyriakidou and Özbilgin(2006) identify that relational method studiesmay consider individual relationships andrelationality as significant in their methodologi-cal approaches in variable degrees rangingfrom integrating relationality as a mere contin-gency factor impacting on various processesand outcomes of work (relational method)to exploring dyadic and group relationshipsamong individuals in organizational settings(relationship method) and to consideringrelationality as a primary and orienting phe-nomenon that shapes the choice of methodsthat in turn would reveal relationality amongindividuals and organizations (relationalmethod). Some relational studies emphasize the“relational” in “relational method” and focuson relational processes such as engagement,coordination, satisfaction, motivation, andemotion (e.g., Game 2008). Second, there aremethodological approaches that we term as“relationship method” that integrate humanrelationships rather than relationality betweenphenomena in their methodological consider-ations, emphasizing human relationships andinteraction between individuals in dyadic andgroup settings in such a way as to inform theirmethods (e.g., Feinman 2000). The final groupof studies emphasizes “method” in “relationalmethod” and use the concept in its broadersense to capture the interrelatedness,intersubjectivity, and interdependence of indi-vidual and organizational phenomena, adopt-ing methods that are designed to capturerelational aspects of the subject of their study.The difference of the latter relational method isits use of relationality as the primary orientingtool for research design rather than as a mereconstruct that is one factor of contingencyamong many, as is the case in relationship andrelational methods.

Bourdieu is, for us, the most significant con-tributor to the development of the relationalperspective for social investigation (see Sallazand Zavisca 2007). Bourdieuan sociology

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locates relationality as the center of under-standing the social world instead of a merecontingency. He identifies that social and eco-nomic worlds and social positions of individualand institutional actors and their practices canbe reconciled by using a relational vantagepoint:

The first conditions for an adequatereading of the analysis of the relationbetween social positions (a relationalconcept), dispositions (or habitus), andposition-takings (prises de position), thatis, the “choices” made by the socialagents in the most diverse domains ofpractice. (Bourdieu 1998, p. 6)

Bourdieu’s proposed relational approachoffers a comprehensive framing for the studyof social phenomenon. This relational per-spective promises three ontological benefits,in particular, compared with other earliermethodological perspectives: First, social phe-nomena are examined in their situatedcontext, revealing the socially and historicallysituated nature of social phenomena; second,applying the relational perspective allows afocus on “the space between” through whichagency, action, and structures are explored intheir cogenerative interdependence; lastly, thelayered nature of social reality can be dis-closed through relational methods as itaccepts objective structures, situated activity,and subjective experience to be considered asrelevant to understanding social reality. Inthat sense, the Bourdieuan notion of therelational perspective is situated in the middleof the ontological spectrum that rangesfrom positivist essentialism to postmodernrelativism, which were the isomorphic ortho-doxies of his time (Özbilgin and Tatli 2005).Therefore, Bourdieuan relationality has a sig-nificant potential for entrepreneurshipresearch in terms of overcoming the currentparadigmatic dogmas that ail this field ofstudy at present by not only transcending thedichotomy between agency and structure butalso offering ways to reflexively reconcilequalitative and quantitative methodologies ina way that is mindful of the epistemologicaldifficulties.

In their 2005 article, Özbilgin and Tatli dis-cussed the potential contribution of Bourdieu’ssocial theory for management research. In theyears that have followed, Bourdieu’s concepts

have been utilized by various entrepreneurshipscholars (e.g., De Clercq and Honig 2011;De Clercq and Voronov 2009; Drori, Honig,and Wright 2009; Karatas-Özkan 2011). Theseempirical and conceptual works haveadvanced relational thinking in entrepreneur-ship research. We take one step further in thispaper and offer a conceptual map for relationalentrepreneurship scholarship. Bourdieu’stheory offers leeway for a relational perspec-tive for empirical investigation and theorydevelopment in entrepreneurship research.Our framework, responding to the call forpapers for this special issue, is comprehensiveand covers the broad area of entrepreneurshipinstead of a specific entrepreneurial phenom-enon. We utilize seven key Bourdieuan con-cepts and situate these within a relationalframework that could be used in empiricalresearch into numerous dimensions ofentrepreneurship.

In the light of the dichotomies we identifiedearlier, this paper positions Bourdieuanrelationality in research in entrepreneurshipacross two dimensions. The first is therelationality between multiple levels (i.e., levelsof individual, organizational, sectoral, andsocial context). In doing this, we respond tocalls for multilevel inquiry in studying entrepre-neurship and introduce the relational perspec-tive as a novel approach through whichartificial separation between levels could beovercome and the interplay between differentlayers of entrepreneurship could be exploredtrue to their nature. Such a perspective isinstrumental in overcoming one of the twodominant dichotomies in entrepreneurshipscholarship: the dichotomy between agencyand structure. In discussing Bourdieuanrelationality in relation to multilevel research inentrepreneurship, we introduce the conceptsthat Bourdieu used in his social theory: field,illusio, symbolic violence, habitus, strategies,and capitals. We see these concepts as keyconstituents of a relational conceptual toolbox.Second, Bourdieuan relationality offers areflexive tool for entrepreneurship research.We show that Bourdieu’s notions of participantobjectivation and epistemological breaks drawour attention to the relationality between theresearcher and the research inquiry and mayhelp us overcome the second dichotomy in theacademic study of entrepreneurship: thedichotomy between qualitative and quantitativeapproaches.

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Bourdieuan RelationalPerspective forEntrepreneurship Research

A relational perspective first and foremostis based on the assumption that the agency–structure dualism could be overcome throughan understanding of social reality as com-prising varying and distinctive layers that aremutually interdependent and interlocking. Therelationality of the agency and structure hasbeen one of the key concerns in managementand organizational theory, and the approachtaken to the interaction between agentic andstructural conditions generated the paradig-matic divisions between critical, postmodernist,and social constructionist perspectives(Karatas-Özkan and Murphy 2010). To over-come the duality between agency and structure,some entrepreneurship scholars called for mul-tilevel research. Entrepreneurship researchfocuses on the characteristics of the individual,firm, and environment (Aldrich and Martinez2002; Lee and Peterson 2000; Shaver and Sott1991). Some have claimed that multilevelresearch is a distinct feature of entrepreneur-ship scholarship compared with the generalmanagement literature (Busenitz et al. 2003).However, entrepreneurship scholarship isoverall dominated by research that only consid-ers one level of analysis, such as for example,the industry, firm, or the individual level, withthe firm being the primary unit of analysis(Chandler and Lyon 2001; Davidsson andWiklund 2001; Leonidou and Katsikeas 1996).

Yet there are also exemplary attempts at arelational multilevel investigation. Forson(2007) utilized a relational methodology inresearching the business experiences of blackwomen entrepreneurs in London. She arguedthat a deeper and richer understanding of thebusiness activities of her research participantscould only be procured by a perception ofhow the different domains of social activityimpact interactions within and between eachother in their business experiences. In thecontext of a society stratified by race (ethnic-ity), class, and gender, the research sought touncover and understand how the influence ofpast events and phenomena complicate rela-tionships and current situations in terms ofthe participants’ entrepreneurial strategies andactions within the given context. Morerecently, Karatas-Özkan’s (2011) work hasexplored the relational qualities of entrepre-

neurial learning using a multilayered frame-work informed by Bourdieuan sociology.

In Bourdieuan relationality, the cogenerativeinfluence that structure and agency exert oneach other does not impose a deterministic lineof reasoning: “that objective structures havesubjective consequences, is not incompatiblewith the view that the social world is con-structed by individual actors” (Swartz 1997,p. 97), and structural patterns are merely pos-sible in the course of and because of the actors’practices, their interaction with each other, aswell as with the rest of their environment. Therelational power of Bourdieu’s theory lies firstin the way his key concepts work together todepict the interactions, interdependencies, andinterplays that characterize the social world,second, in the way his theory adequately cap-tures the struggle within the logic of reproduc-tion and transformation and attends to themore paradoxical dynamic of reconciliationbetween stability and change, between routineand novelty, and between order and freedom—the dynamics that have been underexploredby existing entrepreneurial studies. In whatfollows, we explain Bourdieuan relationalityand its practical and theoretical relevance forentrepreneurship research by discussing andthen operationalizing Bourdieu’s key concepts.In line with the scope of the special issue, thispaper illustrates the usefulness of Bourdieuanrelationality for entrepreneurship researchin general rather than focusing on a specificsubfield of research in this field. Yet aBourdieuan relational perspective, whichallows for viewing entrepreneurship as a rela-tional process situated in time and space, couldbe utilized in researching different dimensionsof entrepreneurship such as social entrepre-neurship, institutional entrepreneurship, andinternational entrepreneurship among others.

Table 1 provides a summary that situatesBourdieuan relationality in the context of entre-preneurship research. In the table, there is amovement from structural toward agentic influ-ences instead of the more common practice ofassociating Bourdieu’s different concepts withdifferent levels of inquiry (i.e., macro, meso,and micro levels). We are wary of rigidly locat-ing different concepts at separate levels or cat-egorizing them as purely structural or agenticbecause the very relationality between the con-cepts means that each conceptual notionencompasses both a structural and an agenticdimension, albeit in varying degrees. Our aim

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Table 1Bourdieuan Relationality Explained through Concepts and

Examples of Research Questions

Concepts Operationalization Examples of Relevant Research Questions

Structural

Agentic

Field Regulatory frameworkLegitimate discoursesStructured positioning ofkey playersSocietal, business, andsectoral contexts

Within which regulatory, societal, and sectoral contextsdo entrepreneurial activity takes place? What type ofopportunities and constraints do the contextualfactors generate for entrepreneurial activity? Who arethe key stakeholders with an influence to shapeentrepreneurial context? How are the practices ofdifferent players fed into the field in such a wayas to maintain and/or change the field ofentrepreneurship?

Illusio Legitimacy conferringmechanismsShared meanings, values,and priorities in a field

What are the shared norms, values, and conventions inthe field? What are the stakes that are attachedcurrency by entrepreneurs? How do actors react,adopt, and contribute to valued stakes, sharedmeanings, norms, values, and conventions in theirspecific entrepreneurial field?

SymbolicViolence

Doxic submission to valuesand rules of the field

What is the orthodox understanding ofentrepreneurship and in what ways do new entrantsand established actors submit to this? How does thisworldview define the legitimate place of actors?

Habitus Habitual practicesSense of the game andembodied understandingof the rules of the game

What are the habitual factors that informentrepreneurial decisions, practices, and success?What are the processes of entrepreneurial learning?In what way is entrepreneurial learning impacted byvarious capitals and strategies? How doesentrepreneurial habitus construct the field forces andhow does it in turn lend legitimacy to these forces?

Strategies Practices to gain andmaintain legitimacy,accumulate capitals

What are the strategies used by entrepreneurs to enterand gain legitimacy in the field? What strategies areenacted by entrepreneurs to increase the amount ofcapitals at their disposal?

Capitals Social: networks and tiesCultural: education,experience, mannerismEconomic: material andmonetary assetsSymbolic: influence,legitimacy, and power todefine the rules of thefield

What are the social, cultural, and economic capitalsthat are deemed valuable and how do entrepreneursaccess them? How does the ownership of, and accessto, different forms of capital generate the location,influence, and legitimacy of entrepreneurial actors inthe field? What are the dynamics of capitalconversion between social, cultural, and economicforms? What are the conditions under which social,cultural, and economic capitals are translated intosymbolic capital? Which forms of capital takeprecedence for success and survival at differentstages of entrepreneurial firm development?

ParticipantObjectivation

Reflexivity throughtwo stages ofepistemologicalrupture

How do I as an entrepreneurship researcher break upwith the presuppositions held by the researchparticipants moving beyond the binary of objectivismversus subjectivism? How do I as anentrepreneurship researcher break up with my ownpresuppositions about ontology (what reality natureof is), epistemology (what knowledge of reality isaccessible to me as a researcher), and methodology(what research tools are most appropriate togenerate data on the specific topic underinvestigation)? What type of value judgments can Imake in articulating the research questions? How doI, as a researcher, impact on the treatment andreporting of data?

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in providing this table is to exemplify the waysin which Bourdieu’s concepts can be utilized inentrepreneurship research. We recognize thatthe illustrative research questions identify abroad research agenda, whereas the practicali-ties of empirical research require a narrowingdown of the research focus and specifying theresearch questions in minute detail. Our paperaims to add to the pluralist repertoire ofmethods and perspectives in entrepreneurshipresearch by illustrating the ways in whichentrepreneurship scholars could utilize andoperationalize Bourdieu’s concepts in anempirical research setting. For example, theresearch questions provided in the final columnof Table 1 are possible questions that may beasked by the researchers, rather than authori-tative questions, which should be strictlyadhered to. True to the spirit of relationalapproach, the choice of the research questionsand the nuances of how each concept isoperationalized are to be considered as contextspecific. In other words, research priorities arerelationally bound with the geographic and his-torical context within which the research isconducted. These priorities in turn wouldinform the research questions and data collec-tion methods.

To start with, Bourdieu’s concept of fieldcan be located at the structural end of therelational continuum of structure and agency.Bourdieuan field is a relationally constitutedstructured space of positions in which indi-vidual and institutional agents seek to maintainand increase their influence and legitimacy(Bourdieu 1987). The fields are partlypreconstituted through objective historicalforces and are governed by their distinct logics,which define the legitimate rules and resources,and they impose their specific logic upon allthose who enter it (Bourdieu 1977, 1991). Theuse of the Bourdieuan concept of field offersthe potential for keen attention to thecontextuality of the entrepreneurial activity. Inrecent years, there was a refocusing of entre-preneurship studies on contextual and institu-tional influences, mainly in an attempt toexplain the disparities in participation rates andbehavior of different social groupings. Studieshave pointed to elements of the contextualsetting, such as limited opportunities in theinner city and deprived urban environments(Nwankwo 2005), discrimination and racism(Ishaq, Hussain, and Whittam 2010), the roleof education and learning (De Clercq and

Voronov 2009; Rasheed and Rasheed 2003),and demographic influences on personality(Mann and Thorpe 2007).

These studies sought to include the impactof environmental variables on entrepreneur-ship. In this regard, it is the entrepreneur’sembeddedness in the social structure that leadsto opportunity creation (Jack and Anderson2002), which can engender collective entrepre-neurial activity (Bygrave and Minniti 2000). Infact, using the metaphor of game playing,Bourdieu emphasizes that occupants of thefield are agents who implicitly acknowledgethe legitimacy of the field by virtue of staying inthe field and playing the game even when theyaim to overturn the terms and rules of the game(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). The field issimilar to a game, field with players who arelocated in semipermanent positions competingwith each other over the rewards and formtemporary alliances. As such, it is the very actof relational game playing that makes a fieldpossible. Yet fields are not only relational butalso contested, and the relationality of a field isestablished upon power struggles between theplayers who aim to maintain and transform thestatus quo (Bourdieu 1990). Özbilgin and Tatli(2011, p. 1233) explain this dual principle of aBourdieuan field as follows:

If the first principle that defines a field isthat of relationality (i.e. what makes afield is the relationships between theactors), the second is the power struc-tures within a given field which gener-ates position taking by the actors in thefield (i.e. what defines a field is the posi-tion of different actors in relation to eachother across a matrix of power).

Yet the continuation of a field depends onthe agents’ belief in the legitimacy of the field(and the game) and their unceasing enactmentof the field’s rules and norms in accordancewith the field-specific logic: “A field is notsimply a dead structure . . . but a space of playwhich exists as such only to the extent thatplayers enter into it who believe in and activelypursue the prizes it offers” (Bourdieu andWacquant 1992, p. 19). The agents’ belongingto the field is maintained through whatBourdieu calls illusio. In simple terms, illusiorefers to the agents’ conviction and belief thatthe game and its stakes are valuable, meaning-ful, and worth pursuing, or in other words, the

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illusio is the tacit entry fee that a field imposeson its occupants (Bourdieu 1998). Throughtheir internalization of the field-specific illusio,the agents obtain a license to enter and remainin the field but at the same time grant recogni-tion and legitimacy to the structures, logic,rules, norms, and stakes of the field (Tatli2011). The field-specific illusio imposes aworldview which is seen as commonsense andtherefore fundamentally legitimate by thefield’s players. In this context, for example,entrepreneurs feel compelled to demonstrate aparticular set of values and beliefs in order tolegitimize themselves in the field, for example,demonstrating their entrepreneurial powers tosucceed, their ability to present themselves as“innovative self” (Betta, Jones, and Latham2010), their self-reliance and ambition togetherwith a dislike for institutional and bureaucraticenvironments, and an aspiration to lead (Gosset al. 2011; Rindova, Barry, and Ketchen 2009).Their attachment to the notion of “enterprisingself” reveals itself in adherence to traditionalconceptualizations of entrepreneurial ethos.Commitment to these values can be seen as a“compulsory” condition in the process of estab-lishing belonging and legitimacy as a part ofthe field to which they claim membership.

As Bourdieu (1990) and Bourdieu andPasseron (1990) explain, there is an ongoingstruggle in a field over gaining symbolic domi-nation to monopolize over the terms of illusioand the legitimate vision of the social worldand relations. One manifestation of illusio issymbolic violence, which is a partly uncon-scious instrument of domination and an impos-ing system of symbolism and meaning uponsubordinated groups and agents in a field(Bourdieu 1991). Most crucially, symbolic vio-lence is exercised over agents with their com-plicity and manifests in daily exchanges andpractices (Bourdieu 1977; Bourdieu andWacquant 1992). Accordingly, symbolic vio-lence is not a blunt, coercive, and direct instru-ment of control but an often unrecognizableand invisible mechanism of consent to maintainthe status quo in the field. Illusio and symbolicviolence are often reinforced by a sharedhabitus of the field. Just as the field structuresaction and representation from without,habitus guides practice from within (Wacquant2006). Bourdieu defines habitus as the drivingforce behind individual action in conjuncturewith the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,p. 129); as “a strategy generating principle

enabling agents to cope with unforeseen andever-changing situations” (Bourdieu 1977,p. 72); as a system of durable and transposabledispositions through which we perceive, judge,and act in the world (Bourdieu 2000); and as afeel for the field’s game (Bourdieu 1990).Habitus makes practice possible by shapingagents’ responses to past, present, and futureevents and often unconsciously disposes theagents to behave in particular ways (Bourdieuand Wacquant 1992). The habitual frames ofreference are generated through lasting expo-sure to fields and by internalizing the illusio ofspecific fields (Swartz 1997; Wacquant 2006).

The final pieces in Bourdieu’s relational bri-colage are the strategies and different forms ofcapital that are located at the agentic end of hisconceptual spectrum yet firmly connected tostructural mechanisms. In fact, the strugglesthat take place in the field are struggles forcapital accumulation. For example, Scott (2012)in his discussion on cultural entrepreneursinvestigates the role of mobilizing and convert-ing Bourdieu’s alternative capitals in advancingmusic producers’ entrepreneurial practices.According to Scott (2012), cultural entrepre-neurs often struggle to raise economic capital,and therefore, the mobilization and conversionof alternative forms of capital become vital tocreate “buzz” (for instance, tacit appropriationof symbolic capital that cultural products gen-erate). On the one hand, different forms ofcapital reflect the logic of the field (what isdeemed legitimate and valuable), and on theother hand, the field owes its survival to theagents who strategically deploy different formsof capital at their disposal in order to improvetheir position in the field. Those who occupythe dominant positions in a field tend to pursuestrategies of preservation of the existing distri-bution of capital, whereas those in subordinatepositions are inclined to deploy strategies ofsubversion (Emirbayer and Johnson 2008;Wacquant 2006). Tatli and Özbilgin (2012,p. 193) explain that Bourdieuan framing ofcapitals is irrevocably relational:

Relationality exists at two levels andshapes the legitimacy and value of dif-ferent forms of capital. First, there is arelationality that is borne out of themeaning conferment of a specific mani-festation of a type of capital in relation tothe contextual characteristics in the formof national, sectoral dynamics and job

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setting . . . Second, there is a relationalitybetween different forms of capital them-selves, as individuals strategically trans-late one form of capital to another.

Capitals are resources that agents draw on inorder to enact their strategies, which advancesand protects their field position. Bourdieu(1986) identifies four specific forms that capi-tals can take: economic (material assets oraccess to them), social (ties with other agents,membership in formal and informal networksand groups), cultural (skills, qualifications,embodied dispositions such as mannerism inspeech, behavior, and appearance), and sym-bolic (power, influence, recognition, and legiti-macy in the field). The value of capitals is onlyconferred within the confines of a specific fieldand thus are relationally generated. Forinstance, Patel and Conklin (2009) argue thatwithin the context of situated and emergentpower relations across borders, the acquisitionand leverage of information enhance an entre-preneur’s ability to be effective across twohabitus in transnational entrepreneurship.Indeed, the mutual dependencies across differ-ent networks may facilitate the agility andfluidity of an entrepreneur’s human capital andentrepreneurial efforts, thereby providing therequired channels for the flow of resources,technologies, and human capital acrossnational borders.

In terms of the relational framing of entre-preneurship in its many facets and dimensions,individual entrepreneurs who are in possessionof varied resources (capitals) are located a inspecific entrepreneurial and business context(field) and enact strategies in order to succeedin their entrepreneurial ventures, not only toremain in business but also to improve theirstanding with respect to the others in theirenvironment. In that sense, agentic practices ofentrepreneurs take place in the context of aconstant struggle for survival, legitimacy,and monopoly over material and symbolicresources. Essers and Benschop (2009), forexample, demonstrate how female Muslimentrepreneurs, within the field of entrepreneur-ship that pictures Islam as backwards, violent,and primitive, negotiate a constructed entrepre-neurial identity through the connection of mul-tiple identities to wider social phenomena andthe power relations underlying these. Throughadherence to or restraint from the societalhabitus of what an entrepreneur is, they are

able to negotiate a position of legitimacy withinthe fields of personal services and retailing.

This agency is shaped by the habitual feelfor the entrepreneurial practice (habitus) aswell as submission to the rules, conventions,and norms about what entrepreneurship means(illusio). The recognition of the common senselogic of a specific field (illusio), however, hasvaried meanings and implications dependingon the power position of entrepreneurs. Forthose who are established in the field, submis-sion to illusio is a mechanism through whichthey consolidate their position of power, influ-ence, and control. Yet for entrepreneurs whoare in relatively subordinate positions due tothe amount of capitals at their disposal, inter-nalizing illusio means complicity with the veryrules and norms that reinforce their subordi-nate status (symbolic violence). For instance,De Clercq and Voronov (2009) argue that newentrant entrepreneurs seek legitimacy in thefield in order to be able to effectively operate.Yet by the very act of seeking legitimacy, theyalso legitimize and perpetuate the field-specificpower arrangements and assumptions. DeClercq and Voronov (2009) emphasize that thenew entrepreneurs exercise symbolic violencethrough their complicity with the status quo.Furthermore, such acts of symbolic violencetogether with a strongly held illusio may havesignificant implications for entrepreneuriallearning and innovation. In her recent articleon entrepreneurial learning, Karatas-Özkan(2011) shows that ownership of different formsof capital and development of an entrepreneur-ial habitus are intricately linked for nascententrepreneurs (see also Drori, Honig, andWright 2009 on transnational entrepreneur-ship). Symbolic violence, habitus, and capitalsas situated in the context of a specific field arealso useful concepts in understanding the dis-advantage that originates from the demo-graphic characteristics of the entrepreneurs (DeClercq and Honig 2011).

The first six concepts in Table 1 (differentforms of capital, strategies, habitus, symbolicviolence, illusio, and the field) are discussedwith reference to the relationality between dif-ferent layers of the entrepreneurial phenom-enon under investigation, whereas the finalconcept links the research inquiry to theresearchers themselves by taking a relationalreflexive turn. For us, participant objectivation(Bourdieu 2003) is maybe the most importantBourdieuan notion for relational investigation

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because it recognizes the relational embedded-ness of the entrepreneurship scholars them-selves and, in turn, promotes openness andreflexive rigor in research.

For Bourdieu (1984), research practice itselfis a legitimate and necessary subject of socialscience investigation. He is a fierce critic of themyopia of social scientists when it comes to theexploration of their own scientific practice:“The unanalyzed element in every theoreticalanalysis (whether subjectivist or objectivist) isthe theorist’s subjective relation to the socialworld and the objective (social) relation pre-supposed by this subjective relation” (Bourdieu1990, p. 29). As a sociologist, he makes a casethat sociologists must engage in the sociologyof sociology in order to expose the impact oftheir personal stories, stakes, and dispositionson sociological knowledge. Bourdieu (1999)suggests that engaging in a reflexive researchpractice through participant objectivation isonly possible through transcending the precon-ceptions held by both researchers and researchparticipants through two stages of epistemo-logical rupture. Following Bourdieu (1984,1990, 1999) we suggest that reflexivity shouldbe an organic part of the entrepreneurshipresearch process through which researcherswould engage in a systematic and continuouscycle of reflection in order to break up with thetacit assumptions that affect the analytic toolsand research methods that they employ.Bourdieuan relationality in that sense invites usto ask various questions of ourselves: How doI as an entrepreneurship researcher break upwith the presuppositions held by the researchparticipants moving beyond the binary ofobjectivism versus subjectivism? How do I as anentrepreneurship researcher break up with myown presuppositions about ontology, episte-mology, and methodology? What type of valuejudgments can I make in articulating theresearch questions? How do I, as a researcher,impact on the treatment and reporting of data?

Bourdieuan relational reflexivity has thecapacity to open up entrepreneurship scholar-ship to methodological pluralism. Yet method-ological pluralism is not methodologicalmindlessness but the acceptance of the factthat in order to capture the relational nature ofentrepreneurial reality, we need to embracedifferent methods of doing research, utilizing awider repertoire of research methods. In fact, arelational perspective embraces a wide range ofmethodological approaches. Lack of closure in

application and the practice of relationalmethod offer a richness of methodological rep-ertoires to relational inquiry. Instead of dog-matic divisions between qualitative andquantitative methods, Bourdieuan relationalityseeks a fit between the method of inquiry andthe phenomenon under investigation. In hislifetime, Bourdieu himself used a wide reper-toire of research methods, ranging from quan-titative surveys to visual elicitation techniques.The key point in the choice of a researchmethod (or combination of two or more) is theparticular methods’ ability to unpack therelational properties of the entrepreneurialphenomena that are explored. That is, method-ological choices are made on the principle ofbeing fit for purpose to determine the tools andtechniques that are conducive to revealing therelationality between various facets of thechosen entrepreneurial phenomena. To namebut a few, statistical evidence, large-scalesurveys, documentary review, textual analysis,observation, qualitative interviews, focusgroups, ethnography, photo elicitation,ethnography, and visual interpretation are allpossible methods for generating evidence onentrepreneurship.

ConclusionThis paper set out to demonstrate that rela-

tional thinking offers both a novel conceptuallens and a methodological perspective to thestudy of entrepreneurship, helping to open upnew avenues for theoretical and empirical devel-opment. Relational imagining of the socialreality offers thoughtful challenges to currentattempts at understanding entrepreneurship as acomplex phenomenon. Bourdieuan relationalityis particularly useful for the investigation ofentrepreneurial phenomena in ways that remaintrue to their interwoven, situated, complex, andsophisticated nature.

We first explored the two prevailing para-digms in entrepreneurship research, identifyinghow these paradigms are generally linked tothe two dominant dichotomies (qualitativeversus quantitative; structure versus agency)within the existing entrepreneurial literature.Relatedly, we noted the difficulties of integrat-ing these two often contrasting approaches in anonreductionist way and the impossibility ofaddressing the present bias without developinga broader and more inclusive perspective.Upon this backdrop, we presented a relationalperspective based on Bourdieuan sociology as

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a viable and inspiring alternative for research-ing entrepreneurship.

The premise of a Bourdieuan relational per-spective for us is its ability to counteract thereductionist tendencies in positivist and socialconstructionist paradigms by offering a deeperand layered understanding of entrepreneurs associal agents and the entrepreneurial field as asystem of structures, as well as the interplaybetween the two. Bourdieuan relationality pro-vides entrepreneurship scholarship with anextra analytical apparatus to trace and to reflectupon the relational lines of cogenerative influ-ence between phenomena, and to see the directand indirect linkages between intentions,actions, structures, and potential outcomes.This perspective provides a more nuancedmode of accessing complex and multilayeredfacets of what is understood as entrepreneur-ship. Bourdieuan relationality, on the onehand, indicates paths to link individual actionsto their structural settings, the past to thepresent and the future, and on the other hand,it preserves a space of freedom for the agentsto exert an influence over their field of actions.Overall, the paper presents the relational per-spective as an improved alternative to frag-mented and often hostile methodologicaltraditions and paradigmatic divisions in entre-preneurship research.

It must be acknowledged that the particularstrength of the relational perspective in attend-ing the complexities of social reality constitutesalso one of its major challenges in terms ofempirical application. A relational perspectiverequires a more detailed and sophisticated lookat social phenomena. Yet time and money, thetwo essential prerequisites to conductingresearch, are finite resources, and entrepreneur-ship researchers would need to make choices interms of research focus, questions, andmethods, prioritizing some issues over theothers. Bearing this in mind, the paper hassituated Bourdieuan concepts in a relationalframework for entrepreneurship research byindicating the ways in which the concepts can beadopted by researchers in exploring entrepre-neurial phenomena. Although it is not in thescope of this paper to offer a set of prescriptiveguidelines on how specific research projectsmight be designed, the paper provides sugges-tions on how a more nuanced understanding ofrelationality can inform and underpin the choiceof research questions and methods. Bourdieuanrelationality is helpful in framing the bigger

picture and improving reflexive sensibility. Therelational web of a Bourdieuan conceptualtoolbox helps to provide an explicit awarenessof the methodological and epistemologicalchoices made, facets of the entrepreneurial phe-nomena that was deemed relevant, and thefacets that were left unexplored, contributing inturn to greater level of “scientific mindfulness”(Jonsen et al. 2010) in our research. Finally, thepaper contributes to the discussion on howresearch practice itself can be developed furtherby attending to the “unanalyzed elements”present in any analysis and by better under-standing individual researchers’ vulnerabilitiesin relation to the social world.

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