The Ethical Entrepreneur: Ethics and Aspiration of Microentrepreneurship in Urban Chile

The global microentrepreneurship boom is built on the promise of new material benefits and self-transformation. Drawing on experiences and reflections of microentrepreneurs from urban Chile, we examine the effects of this phenomenon by focusing on the emergence of the ethical entrepreneur as a figure embodying the ideal of individual freedom as much as a new sense of responsibility toward others. While reflecting neoliberal principles of self-accountability and the entrepreneurialization of society, the development of entrepreneurial ethics offers a means for the articulation of solidarity networks in response to economic and affective precariousness. Ethical self-making in microentrepreneurship is an open-ended process that does not exhaust itself with the achievement of an existing ethical objective but rather unfolds through the constant adjustment of ethical and material aspirations. Among microentrepreneurs, the middle class is conceptualized as an ideal existential condition for the development of ethical and material aspirations and their difficult balance.