Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man

Abstract

This aim of this chapter is to interrogate the notion of the ‘self-made man’ and to show the connection between emotionality, domesticity, masculinities and enterprise. Contrary to Seidler’s (1989) argument, this chapter suggests that male emotion, particularly for entrepreneurial men, is not repressed in the public sphere, but is disguised in different forms and is expended in the pursuit of enterprise mirroring Victorian prescriptions of the capitalist ethic. In highlighting two typologies of entrepreneurial men, Ochberg’s (1987) notion of ‘men’s disengagement from the emotional’ arena is drawn on to show that entrepreneurial men free themselves for emotional expression in the business world. Men’s creative energy and emotional expression are additional resources that are consumed in the act of enterprise, and are contingent on men’s relationship to domesticity. At the same time, men retain their bonds in domesticity through the discourses of sacrifice and effort on behalf of the family, simultaneously elevating their economic role over other concerns.