Fermenting alternatives through the more-than-human relations of craft entrepreneuring

Abstract

The practice turn creates possibilities for more relational approaches to entrepreneuring that challenge anthropocentric logics which exclude naturalized others, including animals, plants and ecologies, from consideration. This article uses feminist materialism to develop a more-than-human understanding of entrepreneurship, drawing empirically on qualitative data collected from a study of artisanal bakeries. I show how practices of craft, that rely on embodied proximity to materials and care(ful) making, require bakers to engage affirmatively with and become relationally dependent upon the microorganisms needed to make bread. The heterogeneous elements of artisanal bread making become connected and acquire agency through fermentation, which alerts bakers to invisible life forces they do not control and must treat with care. Through empirical insights of proximity, connections and collective agitation, fermentation offers a transversal metaphor for thinking differently about what entrepreneurial bodies can do. The article contributes to understanding craft entrepreneuring as a vital, self-organizing, emergent process of meeting with and extending care to others. By drawing attention to the more-than-human relations of artisanal bread making, it demonstrates the ethical possibilities of an entrepreneuring that remains open, attentive and curious towards others and the capacities of matter, as a basis for collective future-making.