“Todo mundo aqui quer ser patrão”: pernambucanizando o empreendedorismo no Polo de Confecções de Roupas do Agreste

Abstract

The entrepreneur has become one of the most enigmatic characters in the scenario of economic and social changes in the contemporary world. Its presence has been increasingly recurrent both in the academic debate and in the mass media, making us question: are we living in the era of entrepreneurship? Many scholars from different fields of knowledge have dedicated a large part of their studies in an attempt to understand the advance of this phenomenon. However, much of the literature on the subject has reinforced the standardization of this figure, through hegemonic perspectives that have the “perfect” entrepreneur from the global North as their standard model. Unlike these approaches, the research provided here does not focus on the classic models of entrepreneurship, but brings as an example what has been happening in the Agreste region of Pernambuco since the mid-1950s, when men and women started to produce and commercialize clothes with little pieces of fabrics and from there, they managed to build what is now considered the second largest textile second largest textile pole in Brazil. Given this context, through a theoretical dialogue with critical approaches to the economy and post-colonial studies on entrepreneurship, the present thesis has as its main objective to analyze the trajectory of a number of textile entrepreneurs of Polo de Confecções do Agreste Pernambucano and reflect on the different forms of insertion in that market. This is intended to understand, on the one hand, which paths are followed in the formation of enterprises and people as entrepreneurs; and on the other, to understand how they develop the learning and economic skills necessary to stay in the Polo market. This thesis, therefore, launches the following challenge: How to study this entrepreneur from the countryside of the Brazilian Northeast region who is on the margins of the European-American context of theories? Aiming to “pernambucanize” entrepreneurship to better understand the analyzed reality, the cases brought here focus on the life trajectories of people who own businesses (small, medium, and large) aimed at making and selling clothes. The research reveals that what we currently call “entrepreneurship”, in the local reality, can be defined as the culture of “working without a boss”. Being free from the authority of the other is one of Polo's most characteristic elements. Thus, it is possible to see that this entrepreneurial “vocation” in the region has deep roots in the family context of the individuals who make up the Pole, as well as in the historical and previous experience of these people's free peasantry. Analyzing in a wider context, the life trajectories of the interviewees bring to light some elements that will be addressed during the following chapters, such as work since childhood, lack of access to education, gender distinctions, the importance of personal relationship networks in business, failures, and the desire to get rich. Finally, in view of the need for alternative approaches to the predominant way of conceiving entrepreneurship, it is hoped that this thesis can contribute to the analysis of entrepreneurial activity in fluid institutional environments, with scarce resources and in the context of economies of the global South, as is the case of this research, and to think about contemporary Brazil.