Aesthetic Embeddedness: Towards an Aesthetic Understanding of Cultural and Artistic Entrepreneurship

Aesthetics is quintessential for entrepreneurial practice and theory. Specifically, we argue that aesthetics provides a more sophisticated understanding of the embeddedness of cultural and artistic entrepreneurship (CAE). This paper is based on an aesthetic ethnography of entrepreneurial organizations in the music sector in Brazil. Our findings generate a conceptualization of aesthetic embeddedness, explaining how CAE is embedded in culture through three practices (crossing, syncretic and valuing). Crossing practices are aesthetic contagions that generate exchange. Syncretic practices are harmonizations between different elements that create coexistences during aesthetic product creation. Valuing practices are aesthetic negotiations that occur between entrepreneurs and stakeholders. As an outcome of the three practices, we discuss how aesthetic knowledge deriving from aesthetic embeddedness can be mobilized as aesthetic capital, value and innovation in entrepreneurial practice.