The revolution will not be paid: The politics of small town entrepreneurial economic development

As poverty and unemployment rates rose in small towns in the United States following the economic crisis, austerity measures decreased access to social programs for the most vulnerable populations. At the same time, investors and small business owners, concerned that the growing power of large-scale global corporations threatened these communities, responded by encouraging businesses to put long-term solutions to environmental destruction and economic decline above short-term profit. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the northeastern United States, this article demonstrates how different class-inflected economic development trends come together to shape response to economic decline. In this small town, social and environmental entrepreneurialism led to a rethinking of the role of businesses, but also tempered conflicts about the future of the region and encouraged a business-centric understanding of economic problems and solutions. The result is that poverty and the decline in social programs are addressed indirectly or are relegated to individual or cultural problems.