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Doing Business in a Pandemic: Agency and Resilience Among US Nonemployer Businesses

ISBN: 978-1-83549-034-1, eISBN: 978-1-83549-033-4

Publication date: 30 May 2024

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic struck roughly halfway through the execution of my dissertation research: an investigation of single-person business ownership as an alternative form of work. As the pandemic continued on its course, I was fortunate enough to be able to reconnect with many of my informants to find out how they had weathered the crisis. In this article, I review ethnographically the strategies pursued by some nonemployers to weather the economic storm, including follow-up interviews and the results of a survey of North Carolina nonemployer business owners covering how they had fared during the pandemic. Finally, I close by considering nonemployer resilience as a function of the agency they are able to exercise over the way they work.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

This research project would not have been possible without the support of the American Association of University Women, the Graduate School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Society for Economic Anthropology.

Citation

Rivers, D. (2024), "Doing Business in a Pandemic: Agency and Resilience Among US Nonemployer Businesses", Wood, D.C. and Swamy, R. (Ed.) Health, Money, Commerce, and Wealth (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 43), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited