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This paper aims to contribute to entrepreneurship theorising by highlighting the salience of feminine caring positions in creating novel entrepreneurial roles and investigating how these roles contribute to community resilience. Using a critical feminist economics lens, alternative conceptualisations of the economy are expanded upon to reveal how an economic externality influences entrepreneurial discourse, gender roles and community resilience.

In this interpretive approach, empirical evidence is drawn from six months of intensive ethnographic research with 20 tourism handicraft micro-entrepreneurs in Crete and Epirus, Greece, in 2012 and hence in the context of a macroeconomic crisis. Ethnographic interviewing and participant observation are used as the methods to achieve the research objectives.

Thematic analysis is used to investigate how gender roles and entrepreneurial roles interact and how this interaction influences community resilience to an economic crisis. Using the critical theory to critique neoclassical economics interpretations of entrepreneurship, it becomes evident that politico-economic structures perpetuating feminised responsibility for social reproduction configure feminine entrepreneurial roles, and these roles have a positive effect on increasing community resilience. By conceptualising entrepreneurial involvement as being primarily for community gain, participants highlight how feminine entrepreneurial discourse differs from the neoclassical economics entrepreneurial discourse of entrepreneurial involvement being primarily for individual gain.

This paper contributes to theoretical advancements on the role of gender in entrepreneurship and community resilience by investigating the entrepreneurs’ gendered responses to an exogenous shock. Providing insight into the role gender has in entrepreneurial adaptation and sustainable business practices means that new policies to combat social exclusion and promote rural development can be formulated.

The theoretical interplay between gender and entrepreneurship is investigated from a novel angle, that of critical feminist economics. The relationship between feminised interpretations of entrepreneurship and community resilience is brought to light, providing a unique insight into entrepreneurial resilience.

Culture is increasingly recognized as a key component of local development, but this attention is largely focused on large cities. This paper aims to focus on the ways in which the innovative, participatory action-research (PAR) methods of IdeaLabs and community intervention workshops are used by two projects with solidarity economy enterprise (SEE) participants to activate place-based cultural resources for local development in small communities.

An in-depth reflexive analysis undertaken by researchers involved in the two projects, taking a feminist ethics of care perspective, demonstrates the ways in which these two PAR methods promote local development with the goal of fighting against the economic, social and cultural degradation of small cities and rural areas.

The PAR methods used by the two projects examined stimulate place-based local development initiatives through collaboration and knowledge co-production among participants and researchers. The projects go beyond an instrumental view of the use of culture and the arts for local development to innovate and demonstrate new methodologies for more participatory approaches.

This paper addresses a gap in social economy literature, presenting methods that can be used in PAR projects to catalyse the use of culture as a local development tool by local SEEs.

Given limited research about how artisans become integrated into tourism, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who link artisans to tourism in rural areas and small cities in Portugal. Using social embeddedness as a conceptual framework, this paper views artisan entrepreneur–mediators as existing within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The paper investigates their role within this ecosystem and how social networks influence the artisan entrepreneur–mediators’ roles in connecting artisans to creative tourism.

The paper is based on new (2017 and 2018) empirical evidence developed through two rounds of semi-structured interviews of five artisan entrepreneur–mediators.

This paper finds that artisan entrepreneur–mediators in rural areas or small cities take on multiple roles as networking agents who organize and offer creative tourism experiences, providing the missing link between artisans and tourists. An analysis of the nuances of the operations of these artisan entrepreneur–mediators suggests that high levels of social embeddedness within local rural communities are important in order for these neo-rural entrepreneurs to attain their goals.

Originality lies in the identification of a gap in artisan entrepreneurship literature in a rural context. It is the first time that a critical analysis of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who facilitate the link between artisans and tourism is carried out in terms of social embeddedness, their roles and connections to creative tourism, and types of community engagement.

This paper aims to investigate the ways in which gender influences entrepreneurial motivations and barriers in the Brazilian tourism sector. As an economic process, tourism entrepreneurship is widely spread in Brazil, with tourism development programs promoting it as a strategy to empower women, however limited research exists on how gender roles influence entrepreneurial ideals. This nationwide study aims to provide a contemporary insight into how tourism entrepreneurs in Brazil are situated within current entrepreneurship theorizing by questioning the complexity caused as gender roles influence entrepreneurial conceptualizations of what constitute motivations and barriers.

This study uses online questionnaires aimed, for the first time, at a large variety of tourism sub-sectors in Brazil. Having nation-wide scope, the questionnaires produce knowledge on what motivates and what constrains Brazilian tourism entrepreneurs through a gender lens. Quantitative analysis using SPSS statistical software tests the statistical significance of results and is complemented by the integration of feminist economic theories into the analytical framework.

The current study’s findings highlight the invisibility of gender’s workings, as the majority of participants did not conceive gender as playing a role in their entrepreneurial experience. Entrepreneurial motivations and barriers show a departure from past literature, such as the fact that similar numbers of male and female tourism entrepreneurs perceive networking as a significant entrepreneurial barrier. This and other interesting findings prompt for alternative conceptualizations of discourses surrounding women’s involvement in tourism entrepreneurship.

This study consists of an original contribution to knowledge on tourism entrepreneurship in Brazil as this is the first time an empirical study has been made on a nation-wide scale regarding the role of gender in Brazilian tourism entrepreneurs’ motivations and constraints.

The purpose of this paper is to address the gaps in research on strategic planning for the social impacts of small-scale events in rural areas and small cities. This is achieved by investigating the social utility inferred by small-scale art festivals with a creative tourism element in terms of increasing social capital and positive social change, from an event stakeholder perspective.

The identified gap in knowledge is addressed by using interviews and fieldnotes from participant observation to co-create meaning with the organizers of four small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural areas in Portugal. Theoretical frameworks relating to creative tourism development and social capital creation are used to analyze the social utility of small-scale art festivals.

Creative tourism activities are integrated within small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural areas in various ways, mainly through art-related workshops. Significant empirical data give insight into how small-scale art festivals create social value by increasing the host community’s pride and reinforcing the social fabric of the festival’s local and “portable” community, in part through these creative tourism activities.

One of the limitations of this study is that it focuses on the perspectives and insights of the festival organizers. An analysis of the festival participants’ views, local community stakeholder analysis and community impact analyses would offer further insights into how the creative tourism experiences and other moments of shared meaning generation within small-scale art festivals influence the creation of social utility.

This paper offers insights into how creative tourism activities are being integrated into small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural contexts, and how these activities foster social connections among festival participants and with the local community. This addresses significant gaps in the literature on strategic planning for the social impacts of events, particularly in the context of small-scale events in rural areas/small cities, and the strategic value of including creative tourism activities within small-scale festivals.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on emerging research avenues for artisan entrepreneurship. The key findings of the articles in the special journal issue are discussed in terms of potential research issues that need to be discussed in future work.

An overview of the main themes of artisan entrepreneurship in terms of cultural and tourism perspectives is undertaken. This helps to establish artisan entrepreneurship as a new and emerging field of entrepreneurship studies.

There is more interest in artisan entrepreneurship due to its role in revitalizing economies and placing emphasis on cultural heritage and traditions.

This paper will provide directions for future research on artisan, cultural and tourism entrepreneurship.