On the Margins of Power: Social Entrepreneurs and Social Change

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual describes thinkers who emerge from lived experience and collective struggle, giving voice to alternative ideas and shaping movements for social change. In today’s world, social entrepreneurs can be read as a new generation of organic intellectuals. Working at the margins of public systems, they remain rooted in communities yet orbit institutional life, introducing innovations that challenge orthodoxies and gesture towards fairer, healthier, and more inclusive futures.This talk will critically examine the role of social entrepreneurs in attempts at systemic transformation. Often they pilot small-scale innovations where institutions fall short, but whether these experiments truly shift systems remains contested.

What happens when radical ideas are absorbed by bureaucracies? Do they retain their edge, or are they diluted in the process?We will explore how social entrepreneurs can avoid being co-opted by the very systems they seek to change, and what kinds of alliances or collective efforts might sustain their work without losing radical intent. Finally, the session will reflect on the tensions of leading both within institutions and across wider systems, and what this reveals about the future of transformative social action.
Mark Swift is a Fellow of the Antonio Gramsci Society UK & Chief Executive Officer of Wellbeing Enterprises

Image source: MoMA, Jeffrey Gibson POWER! POWER! POWER! (detail), 2020