SOCIAL STRUCTURATION OF THE FIELD OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP - A CASE-STUDY

As part of the emergence of an epistemology specific to the field of e ntrepreneurship research, this article aims to reveal the social struc turation of knowledge in entrepreneurship, through the empirical study of articles published in the Journal of Business Venturing between it s founding in 1986, and 1993. This research, by virtue of its empirica l approach based on methods of network analysis widely used in the soc iology of science and technology, tends to substitute a social represe ntation of the field of entrepreneurship research for the essentially cognitive and formal representation characteristic of most epistemolog ical reflections in this field. At the end of this study, the field of entrepreneurship research appears as an intricate network, where rese archers and institutions are involved in a social and collective game of strategic struggles and alliances. Furthermore, this field of resea rch appears as a largely fragmented space fraught with the traps inher ent to disciplinary introversion.