In the context of recurrent economic crises, ‘alternative’ models of economic organising such as social enterprise offer compelling examples of utopian imageries of a better future ‘to come’. Social enterprise qua utopia implies not only that alternative ways of being and co-existence are desirable, but that there is often a disjuncture between the desirable futures such utopian imaginaries project and the extent to which they are actualised or even actualisable in practice. The UK, which has long been considered the most conducive environment for social enterprise activity, offers a fertile ground to study this tension between utopian imagination and empirical actualization. Drawing from three large-scale research projects focusing on the social economy in Scotland and the North of England, this paper explores the link between social enterprise as a political program and as lived material practices unfolding under conditions of extreme resource scarcity caused by austerity measures. Our findings reveal that whatever utopian impulse social enterprise might contain, it is constituted, in the last instance, in the movement between ideas and everyday life, i.e. the aggregate of mundane practices, routines and experiences. Attentiveness to the precariousness instigated through austerity measures, such as social budget cuts, the key contribution this paper makes is to jettison approaches that treat social enterprise as a context-independent and totalizing ideal that divorces its utopian potential from the everyday practices through which this potential is being realized.

在反复出现的经济危机的背景下，社会企业等经济组织的“替代”模式提供了令人信服的例子，说明“未来”更美好的未来的乌托邦意象。社会企业资格乌托邦不仅意味着存在和共存的替代方式是可取的，而且在这种乌托邦式的想象所投射的可取的未来与它们在实践中实现或什至可以实现的程度之间往往存在脱节。长期以来，英国一直被认为是最有利于社会企业活动的环境，它为研究乌托邦想象与经验实现之间的这种紧张关系提供了沃土。本文从三个以苏格兰和英格兰北部社会经济为重点的大型研究项目为基础，探讨了作为政治计划的社会企业与在紧缩措施导致资源极度稀缺的条件下展开的生活物质实践之间的联系。我们的研究结果表明，无论社会企业可能包含什么乌托邦冲动，归根结底，它是由思想与日常生活之间的运动构成的，即世俗实践、惯例和经验的集合。关注通过紧缩措施（例如削减社会预算）引发的不稳定，本文所做的主要贡献是抛弃将社会企业视为独立于背景和总体理想的方法，将其乌托邦潜力与日常实践相分离。正在实现。