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Institutional complexity and entrepreneurial work in grassroots cultural heritage: Evidence from Hanfu entrepreneurship in China
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DOI：10.1007/s10490-026-10165-2.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Cultural heritage entrepreneurship (CHE) often requires entrepreneurs to reconcile authenticity claims with commercial imperatives. This challenge is especially pronounced in grassroots heritage revivals where heritage meanings are contested and cultural authority is uneven, yet CHE research has largely centered on ventures operating within authorized heritage discourse (AHD). Grounded in institutional theory, we draw on institutional logics and institutional work perspective to examine Hanfu entrepreneurship in China, a community-driven revival that remains largely outside the state-led heritage system while supporting a fast-growing consumer market. Based on a qualitative multiple-case study of seven Hanfu enterprises using interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival and digital trace data, we identify a community-generated Hanfu cultural inheritance logic and a commercial logic that operate alongside a dominant AHD cultural inheritance logic, as well as professionalism-oriented legitimation practices that render grassroots claims more publicly defensible without formal endorsement. We further show that entrepreneurs’ hybrid role identities channel distinct institutional work repertoires. Businessman-inheritors translate inheritance into market-legible offerings, reframe authenticity toward lived cultural resonance, and build de facto legitimacy through diffusion and public engagement. Artisan-inheritors mobilize evidence-based reconstruction, frame historical fidelity as verifiable expertise, and pursue boundary-spanning collaborations with authoritative cultural arenas. This study advances CHE by theorizing grassroots entrepreneurship as heritage-making under contested classification and extends institutional theory by linking logics, identity configurations, and identity-shaped institutional work in fields marked by uneven cultural authority.
Keywords:
Cultural heritage entrepreneurship (CHE)
Authorized heritage discourse (AHD)
Heritage from below (HFB)
Institutional logics
Institutional work
Hanfu
Role identity
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