Human-animal mutualism in regenerative entrepreneurship

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the micro-interactions through which a regenerative enterprise engages with proximate natural ecosystems in its attempt to repair and protect them. Through an ethnographic study of a regenerative farming enterprise in rural Southern Patagonia - Fundo Panguilemu - we discover a reciprocal relationship between the enterprise and animals, central to their regenerative efforts. This relationship is formed and actively maintained by the founders through three practices–joint rewilding, ambivalent relationality, and task interdependence. We leverage nature relatedness to conceptualize the relationship between these practices as human-animal mutualism in regenerative work. We advance regenerative entrepreneurship research by revealing novel human-nature interactions formed and fostered by a rural enterprise in the pursuit of local regeneration and expand our understanding of micro-level phenomena in rural entrepreneurship.