Responding to the call for recalibrated entrepreneurship research that embraces the pluralism of entrepreneurial activity and is open to contextually grounded theorizing, this paper investigates the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs in a violent conflict zone. Although such contexts may seem ‘extraordinary’ relative to the stable and benign settings underlying the vast majority of extant scholarship, unfortunately, such environments are ‘ordinary’ for the millions of people who live within them. Adopting an inductive theory-building approach, we analyzed qualitative data collected from interviews with 30 women who had launched businesses in Libya—a country that has become one of the most dangerous in the world after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Our findings illuminate the indeterminate everyday dangers that exist for women entrepreneurs in such a context, the tactics that they implement as attempted coping/surviving mechanisms, and the consequences for themselves, their businesses, and other citizens. Collectively, the emergent insights from our study not only extend—but also challenge—several taken-for-granted understandings about entrepreneurship, derived primarily from Western theory and research, in which entrepreneurs are presumed to operate in environments of relative peace.
