Review

Juan Espinosa:

"New insights about the uncertainties that those who work in knowledge intensive companies need to live and manage. In particular, Neff offers an acute analysis of personal discourses (chapter 3) and a social network analysis (chapter 4) of the personal connections of the Silicon Alley’s workers. She analyses in detail the discourses and the personal strategies that peopleadopted in order to deal with the burden of risk that they experienced and accepted.

As the author shows, it is not enough to explain the risk and uncertainty that the workers experiencepurely as the false consciousness of them. The discourses of those who work in the New York’s internet industry clearly embraced entrepreneurship and risk as something ‘cool’ and ‘desirable’. But there is another dimension, which in the words of the author needs to be understood as venture labor. Venture labor is defined as ‘the explicit expression of entrepreneurial values by non- entrepreneurs’ (16). It is the result of a translation of risk from venture capital towards labour. Thereis a connection here to what Isabelle Pignarre and Stengers call ‘infernal alternatives’. These are alternatives that workers can’t escape. It is a discourse of ‘acceptance’ where labour is moved towork under increased levels of uncertainty." (http://www.academia.edu/2012177/Book_Review_Accepting_Infernal_Alternatives_Sustaining_Venture_Capital_on_Venture_Labor)

Venture Labor

Review

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