Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal of selfhood, not just a career path

Evidence

The excitement around social media and the immense wealth of young technologists glamorized entrepreneurs as the rock stars of twenty-first-century capitalism. Technology workers, media, and businesspeople valorized Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ev Williams as visionary leaders. Prestigious universities launched entrepreneurship programs, cities from New York to Waterloo invested significant public money into encouraging technology startups, and incubators popped up to nurture potential young entrepreneurs. Indeed, 77 percent of fifthto twelfth-graders stated in a 2011 Gallup poll that they wished to own their own business. Entrepreneurs were thought to embody bravery, gumption, self-promotion, and creativity, the predictors of contemporary success. Indeed, the ideal of entrepreneurship expanded beyond the technology industry into other aspects of life, including our most personal understandings of selfhood, relationships, and the body. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 17

Categorization

• XREF: The entrepreneur-as-self-ideal connects naturally to Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis and the broader literature on enterprise culture and self-branding that this book will draw on. — connects to: Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal pervading personal identity and relationships; Neoliberalism replaces exchange-based self-interest with self-entrepreneurship — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 199; Mises defined entrepreneurship as universal human choice-making, not elite innovation — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 273 (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes that ‘entrepreneurialism’ in this context is a wider ethos applying to selfhood, relationships, and the body, not merely owning a business.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 17

Broader Connections

• Entrepreneurship became a generalized ideal pervading personal identity and relationships #corroborates (0.98)
• Silicon Valley’s self-image elevates entrepreneurship as society’s universal problem-solving model #exemplifies (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 713
• The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 36
• The logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation #expands (0.82) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 25
• Neoliberal self-entrepreneurship destabilizes the fixed boundaries of personhood #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 418
• Neoliberalism replaces exchange-based self-interest with self-entrepreneurship #expands (0.75) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 199
• Mises defined entrepreneurship as universal human choice-making, not elite innovation #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 273