This is the inaugural post for this site.  I am a PhD candidate in anthropology at Yale University.  My dissertation focuses on the Yale entrepreneurship ecosystem and the related entrepreneurial culture.  This blog will focus on the central question of my research: What does it mean to have a job or to work in the 21st century global economy?  My research will seek to understand how elites, at the individual level, think about and use entrepreneurship as a strategic option to control their own labor, as well as the means of production; and at the institutional level, the manner in which Yale is facilitating entrepreneurship by transitioning to a more strategic stance in the production and use of knowledge in the global knowledge economy.

Given the changing relationship between labor and capital, my viewpoint is that Millennials need to control their own labor, as well as the means of production in order to control their futures, and avoid the old career paradigm of “fixed apprentice–to–master craftsman–to–management.”

Studying Millennial elites at Yale who are engaged in entrepreneurial activities, allows us to understand how this cohort’s relative advantages allows it to use entrepreneurship as a strategy to rethink and re-imagine the expectations, hopes and aspirations that inform the traditional career path of students who attend an elite research university.