‘Money probably has something to do with my life’: Discourse and materiality in the working lives of start-up entrepreneurs

Musilek, K.; Jamie, K.; Learmonth, M.

doi:10.1177/09500170231185033

‘Money probably has something to do with my life’: Discourse and materiality in the working lives of start-up entrepreneurs

Musilek, K.; Jamie, K.; Learmonth, M.

Authors

K. Musilek

Dr Kimberly Jamie kimberly.jamie@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

M. Learmonth

Abstract

This article contributes to an understanding of work-intensive entrepreneurial lives as part of analysing the intensification of work in society. It offers an empirical extension of Foucauldian analyses which attribute commitment to work to the influence of neoliberal enterprise discourse while often neglecting the material conditions of entrepreneurial work. The article draws on moderate constructionism and materialist discourse analysis to offer an account that pays attention to discourse and material realities. This ethnographic study shows how participants evoked norms of enterprise discourse to explain their commitment to work. However, they also understood these norms to be fundamentally shaped by their material conditions. The major contribution of the paper is to show that the interpenetration of discursive norms with the investment logic of enterprise tends to displace boundaries between work and personal life and shift temporal arrangements of work from work-life ‘balance’ to prospects of free time in the imagined future.

Citation

Musilek, K., Jamie, K., & Learmonth, M. (2024). ‘Money probably has something to do with my life’: Discourse and materiality in the working lives of start-up entrepreneurs. Work, Employment and Society, 38(5), 1285-1306. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231185033

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 30, 2023
Online Publication Date	Jul 28, 2023
Publication Date	2024-10
Deposit Date	May 30, 2023
Publicly Available Date	May 30, 2023
Journal	Work, Employment and Society
Print ISSN	0950-0170
Electronic ISSN	1469-8722
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	38
Issue	5
Pages	1285-1306
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231185033
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1172423
Publisher URL	https://journals.sagepub.com/home/wes

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).