청년자본의 유통과 밀레니얼 세대–하기: 젊은 소셜벤처 창업자들에 관한 문화기술지

This ethnography focuses on young entrepreneurs in social ventures. In South Korea, a social venture is not just the result of the social, ethical, and technological evolution of enterprise. It is also a field where various subjects, narratives, and apparatuses are assembled surrounding “youth,” a term which has emerged as denoting a social problem as well as being a collective representation of structural anxiety. It is not youth in general, but “millennials” who are qualified as “youth capital” in the field of social venture. Young entrepreneurs convert their own stories into youth capital, valorize and circulate it, thus expanding their networks and the community that is fundamental to businesses that operate as online platforms. The entrepreneurs also take on a mission to defend society while negotiating with the floating signifier of the “social” in their businesses. Drawing on the performative concept of generation, in this article I give particular attention to the problem of labor, which is often veiled in the celebration of flexible and autonomous work in social venture discourses. Many of the college students or graduates have little choice but to combine their business with distributive labor for receiving startup grants and they also use their part-time labor for survival. The ethnography of “doing millennials” sheds light on how adult youth struggle with the uncertainties of life even when they are summoned as capitalists or entrepreneurs. It thus unfolds the grey areas of convergence between dependence and independence, cynicism and optimism, and finding jobs and building startups in their practices and life aspirations.