The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers’ Union in California

offered a chance to do something new. The second group wielded a ‘‘financial strategy’’ that evaluated firms ‘‘for their potential as lucrative investments’’ (p. 73). Most of these interviewees, the smallest group (25 percent), arrived in Silicon Alley after the stock market heated up. Their tone was rather macho. One, for example, dismissed ‘‘worker bees’’—people in conventional jobs who needed to be told what to do (pp. 77–8). Conversely, if one had stock options in a start-up, ‘‘the things that you did could affect the company and could affect the value of your holdings. So it gives you a sense of power’’ (p. 78). Another, in the manner of a venture capitalist, evaluated potential employers in terms of their business models. The third approach to risk was an ‘‘actuarial strategy’’ which entailed ‘‘calculating a degree of riskiness for each position, project, and company’’ with the aim of finding a ‘‘safe haven’’ (p. 88). This group (35 percent of interviewees) sought growing sectors of the industry and did not want to work for—or own— a firm that was dependent on venture capital. As one put it, ‘‘stock options were meaningless to me. That was Vegas roulette’’ (p. 90). Chapter Four confirms previous findings about the value of networks for accessing skills, jobs and credibility in Silicon Alley. More novel are insights gained from mapping social events. Neff found that the nature of networking changed over time. While earlier events had diverse mixes of participants from across sectors and occupations, later events became specialized to particular segments. This homogeneity reduced network access to new ideas and opportunities. Lastly, the centrality of networks in the industry heightened a particular form of inequality—social exclusion based on gender, age, and race. The penultimate chapter analyzes a last wave of interviews completed after the 2000 crash. They revealed that unemployed workers blamed their own choices. Neff’s interpretation is that the culture of risk which formed during the dot-com period survived its end. Her conception of this cultural process is that individual ‘‘justifications collectively functioned as an emergent social structure to support risk-taking’’ (p. 145). Neff advises that choices of these workers can be seen as rational, given these new cultural frameworks and job opportunities. The book’s great contribution is revealing how skilled workers associated good jobs with risk. Neff supplies rich data on their subcultures and networks, including their limitations. She usefully links Silicon Alley to long-standing templates in cultural industries (e.g., entertainment) where skilled workers exposed to risk rely on projects, portfolios and socializing. More problematically, Neff flirts with methodological individualism by claiming that individual values congeal into structure. In addition, the path that she illuminated so ably up to 2002 has taken turns she did not anticipate. Many Silicon Alley veterans eventually caught the Web 2.0 wave (especially if they were in technology which now overshadows content). Moreover, there are more supports for such workers given the creation of a Freelancers Union and the fact that city hall is seeking ways to spark New York’s innovative industries— reliance on finance does not seem a good bet anymore. Since the 2008 crash, most everybody is muddling through things.