Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-1-2011
Publication Title
Anthropological Theory
Volume
11
Issue Number
1
First Page
89
Last Page
106
DOI
10.1177/1463499610397115
Disciplines
Anthropology
Abstract
High-technology work fuels a dynamic global exchange from technopoles throughout the world, but especially between East and South Asia and the northern Californian region of Silicon Valley. This migration drives an expanded number of ancestral identities. Professional and activity-based identities flourish as Silicon Valley’s strong narrative of meritocracy loosens the grip of birth ascription on the creation of identities. These achieved identities proliferate as people experiment on their own sense of self. Traditional conceptual tools related to immigration, and even such contemporary approaches as Appadurai’s ethnoscapes, do not adequately illuminate the ethnographic data on Silicon Valley workers, families, and especially youth. The concept of deep diversity, first posed by philosopher Charles Taylor and reified by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, reinterprets the interactions of traditional ethnic identity categories, providing a powerful framework with which to think.
Recommended Citation
Jan English-Lueck. "Prototyping Self in Silicon Valley, Deep Diversity as a Framework for Anthropological Inquiry" Anthropological Theory (2011): 89-106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499610397115
Comments
Copyright © 2011 SAGE Publications. The published version of the article may be found online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1463499610397115.