STANFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
  
Cover of Cultures@SiliconValley by J. A. English-Lueck
Cultures@SiliconValley
Second Edition
J. A. English-Lueck


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2017
224 pages.
from $26.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9781503600232
Paperback ISBN: 9781503602922
Ebook ISBN: 9781503602991

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Since the initial publication of Cultures@SiliconValley fourteen years ago, much has changed in Silicon Valley. The corporate landscape of the Valley has shifted, with tech giants like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter vying for space with a halo of applications that connect people for work, play, romance, and education. Contingent labor has been catalyzed by ubiquitous access to the Internet on smartphones, enabling ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and space-sharing apps like Airbnb. Entrepreneurs compete for people's attention and screen time.

Alongside these changes, daily life for all but the highest echelon has been altered by new perceptions of scarcity, risk, and shortage. Established workers and those new to the workforce try to adjust. The second edition of Cultures@SiliconValley brings the story of technological saturation and global cultural diversity in this renowned hub of digital innovation up to the present. In this fully updated edition, J. A. English-Lueck provides readers with a host of new ethnographic stories, documenting the latest expansions of Silicon Valley to San Francisco and beyond. The book explores how changes in technology, especially as mobile phones make the Internet accessible everywhere, impact work, family, and community life. The inhabitants of Silicon Valley illustrate in microcosm the social and cultural identity of the future.

About the author

J. A. English-Lueck is Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University. She is coauthor of Busier Than Ever! Why American Families Can't Slow Down (Stanford, 2007), with C.N. Darrah and J.M. Freeman, and Being and Well-Being: Health and the Working Bodies of Silicon Valley (Stanford, 2010). Her first edition of Cultures@SiliconValley (Stanford, 2002) was awarded the 2006 Diana Forsythe Prize for excellence in ethnography of science and technology.

"Many imagine Silicon Valley as a kind high-tech Oz, watched over by wizards of code. But thanks to more than twenty years of on-the-ground exploration, Jan English-Lueck can show us the Valley as it really is: risky, diverse, cosmopolitan and complex. This is simply the best study of Silicon Valley's many cultures that I know."

—Fred Turner, Stanford University

"In her newly updated book, Jan English-Lueck takes a deep dive into Silicon Valley, where hackers, engineers, entrepreneurs, temporary workers, educators, janitors, and many more drive the creation of technologies that pervade our lives. Her sharp and lively account is simply indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how technology shapes those living in Silicon Valley and the broader consequences."

—Gabriella Coleman, author of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous