This paper seeks to investigate issues related to cultural citizenship and governmentality in the context of mass mediated diasporic spaces. Through the examination of Iran, more specifically the Iranian diaspora, I propose that modern audio and visual information technologies not only played an important historical role in the success of the Iranian revolution, but also presently remain as a important site of cultural and political negotiations, pushing notions of nation, identity, belonging, and citizenship beyond their limitations. The Iranian example further elaborates on the expansion of civil society into the transnational realm by illustrating the ways in which mass mediated spaces have become important sites of regional negotiations, national transgressions and transnational transactions. While the nation-state remains the regulatory agent of what can or cannot be produced or circulated, the boundaries of the nation are blurred by visual media and cyberspace where cultural products target audiences both within and beyond the borders of the nation-state.

Its focus will be on Jews in the ancient Mediterranean before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. It is widely assumed that the scattering of the Jews took place largely after that calamity, the loss of their center, thus producing an enforced exile and dispersal. In fact, Jews had migrated far and wide for centuries before the Temple was destroyed, had established thriving communities from Italy to Iran, and had created new lifestyles in a world dominated by Greek culture and Roman power. The lecture will investigate the attitudes of diaspora Jews to Jerusalem and the manner in which they negotiated their presence in the periphery with the existence of a distant but still extant homeland.

Commentators have confounded the spread of the neoliberal globalization and the emergence of a new techno-economic paradigm around information and communication technologies. Using detailed research on the rapidly growing software industry in the Republic of Ireland, this talk argues that the negotiated alliance between states, capital and technical communities has been at least as crucial to the growth of information technology industries as market liberalization. Indeed, information technology industries and systems of innovation must be protected from the corrosive effects of financial liberalization, in particular.

The Global Economy on the Home Front: A Tale of Two Valleys
Glenna Matthews
Research Associate, Institute of Urban and Regional Development & Author of Silicon Valley, Women, and the California dream : gender, class, and opportunity in the twentieth century (Stanford University Press, 2003)

This lecture will look at the degradation of the blue-collar work with the disappearance of the fruit industry in the Santa Clara Valley, especially given the fact that the electronics jobs are non-union. This presentation will begin with a brief account of the history of off-shore production in Silicon Valley and then move on to discuss the fierce competition with Japan in the 1980πs. The bulk of the attention will go to failed attempts at unionization and the consequent vulnerability of the production workers. Finally, there will be an epilogue about the closing of the last cannery in San Jose in 1999, and the fact that the cannery workers feared that they would all have to take pay cuts if they moved into electronics.

Teleworkers and Telemanagers: IT and Telecommuting in Silicon Valley
Michel S.Laguerre
Professor and Director of Berkeley Center for Globalization & Information Technology & Author of The Digital City: Information Technology and Globalization in Silicon Valley (Forthcoming)

This paper examines various types of telecommuting practices in Silicon Valley in order to understand more concretely the diffusion and reconfiguration of work in the digital city in terms of the relations between the central office and the home or other sites of work as it is disseminated and fragmented both physically and temporally by information technology. It examines the ways in which telecommuting affects both the relations among coworkers and between workers and managers because of the choice it affords to work either inside or outside the central office. Finally, it focuses on the phenomenon of the partial decentralization and partial centralization of the digitized office under the regime of telecommuting in its local and globalized dimensions.

Rites of Production: Technopoles and the Theater of Work
Jan English-Lueck
Professor of Anthropology, San Jose State University & Author of Cultures@Silicon Valley (Stanford University Press, 2002)

The knowledge work done in silicon places is often intangible and requires some creative narrative "accounting" to demonstrate competence, trustworthiness, and value to the community at large. This hidden work is imbedded in worker activities and communications, corporate evangelism and community boosterism. Ethnographic research done in Silicon Valley, Taipei, Dublin and Christchurch explores how such performances are an integral part of high-tech work and the communities that house such work.

Measuring Productivity of the Digital Economy: A Macroeconomic Perspective
Aviva Lev-Ari
Director of Methods and Applications, Research Department, CTB/McGraw-Hill

Information Technology is playing an increasing role in growth, capital investment and skill specialization in the current economy. The underlying measurement and methodology of these transformations remain unresolved. How should we identify and measure the key drivers of the digital economy? What are the industry-level and economy-wide investments related to e-commerce, including investments in information technology equipment and labor force? What are the implications for growth, employment, productivity and inflation. How should we account for intangible consumer benefits and burden. The talk will cover four perspectives on Measuring Productivity of the Digital Economy from a Macroeconomic Perspective.

Visualizing Economy Two
Martin Kenney
Professor of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis & Editor of Understanding Silicon Valley : the anatomy of an entrepreneurial region (Stanford University Press, 2000)

This paper discusses the firms involved in the new firm startup process.

Forging a Safe Political Space Through Virtual Communities: The Case of Vietnamese American Transnational Community Building
Caroline Kieu Linh Valverde
Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis

My talk focuses on how information technology aided transnational connections and community-building activities between Vietnamese Americans and Vietnamese nationals. I highlight three virtual discussion groups (Vietnam Forum, Vietnamese Students Abroad and Vietnam Social Culture) and one humanitarian movement that sprung from a virtual organizing campaign (NO Nike). Despite the prevailing political ideologies and forces both at home and abroad in the form of triple domination, individuals transcended national and community restrictions through the formation of virtual communities. Though not a physical space, virtual communities mobilized those from certain sectors in Viet Nam and abroad by bringing them together for dialogue. In such communities these people could express their opinions and concerns and mobilize for change with relative success.


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