| Abstract |
"Erin McElroy's Silicon Valley Imperialism draws on the author's work with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project in the San Francisco Bay Area to analyze the politics of space, race, technology, and displacement in tech destinations in Romania. Despite its many failures and violences, state socialism (which lasted in Romania from 1947-1989) did provide housing, employment, and education for many previously abandoned populations, populations which are again being dispossessed in the wake of post-socialist reprivatization projects. The anti-Communist reprivatization fervor and focus on economic growth in Romania dovetails with the global racial capital project McElroy identifies as "Silicon Valley imperialism." Understanding not only how disparate locations desire to become Silicon Valley, but also how the Valley itself is an unsustainable model of rapacious, exploitative economic and geographic growth, McElroy explores Silicon Valley imperialism as an extension of this kind of growth across a range of physical and imaginative spaces. Using an abolitionist, anti-imperialist lens, the book explores how Romania's socialist past might offer different futures that could disrupt the technofascism enabled by global Siliconization"-- Provided by publisher. |
