Exceptional Visions: Chineseness, Citizenship, and the Architectures of Community in Silicon Valley.

Abstract

I examine the relationship between Chinese immigrants and economic development in the late twentieth-century and twenty-first century Silicon Valley as it transformed from a Cold War suburb founded on military defense research of high technology to a transpacific hub of Chinese high-tech business. I focus on the relationship between regional government’s investments in Chinese material and visual cultures and the daily practice of Chinese culture by Chinese immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs within the context of U.S.-Greater China economic development. I argue that the figure of the Chinese immigrant entrepreneur plays an essential role in Silicon Valley’s self-portrait of achieved multiculturalism and this form of multiculturalism enables and encourages the proliferation of neoliberal economic policies. I trace the on-going normalization of Chinese people and culture in Silicon Valley within local discourses and practices of U.S.-Greater China economic relations. Drawing from theories of neoliberalism and governmentality, I demonstrate how the coordination of Pacific Rim high technology hubs, such as Silicon Valley, guides suburban planning projects of high-tech firms and a host of non-high-tech places extending to shopping centers, financial institutions, city parks, residences. With the resulting promotion of Chinese culture across the cultural and economic geography, the seeming inversion of racial hierarchies reflects what Aihwa Ong defines as “exceptions to neoliberalism.” Chinese built environments across Silicon Valley have become regional pedagogical institutions, transforming individuals into ideal subjects by imbuing them with the appropriate mix of human capital to create a suitable and sustainable environment for Chinese investment. These on-going crises regarding race, immigration, memory, everyday conduct, and suburban form in Silicon Valley reveal the re-invention of historical narratives necessary to the reproduction of regional economic planning. Rather than see the celebrated presence of Chinese people and culture as a form of empowerment, I read these expressions of belonging as socially reproducing a Chinese hegemony constituted by neoliberal economic doctrines. My chapters are broken up into different places of economic concern: high-tech firms, shopping centers, residential vernacular architecture, and Chinese language school and festivals. My dissertation is based on archival and ethnographic research of Cupertino, California, also known as “The Heart of Silicon Valley.”