DSI Lecture Series | Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions

In this presentation, Erin McElroy will discuss Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times, just published with Duke University Press. The book maps out processes of gentrification, racial dispossession, and economic predation that drove the development of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area and also looks at how that logic has become manifest in postsocialist Romania. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Romania and the United States, McElroy exposes the mechanisms through which the appeal of Silicon Valley technocapitalism devours space and societies, displaces residents, and generates extreme income inequality in order to expand its reach. The book also explores how in Romania, dreams of privatization have updated fascist pasts, often in the name of anticommunism. At the same time, McElroy accounts for the ways that activists and artists resist Silicon Valley capitalist logics, building upon socialist-era worldviews not to restore state socialism but rather to establish more just social formations—helping materialize the unbecoming of Silicon Valley. The talk will conclude with a discussion of how Silicon Valley imperialism impacts transnational geographies of landlordism, gesturing to some of McElroy’s newer work.

Erin McElroy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington, where their work focuses upon intersections of gentrification, technology, empire, and racial capitalism, alongside housing justice organizing and transnational solidarities. McElroy is author of Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times (Duke University Press, 2024) and coeditor of Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (PM Press, 2021). Additionally, McElroy is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project—a data visualization, counter-cartography, and digital media collective that produces tools, maps, reports, murals, zines, oral histories, and more to further the work of housing justice. At UW, McElroy runs Landlord Tech Watch, which produces collaborative research and collective knowledge on the dispossessive technologies of landlordism.

We strive to make our events accessible to all participants. This event will be a hybrid event with both a physical meeting space and an online meeting space.

Please register in advance for the online Zoom Webinar here: https://bit.ly/4fuhmzc

Please register for the physical meeting space at the University of Michigan’s Central Campus here: https://myumi.ch/Jwy95

CART will be provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please email Eric Mancini at dsi-administration@umich.edu. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.

This event is co-sponsored by the following units:

Science, Technology, & Society Program
Institute for Research on Women and Gender
ESC (Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing)
Department of Communication & Media
Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Department of Anthropology
Department of American Culture