Customer Reviews

Cultures@SiliconValley

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This book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in culture, Silicon Valley, and the ethnographic methodology. From the first page, the reader is drawn into the people and unique culture of a technology based community. The author simulaneously paints an accurate portrait of the South San Francisco Bay Area while intoducing us to the complex lives of individuals who live, work, and volunteer there. This book is a sharp contrast to jargon-laced papers or tedious textbooks. Information on the area and culture are wrapped around the narratives of real people and their ability to survive in an exceptionally fluid society.

This book is a terrible addition to Anthropological research. Not only does English-Lueck rely on hundreds of undergrads for her research in Silicon Valley, This book never goes into depth in any topic that is mentioned, and midway in the book the author states that the stories are made up from compiled data, thus the people in it are not real. The book never gets into the swing and compels people to want to continue to read. The author also makes claims without backing it up with data (which there should be).

If you want to know how not to write an ethnography- this would be your book.