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Like Exporting Baseball: Individualism and Global Competition in the High‐Tech Industry
Author(s) -
Chet Carrie Lane
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
anthropology of work review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.151
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1548-1417
pISSN - 0883-024X
DOI - 10.1525/awr.2004.25.3-4.18
Subject(s) - offshoring , outsourcing , individualism , offshore outsourcing , competition (biology) , ethos , high tech , flexibility (engineering) , business , market economy , economics , political science , management , marketing , ecology , law , biology
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among high‐technology jobseekers in Dallas, Texas, during the period 2001‐04, this article examines the response of unemployed U.S. tech workers to the intensification of the offshore outsourcing of white‐collar work from the United States to lower‐cost locations overseas. The researcher found that while a vocal minority of tech workers denounces offshore outsourcing, or offshoring, as unethical, unpatriotic, and economically shortsighted, most high‐tech jobseekers see offshoring as a natural offshoot of an unstoppable and ultimately beneficial system of global capitalist competition. These “globalist” workers, who espouse a model of work that privileges individual responsibility and flexibility over loyalty and security, argue that nations and individuals must take the initiative in making themselves competitive with other countries' increasingly skilled, educated, and low‐cost workforces if they are to survive in this newly global economy. This perspective is buttressed by globalists' individualist ethos and their remarkably resilient faith in the logic of the market economy.