Prototyping Self in Silicon Valley, Deep Diversity as a Framework for Anthropological Inquiry

High-technology work fuels a dynamic global exchange from technopoles throughout the world, but especially between East and South Asia and the northern Californian region of Silicon Valley. This migration drives an expanded number of ancestral identities. Professional and activity-based identities flourish as Silicon Valley’s strong narrative of meritocracy loosens the grip of birth ascription on the creation of identities. These achieved identities proliferate as people experiment on their own sense of self. Traditional conceptual tools related to immigration, and even such contemporary approaches as Appadurai’s ethnoscapes, do not adequately illuminate the ethnographic data on Silicon Valley workers, families, and especially youth. The concept of deep diversity, first posed by philosopher Charles Taylor and reified by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, reinterprets the interactions of traditional ethnic identity categories, providing a powerful framework with which to think

From schism to continuum? The problematic relationship between expert and lay knowledge - An exploratory conceptual synthesis of two qualitative studies

Ideas about lay and expert knowledge increasingly underscore debates within qualitative health research. In this article, the authors develop an exploratory synthesis of two qualitative studies in which they critique the lay-expert divide, suggesting instead a spectrum of knowledge(s) about health and scientific issues. In the original studies, the researchers examined food risks and alternative medicine, and they shared an interest in the lay-expert knowledge relationship. Reinterpreting each study in the light of the other led to greater conceptual development. Three mutual themes emerged and are presented with discussion of their contribution to wider theoretical debates. This worked example indicates that researchers can achieve valuable additional conceptual development through the cross-fertilization of ideas across qualitative studies united not by common health topics but by shared conceptual concerns. © 2005 Sage Publications