Silicon is a key raw material for the materialities and imaginations of the digital world. Today, the word silicon is inextricably linked to Silicon Valley and the central role of tech companies in digital capitalism. In this constellation, silicon stands for a new variant of the “California ideology” and is representative of tech solutionism and the industry's creative and immaterial work cultures. The success of this narrative has inspired cities and governments around the world to declare their own silicon regions in order to participate in this narrative and economy. The idea of a “Silicon Savannah” (Nairobi, Kenya) or the narrative of Romania as the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe” are linked to hopes for economic growth through the concentration of start-ups and the promotion of digital creative work.

The original meaning of silicon as a key resource for the manufacture of modern semiconductor chips is being forgotten. This also applies to Silicon Valley, which is hardly associated with semiconductor production anymore. Yet it was the development and production of ever smaller and more powerful silicon-based microchips that gave this region its name and its initial momentum. However, only traces of the production of these chips remain here, for example in the form of irreversible soil contamination at former production sites. Semiconductor manufacturing has now almost completely shifted to East Asia, particularly Taiwan.

Powerful semiconductors are a key component in numerous products, from smartphones and satellites to cars and refrigerators to all applications of artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, their production geographies and supply chains are once again coming into focus and are being negotiated as decisive factors in economic, political, and military dominance. In the context of a much-vaunted “chip war,” China's claims to Taiwan, with its superior production capacities, are seen as an existential economic and military threat to the global North. In response to this situation, governments are striving for nearshoring and awarding subsidies worth billions to relocate the production of semiconductor technology to their own territory and sphere of influence. The resulting “silicon landscapes” are more reminiscent of the origins than the present of Silicon Valley. For even if the myth of creative work is occasionally invoked here, the new semiconductor clusters, such as “Silicon Saxony” (Germany) or the “Silicon Alps” (Austria), are all about material and highly complex production processes based on the raw material silicon.


The workshop aims to explore the materialities, imaginations, and (geo)politics associated with silicon, bringing together research on various “silicon landscapes,” from California's valleys to Saxony's lowlands to the Austrian Alps.

Erin McElroy (
University of Washington) presents her book Silicon Valley Imperialism and examines the mobilization of Californian ideology in the context of post-socialist Romania.

Katja Schwaller
 (Stanford University) 
examines the “participatory” campus landscapes and “sustainable” urban imaginations of large tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Moritz Altenried, Alexander Harder, Gloria Albrecht, and Marthe Völker (

Humboldt University of Berlin) 
present their research on “Silicon Saxony” and the history and present of semiconductor production in eastern Germany.


Loren Grbic and Anna Pillinger
 (Johannes Kepler University Linz) 
explore the connections between the semiconductor industry in southern Austria, EU policies, and imaginaries in the context of the “Silicon Alps” and beyond.

The event is hosted and introduced by Moritz Altenried, Alexander Harder and Mira Wallis (Institute for European Ethnology, IfEE, Humboldt University of Berlin), organized in cooperation with the research lab “Culture,  Society and the Digital” (IfEE), the project “SoLiXG : The Social Life  of XG. Digital infrastructures and the reconfiguration of sovereignty  and imagined communities”, and the Berlin Institute for Migration Research (BIM).

More Information on the workshop - online registration for the lecture on May 22nd.