Fairchildren and factory girls: gender, family, and space in the Singapore electronics industry
Professor Hallam Stevens (JCU)
Abstract: We are now in the midst of what has been called a global "chip war" with China, the United States, and Taiwan considered to be the major players. This situation is the result of the globalization within the semiconductor industry that began in the 1960s. Southeast Asia was a major site for such outsourcing by US firms such as Fairchild Semiconductor, Hewlett Packard, and General Electric. This paper examines some of the local effects of the electronics and semiconductor industries in Singapore. In particular, it examines the effects of these industries on gender norms and family life in the newly independent city state. By examining the forms of labour and patterns of development associated with early semiconductor outsourcing, the paper aims to shed light on the long-term cultural and geopolitical effects of globalization within the chip industry.
Bio: I am an historian of science and technology specializing in the history of the life sciences and the history of information technology. My first book, Life out of sequence: a data driven history of bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013), examined the transformational role of computers and databases in recent biology. I am also the author of Biotechnology and society: an introduction (Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor (with Sarah Richardson) of Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology After the Genome (Duke, 2015).
My work crosses between history and anthropology and more recently I have written about the political and social impacts of artificial intelligence, big data, and surveillance technologies, particularly in an Asian context. I am currently completing a book about the rise of the life sciences in China.