Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: The Making of a Transnati ...

Studies that follow events that shatter the notion of time, place, and space have to engage in field Research that takes as its unit of analysis the connections that link people, hence the term “global ethnography.”

Chapter 5, “Middle Class Path to Entrepreneurship: Education, Family, Networking,” is an analysis of how previously riskaverse middle-class Indians overcame their reluctance to engage in business practices, a reluctance that not only stemmed from fear of a loss of a secure livelihood that salaried jobs offered but also from a negative connotation attached to money making. Indians in Silicon Valley were able to transition from professional to entrepreneur because they realized that in Silicon Valley, there was no disjuncture between educational credentials, professional standing, and the opportunity to engage in wealth-generating businesses. Silicon Valley is not merely an entrepreneurial community, but it is also a techno-entrepreneurial community, and it is the equal emphasis on both technical skills and desire for business start-ups that allowed technically minded Indians to consider entrepreneurship in a favorable light. Not only this, but family support also mattered, and there is an invisible presence of women—wives and mothers—in the lives of the visible entrepreneurial men. Lastly, the chapter highlights how networking has produced successive waves of Indians willing to take a chance and set up a business.

Finally, chapter 6, “Transnational Capitalist Class of Indian Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” engages with the research question on conceptualizing the nature of Indian immigrant business activities in the software industry. It begins by presenting the argument put forth by scholars on why transnationalism among immigrants can, or should be, viewed as a form of subversion of the dominant forces of capitalism. When applied to high-skilled immigrants from middle-class backgrounds, factors that characterize the subject population of the study, there is little to back the claim that the entrepreneurs are engaging in a form of resis-tance to the larger forces that shape their choices.