Nana Rodaki

Thesis Title and Abstract

European Competitiveness and the Global Political Economy of the Information Age

The era that we are in is largely dominated by the discourses of Silicon Valley. The Californian region’s economic success and adaptability, together with its ability to generate innovation and to encourage entrepreneurship have given it “mythical dimensions”, rendering the “model” of production, development and employment that it represents, the “paradigm to be copied” by the rest of the regions and cities across the globe. The creation of the “Silicon Valley model” is thus to a significant extent the result of “narratives” which are generated and reproduced by a variety of “actors”. This thesis will focus on the ways that the “strategy of siliconization” is being promoted by the European Union and will argue that the “Lisbon strategy” (that was decided in the Lisbon European Summit in 2000), together with the promotion and marketing of the high-technology clusters and the other “knowledge milieux” that are established by the E.U. member-states actually favour the reproduction of the “neo-liberal hegemony” in the “Information Age”.

Research Interests

Cultural Political Economy,Information Age, the Knowledge-based economy

E-mail address: a.rodaki@lancaster.ac.uk

Office: County South, D39

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