Family, Labor, and the Global Race for Semiconductor Dominance
The future of global technology is being shaped by the intimate struggles of families
As the United States and China compete for technological supremacy, the re-shoring of semiconductor manufacturing has become a matter of national security. But moving a factory involves more than just transporting advanced machinery; it requires transplanting an entire social ecosystem. In this lecture, sociologist Ya-Wen Lei examines the ambitious attempt by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to replicate its high-precision production model in Arizona. Drawing on extensive interviews with engineers and their families, she reveals how the “intensive overwork” culture of East Asian manufacturing clashes with American norms of work-life balance and gender equality. She also looks at how the success of the global chip war depends not only on billions of dollars in subsidies but also on the hidden subsidy of unpaid domestic labor. By peering behind the clean-room walls of the semiconductor fab, Lei illustrates how the future of global technology is being shaped by the intimate struggles of families trying to bridge the worlds of work and home.
Meet the speaker
Ya-Wen Lei is a professor of sociology at Harvard University. She received a LLB from the College of Law at National Taiwan University and holds both a LLM and a JSD from Yale University as well as a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Lei was a…
