During its boom phase, Silicon Valley was a center of attention for many reasons, but especially for its labor market arrangements. With the dot.com burst of 2000, many will be tempted to view the institutions that surrounded Silicon Valley as yesterday's news. But they would be wrong to do so, for a high-tech labor market adjusts to the ups and downs of the business cycle. Job market mobility -- what Alan Hyde in this volume terms "high velocity" -- was and is a key characteristic of Silicon Valley's labor market. As such, an understanding of Silicon Valley employment practices provides an understanding of labor market practices in any industry where mobility is high and the employment relationship is loose. Hyde suggests that while the work practices associated with high technology are somewhat unorthodox and may present legal problems, they play essential roles in high growth. Hyde addresses such issues as whether trade secret laws ought to give employers more power against departing employees or should be liberalized to facilitate start ups. Why do Silicon Valley employers use temporary help agencies at twice the national rate? Why do they employ so many engineers and programmers on temporary visas, and what would happen if that program were cut back? Why are so few Silicon Valley employees represented by unions? Could new unions serve their needs? How do well-compensated, highly mobile employees provide for their retirement or health insurance? Answers to these and many other questions about today's newest labor markets can be found in this book. The author shows how understanding these unusual features of high-velocity labor markets requires an understanding of how labor marketsfunction like information markets and can be made to contribute to economic growth.

This work examines the relationship between the rapid technological and economic growth characteristic of high-technology districts and their distinct labor market institutions -- short job tenures, rapid turnover, flat firm hierarchies, weak internal labor markets, high use of temporary labor, unusual uses of independent contracting, little unionization, unusual employee organization (e.g., chat groups, and ethnic organization), unequal income, minimal employment discrimination litigation, flexible compensation (especially stock options), and heavy use of immigrants on short-term visas. The author suggests that while these distinctive labor market institutions are somewhat unorthodox and may present legal problems, they play essential roles in high growth.

The most basic assertions about our bodies--that they are ours and distinguish us from each other, that they are private and have boundaries, races, and genders--are all political theories, constructed in legal texts for political purposes. So argues Alan Hyde in this first account of the body in legal thought. Hyde demonstrates that none of the constructions of the body in legal texts are universal truths that rest solely on body experience. Drawing on an array of fascinating case material, he shows that legal texts can construct all kinds of bodies, including those that are not owned at all, that are just like other bodies, that are public, open, and accessible to others. Further, the language, images, and metaphors of the body in legal texts can often convince us of positions to which we would not assent as a matter of political theory.

Through analysis of legal texts, Hyde shows, for example, how law's words construct the vagina as the most searchable body part; the penis as entirely under mental control; the bone marrow that need not be shared with a half-sibling who will die without it; and urine that must be surrendered for drug testing in rituals of national purification. This book will interest anyone concerned with cultural studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, and political theory, or anyone who has heard the phrase "body constructed in discourse" and wants to see, step by step, exactly how this is done.