At the Periphery of the Empire: Recycling Japanese Cars into Vladivostok’s IT Community

The Chapter "On the periphery of the Empire: Recycling Japanese Cars into the Vladivostok IT Community" traces genealogies and geographies of a Russian IT community on the border with Japan from the Soviet period to 2015. Drawing on various qualitative data including interviews, official documents, secondary literature and mass media publications the authors describe the development of the local IT ecology it the context of social and economic transformations of the 1990s and uneven relationships between center and periphery, university and industry, institutions and individuals. Building on micro examples of individual trajectories and local bottom up initiatives in entrepreneurship, education and civic mobilization, the chapter shows how local experts use their professional competences, alumni networks and creative thinking skills to maintain the community regardless challenges of outmigration, market crises and structural dependence on federal decisions. The chapter contributes to the debates on emerging ecologies of knowledge and innovations, the role of entrepreneurship in regional development, the post-imperial border politics and on post-Soviet transformations.     «

The Chapter "On the periphery of the Empire: Recycling Japanese Cars into the Vladivostok IT Community" traces genealogies and geographies of a Russian IT community on the border with Japan from the Soviet period to 2015. Drawing on various qualitative data including interviews, official documents, secondary literature and mass media publications the authors describe the development of the local IT ecology it the context of social and economic transformations of the 1990s and uneven relationship...     »