Luis Suarez-Villa

Luis Suarez-Villa specializes in the study of technology, innovation, corporate capitalism and international development from the perspectives of critical social analysis and political economy. 

His most recent book, Technocapitalism: A Critical Perspective on Technological Innovation and Corporatism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009) explores the emergence of a new, twenty-first century version of capitalism grounded in technology and science, and the political economy of corporate power and influence associated with it.  

Prof. Suarez-Villa is presently working on the topic of globalization and technocapitalism, to understand the global reach and effects of a new version of capitalism (technocapitalism) that has potentially major systemic effects on human existence, life and nature.  New sectors grounded in this new version of capitalism, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, genomics and biomimetics, are bound to become hallmarks of the twenty-first century, much as aviation, the automotive industry and nuclear technology were of the twentieth.  These new sectors depend fundamentally on creativity and research, much as the industrial sectors that were a hallmark of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depended on production, raw materials and factory labor.  Because of their deep grounding in technology and science, their high complexity and their close association with corporate power, these new sectors are likely to impose new social realities, pathologies and injustices that may be very difficult to understand and reverse. 

Prof. Suarez-Villa has extensive international experience, and has pursued his research interests in various nations in Europe, North America, Latin America and East Asia.  He has twice been awarded Fulbright fellowships for research.  He has also been awarded honors and fellowships by numerous organizations, such as the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Organization of American States, Cornell University, and the University of California.   His educational background was diverse and multi-disciplinary.  He earned his doctorate at Cornell University in 1981, where he pursued studies in international development, sociology, economics, and development planning.  His first university diploma was in architecture and architectural engineering, but his academic interests subsequently expanded and encompassed the fields of international development, technology studies, sociology, economics, human geography and regional science.

Prof. Suarez-Villa has been a faculty member of the University of California since 1982.  He has been affiliated at various times with UCLA, New York University's Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems, the United Nations, the Autonomous University of Madrid, with Spain's National Scientific Research Council, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, and the Institute of Technological Research at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Among his current extra-curricular interests is the advancement of disadvantaged minorities in education, and helping raise public awareness of the need for social justice to sustain democracy.