This book examines contemporary efforts to make hackerspaces and open source software communities more diverse and inclusive, and identifies the challenges faced by those spearheading these efforts. A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and hackerspace communities. Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. Hacking Diversity investigates the activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why, despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their ideals support. Christina Dunbar-Hester shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world, beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity legislation, women face unique challenges. She brings together more than five years of firsthand research: attending software conferences and training events, working on message boards and listservs, and frequenting North American hackerspaces. She explores who participates in voluntaristic technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences. Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning STEM-oriented societies, Dunbar-Hester demonstrates that while the preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts—their “hacks” of projects and cultures—can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in technical production is not equal to generating justice. Hacking Diversity reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation in the hacking world and beyond.
Author(s): Christina Dunbar-Hester
Series: Princeton Studies In Culture And Technology | 21
Edition: 1
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF | Full TOC
Pages: 289
Tags: Hacktivism, Computers And Women, Open Source Software: Social Aspects, Multiculturalism
Cover
Half title
Series title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
Figures
Table
Acknowledgments
1 | Introduction
Give Me a Hackerspace and I Will Make the World
Hacking Emancipation
Technology and Social Order (Or, How Hacking
and Emancipation Came to Be Linked)
If Diversity Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
How This Book Is Organized
Research Methods
Researcher’s Position
Research Sites: Names and Anonymity
2 | History, Heresy, Hacking
Geeks and Hackers
FLOSS; Hackerspaces and Hacktivism
Women in Computing and Hacking
We Chew on The Roots Of Control And DomInatIon
Hacking Hacked?
3 | To Fork or Not to Fork: Hacking and Infrastructures of Care
Changing the Dominant Culture: Visibility and Dialogue in Mainstream Spaces
Changing the Dominant Culture: Codes of Conduct
Separate Spaces: Hackerspaces and Unconferences
Separate Spaces: The Backchannel
“No More Rock Stars”: The Backchannel Goes Public
Conclusions: Progress, Ambiguity, and Maintenance
4 | Crafting and Critique: Artifactual and Symbolic Outputs of Diversity Advocacy
Hacking Meets Feminine Craft
Autonomy of Infrastructures
Conclusions: Crafting Capacity?
5 | Working Imaginaries: “Freedom from Jobs” or Learning to Love to Labor?
Politics of Open-Technology Projects and Their Relationship to Paid Labor
Working Imaginaries along a Continuum
Conclusions: Can Diversity Advocacy Do Scary Work?
6 | The Conscience of a (Feminist) Hacker: Political Stances within Diversity Advocacy
Radical Politics and Activism
Opposing Militarism
Global Positioning Systems: “Decolonizing Technology”
Conclusions
7 | Putting Lipstick on a GNU? Representation and Its Discontents
Background on Social Identities and Technical Cultures
Gender, Trouble
Contesting Gender Essentialism
Genderfuck: Queer, Nonconforming, Otherwise
Positionings: Ethnicity, Race, Nation
Conclusions: Social Identity, Power, and Expert Knowledge
8 | Conclusion: Overcoming Diversity
Bibliography
Index
A Note On The Type
