Hacking Diversity

The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures

Christina Dunbar-Hester

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780691192888
  9780691182070
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691194172
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Technology & Engineering

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, members of underrepresented groups 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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. History, Heresy, Hacking
• 3. To Fork or Not to Fork: Hacking and Infrastructures of Care
• 4. Crafting and Critique: Artifactual and Symbolic Outputs of Diversity Advocacy
• 5. Working Imaginaries: “Freedom from Jobs” or Learning to Love to Labor?
• 6. The Conscience of a (Feminist) Hacker: Political Stances within Diversity Advocacy
• 7. Putting Lipstick on a GNU?: Representation and Its Discontents
• 8. Conclusion: Overcoming Diversity
• Bibliography
• Index