Code Work
Hacking Across The US-Mexico Techno-Borderlands
- Editore:
Princeton University Press
- EAN:
9780691245034
- ISBN:
0691245037
- Pagine:
- 224
- Formato:
- Hardback
- Lingua:
- Inglese
Descrizione Code Work
How Mexican and Latinx hackers apply concepts from coding to their lived experiencesIn Code Work, Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx codersâ?¿ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the code worlds to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coupling, iterative processing (looping), hacking, prototyping, and full-stack development in their daily social interactionsâ?¿at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics. Merging ethnographic analysis with systems thinking, he draws on his eight years of research in México and the United Statesâ?¿during which he participated in and observed hackathons, hacker schools, and tech entrepreneurship conferencesâ?¿to unpack the conundrums faced by workers in a tech economy that stretches from villages in rural México to Silicon Valley. Beltrán chronicles the tension between the transformative promise of hackingâ?¿the idea that coding will reconfigure the boundaries of race, ethnicity, class, and genderâ?¿and the reality of a neoliberal capitalist economy divided and structured by the US/México border. Young hackers, many of whom approach coding in a spirit of playfulness and exploration, are encouraged to appropriate the discourses of flexibility and self-management even as they remain outside formal employment. Beltrán explores the ways that â??innovative cultureâ?? is seen as central in curing Méxicoâ?¿s social ills, showing that when innovation is linked to technological development, other kinds of development are neglected. Beltránâ?¿s highly original, wide-ranging analysis uniquely connects technology studies, the anthropology of capitalism, and Latinx and Latin American studies.
