Christina Dunbar-Hester: Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (2020)
Filed under book | Tags: · care, community, computing, diversity, diy, ethnicity, feminism, floss, gender, hacker culture, hackerspace, hacking, identity, open source, openness, participation, politics, queer, race, technology, women
“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.”
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2020
Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology series
ISBN 9780691182070, 0691182078
xi+271 pages
Reviews: Jenna P. Carpenter (Tech & Society, 2021), Rebecca Ortenberg (Lady Science, 2020), Samantha Shorey (International Journal of Communication, 2020).
EPUB (updated on 2022-8-29)
PDF (added on 2022-12-12)
Ursula K. Le Guin: Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (1989)
Filed under book | Tags: · feminism, literary criticism, literature, science fiction, women
“Chronologically arranged, these 33 talks and essays and 17 reviews of books and films, dating from 1976 through 1987, eloquently record Le Guin’s responses to ethical and political climates, the transforming effect of certain literary ideas and the changes of a supple, disciplined mind,”
Publisher Grove Press, New York, 1989
ISBN 080211105X, 9780802111050
viii+306 pages
Reviews: Joan Gordon (Science Fiction Studies, 1990), Elizabeth Cummins (Science Fiction Studies, 1990), Thomas Larson (Brick, 1989), Kirkus Reviews (1988).
Commentary: Lisa Hammond Rashley (Biography, 2007).
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May Opitz, Katharina Oguntoye, Dagmar Schultz (eds.): Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (1991)
Filed under book | Tags: · black people, colonialism, feminism, germany, history, race, racism, sexism, women
“ISD (Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland), ADEFRA (Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland), Neuen Schwarzen Bewegung, all began in the 1980s in Berlin, centred around Freie Universität where Dagmar Schultz was professor. She invited Audre Lorde as a visiting professor from 1984, where May Opitz (from 1992 May Ayim) and Katharina Oguntoye attended her seminars. Out of this came Black History Month in Germany in 1991, and Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, published in 1986.” (Source)
First published in German as Farbe bekennen: afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, Orlanda Frauenverlag, Berlin, 1986.
English edition
Foreword by Audre Lorde
Translated by Anne V. Adams
Publisher University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 1991
ISBN 0870237594, 9780870237591
xxv+239 pages
Reviews: Amina Mama (Feminist Review, 1993), Leslie Morris (German Quarterly, 1994), George Junne (Explorations in Sights and Sounds, 1993), Laura Freisberg (BR, 2020, DE).
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