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Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands

Online ISBN:
9780691245058
Print ISBN:
9780691245034
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands

Héctor Beltrán
Héctor Beltrán

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Published online:
19 September 2024
Published in print:
14 November 2023
Online ISBN:
9780691245058
Print ISBN:
9780691245034
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

This book examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. The book 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 interactions—at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics. The book unpacks the conundrums faced by workers in a tech economy that stretches from villages in rural Mexico to Silicon Valley. It chronicles the tension between the transformative promise of hacking—the idea that coding will reconfigure the boundaries of race, ethnicity, class, and gender—and the reality of a neoliberal capitalist economy divided and structured by the US/Mexico 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. The book explores the ways that “innovative culture” is seen as central in curing Mexico's social ills, showing that when innovation is linked to technological development, other kinds of development are neglected. The book connects technology studies, the anthropology of capitalism, and Latinx and Latin American studies.

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