Code Work: Hacking Across The Us/M?xico Techno-Borderlands (Princeton Studies In Culture And Technology, 33)

How Mexican and Latinx hackers apply concepts from coding to their lived experiences In Code Work, H?ctor Beltr?n examines Mexican and Latinx coders??personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltr?n 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??t 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 M?xico and the United States??uring which he participated in and observed hackathons, hacker schools, and tech entrepreneurship conferences??o unpack the conundrums faced by workers in a tech economy that stretches from villages in rural M?xico to Silicon Valley. Beltr?n chronicles the tension between the transformative promise of hacking??he idea that coding will reconfigure the boundaries of race, ethnicity, class, and gender??nd the reality of a neoliberal capitalist economy divided and structured by the US/M?xico 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. Beltr?n explores the ways that ??nnovative culture??is seen as central in curing M?xico?? social ills, showing that when innovation is linked to technological development, other kinds of development are neglected. Beltr?n?? highly original, wide-ranging analysis uniquely connects technology studies, the anthropology of capitalism, and Latinx and Latin American studies.

• | Author: H?ctor Beltr?n
• | Publisher: Princeton University Press
• | Publication Date: Nov 14, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 240 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0691245045
• | ISBN-13: 9780691245041