Code Work: Exploring the Relationship between Computer Culture and Society in Mexico

Monday - November 27 2023, 10:12 UTC - 12 months ago

In his book 'Code Work', MIT anthropologist Hectar Beltran explores the relationship between computer culture and society in Mexico. He finds that coding is more than writing code: It's an activity that generates reflection by the coders about themselves, their political and economic circumstances and what roles they can play in society.

Several years ago, MIT anthropologist Héctor Beltrán '07 attended an event in Mexico billed as the first all-women's hackathon in Latin America. But the programmers were not the only women there. When the time came for the hackathon pitches, a large number of family members arrived to watch.

"Grandmothers and mothers showed up to cheer up the hackathon participants," Beltrán says. "That's something I had never seen in the U.S. It was inspiring. It felt good to see people who are usually excluded from these spaces being welcomed as part of this infrastructure of innovation." .

In a sense, the grandmothers hacked the hackathon. After all, hackathons started as male-dominated code-writing marathons, often inaccessible to women—who, even when they join tech or other professions, also handle much of the "second shift," the unpaid family work women have been doing for generations. As one of the hackers told Beltrán, her grandmother "helps with everything in the day to day. She is the one that is in charge of everything." .

But having so many women in the hackathon audience, Beltrán observes, made visible an often-ignored point: All that unpaid work by women is part of the "infrastructure" that has let men code and innovate and build their own careers.

"Things people normally don't think about, even like the structure of a hackathon, being there the whole weekend with your buddies, is something that has not been feasible for many women," Beltrán says.

Now, in a new book, "Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands," published today (Nov. 14) by Princeton University Press, Beltrán closely explores the relationship between computer culture and society in Mexico. In it, he finds that coding is more than writing code: It's an activity generating fruitful reflection by the coders—about themselves, their political and economic circumstances, and what roles they can play in society.

"A core concept of the book is precisely that as you're coding and participating in these events, you're also constructing a sense of yourself and how you fit into these larger societal structures and engines of difference," says Beltrán, who is the Class of 1957 Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT's anthropology program.

Breaking into the field .

"Code Work" builds on field research Beltrán conducted in Mexico, attending hackathons, conducting interviews, and scrutinizing the country's politics and economy. However, the roots of the project go back to Beltrán's undergraduate days at MIT, where he majored in computer science and engineering. After graduating, Beltrán worked in consulting; a trip to Mexico City helped spur his interest in the differences between the tech sectors in Mexico and in the U.S.

"I saw that there was really a disconnect between different cultures," Beltrán says.

As such, "Code Work" is an exploration of coding both as it is practiced within Mexico and in its relationship to U.S. computing culture. The book focuses extensively on hackathons, as events where the enjoyment and promise of tech innovation are evident, along with the tensions in the field.

In contrast to the U.S., where hackers have long celebrated having fun, learning, and moving fast, hackathons in Mexico often become incubators of social action projects. Yet, there's also money at play in some of them, a tension Beltrán keenly observes as some coders prioritize gathering knowledge over profit. The book also documents how, at times, the "U.S lifestyle" of coders clashes with local, cultural practices.