Engaging Care Ethics in Describing Invisible Labor in Hacker and Makerspaces

• In Event: Interrogating Ethics & Values in Technology Design & Engineering Practice

Abstract

Care labor is often described as invisible. This invisibility can have negative consequences, where types of labor—especially those often segmented by gender, class, or socioeconomic status—are left out of the translation process when community systems designers and engineers reify the interpersonal interaction components built into such systems. However, this invisibility can also be necessary, such as when care actions are performed in a way that minimizes a recipient’s vulnerability. Engaging with an ethic of care can help clarify the tensions that exist between these invisibilities.

In this paper, I use Stephanie Collins’ dependency principle as a lens for analyzing the normative commitments that hackerspaces claim or should claim, as a means of recharacterizing the care work that members carry out in their everyday interactions. Through my analysis of these interactions, I posit that hackerspaces, as collectives, have two primary moral duties: 1) to care for their members as they navigate the vulnerable and interdependent process of developing and performing their hacker identities; and 2) to provide a welcoming environment for anyone who holds an important interest that could be fulfilled by becoming a member of such a community. I will discuss how hacker culture succeeds in fulfilling the first moral duty, but fails to fulfill the second. In light of this failure, I argue that hacker communities must choose either to abandon their collective claim that everyone is included and welcome in these spaces, or they must engage in more explicit inclusivity work, despite imagined costs to current community culture.

Author

• Austin Lewis Toombs, Purdue University