Interrupting Merit, Subverting Legibility: Navigating Caste In ‘Casteless’ Worlds of Computing

Title of the Paper

Interrupting Merit, Subverting Legibility: Navigating Caste In ‘Casteless’ Worlds of Computing

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Technology and Social Inequality, Caste
• Keywords: Technology and Inequality, Caste, Feminist HCI, Postcolonial Computing, Meritocracy, South Asian Culture

Research Background and Problem Statement

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • Despite the perception of the computing field in India and globally as “casteless,” both implicit and explicit influences of caste persist.
  • In Indian and transnational Indian communities, the concept of meritocracy is often used to legitimize caste privilege and marginalize Dalits in India.
  • Dalit engineers face systemic inequalities in computing workplaces and educational institutions, which are obscured under the narratives of “castelessness” or “merit.”

• Significance:

  • Mainstream discussions rarely address how caste shapes inclusivity and diversity in the technology sector.
  • Making caste issues visible helps dismantle inequality structures driven by meritocracy that reinforce caste privilege and advocates for greater representation of Dalits and other marginalized groups.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Literature shows that caste-like systems of inequality are entrenched through education, language, professions, and more.
  • Existing research primarily focuses on inequalities related to gender, race, or economic class, with insufficient attention to caste issues in the South Asian context.
  • This paper aims to uncover the ongoing impact of caste in the globalized computing field by studying the lived experiences of Dalit engineers.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Methods and Solutions:

  • Based on a study of 16 life stories of Dalit engineers, the research adopts the theoretical perspective of “the personal is political” to analyze how they perceive, interpret, and navigate caste norms in their daily lives within the computing field.
  • Four coping strategies are proposed: interpreting caste markers, disrupting caste narratives, employing subtle and ambiguous strategies to manage identity, and seeking caste-based communities.

• Innovative Contributions:

  • Challenges the dominant narrative of a “casteless” computing field, emphasizing caste as a dynamic and performative social identity, and reveals how Dalit engineers disrupt and redefine caste through creative everyday practices.
  • Introduces the concepts of “caste performance” and “caste work,” framing caste as a relational and contextual social construct rather than a fixed category.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  • Research methods include qualitative interviews and narrative analysis, employing grounded theory and reflexive dialogue for data analysis.
  • Emphasizes building trust between researchers and participants to create a safe space for Dalit participants to share their experiences.
  • Identifies and categorizes Dalit engineers’ strategies for navigating caste inequalities, focusing on four key patterns.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Reveals how Dalit engineers encounter caste markers (e.g., family background, food preferences, language, and place names) in supposedly “casteless” environments and how they obscure their caste identity through subtle and nuanced methods.
  • Through collected real-life stories, demonstrates how caste in computing professions is made explicit by upper-caste groups through meritocratic narratives, further reinforcing inequalities.
  • Provides a comprehensive analysis of caste as a dynamic, performative social identity, highlighting its variability and contextual nature.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Situates caste issues within an intersectional perspective of multiple inequalities, such as gender, religion, and social status.
  • Highlights individual agency and “artistic” strategies, empowering marginalized groups with more active social roles.

• Experimental and Evaluation Results:

  • The coping strategies of Dalit engineers (interpreting, disrupting, obscuring, connecting) proved effective in helping them navigate caste-dominated computing environments.
  • These strategies not only challenge the structural manifestations of caste inequality but also underscore the significance of caste in heterogeneous technological cultures.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    • The study primarily focuses on Dalits in Indian and transnational Indian communities, without exploring the experiences of Dalits from other religious backgrounds (e.g., Muslim, Christian).
    • Limited research on micro-level privileges and diversity within the caste system.
  • Future Directions:
    • Expand the scope to include other religious backgrounds and global caste relations.
    • Focus on the subjectivities of upper castes in the computing field and how they reshape industry culture.
    • Integrate design research to explore how caste is embedded in technological systems and decision-making algorithms.