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Cracking the Code: Navigating and Subverting Dominant Class Rule in Computer Science and Engineering Coleen Carrigan A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Dr. Rachel Chapman, Chair Dr. Devon Peña Dr. Alison Wylie Dr. Joyce Yen Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Anthropology ©Copyright 2013 Coleen Carrigan 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the people who made this dissertation possible. First, I thank all of my research participants who graciously shared their stories, opinions and experiences with me. Their passion, grit, talents and wisdom have greatly inspired me. I would also like to acknowledge my parents, Janice Carrigan and Kevin Carrigan, who gave me many educational opportunities, including unlimited books from Notes & Quotes, our family bookstore. Their confidence in my capabilities remains unflagging. Their love and encouragement were invaluable to the completion of this dissertation. My brother, Kevin Carrigan, was also a great source of support. In difficult moments, his lighthearted advice and sense of humor never failed to uplift me. I have been blessed with the most incredible dissertation committee! Meeting and working with Professor Rachel Chapman has had a profound and lasting impact on my life. Her intellectual breadth is matched only by her powerful, passionate commitment to activist scholarship. As chair of my dissertation committee, she has guided me with grace and fierce commitment. Even though she is highly sought after by both undergraduates and graduate students, for the past eight years, she made me feel like one of her top priorities. She challenged me to reach an outstanding level of performance while building the confidence and skills I needed to meet her expectations. Rachel encouraged my critical approach to anthropology and helped turn my radical sensibilities into a career inspired and sustained by a love of knowledge and justice. There could be no better sponsor to inspire me on my path ahead. Dr. Joyce Yen hired me seven years ago as a research assistant to do feminist research and pedagogy with her at the University of Washington ADVANCE Center for 3 Institutional Change. The funding from this research position was critical to persisting in my doctoral program. I have learned so much from Joyce during the years of our collaboration. She gave me many opportunities to grow intellectually and professionally. She went above and beyond to help me realize my potential, always believing in me and always there to lend her support. She is approachable, warm and has an infectious mirth that made me look forward to seeing her at work. Joyce’s deep and broad interdisciplinary knowledge as well as her uncanny ability to directly address the heart of the matter has influenced my career and the way I mentor my students. Professor Eve Riskin has also been a tremendous source of support and inspiration in my graduate career. Her abundant generosity knows no limits. She is a tireless advocate for women and underrepresented groups in academia. She always encouraged me to speak my mind and follow the ideas about which I am most passionate. Best of all, she offered me the resources to be successful in my endeavors. Eve’s professional network is vast and she introduced me to many of the participants in this research. I am also grateful for the opportunity to collaborate on ethnographic research funded by two grants on which Eve is the Principle Investigator. Professor Devon Peña taught me all I know about Marx and Marxist feminism. These intellectual orientations helped me translate my political beliefs into activist scholarship. His intellectual prowess knows no limits and I am deeply indebted to him for his mentorship. Whenever I was in need of inspiration, an hour with him would revitalize me and propel me further down my intellectual path. Devon always had a knack for challenging me kindly and then helping me cultivate my strengths in service of justice. 4 His belief in me was critical to my persistence and his encouragement of my “acerbity” helped me find my voice as a critical scholar. Professor Alison Wylie is a great inspiration and her work in both anthropology and feminist science and technology studies allowed me to envision and enact my own interdisciplinary work in these areas. She has guided me with affection and intense commitment to women’s advancement in science and engineering. In early stages of my dissertation, she noted important areas that needed more attention and her advice helped guide my research design and analyses. Her cutting edge standpoint scholarship has been invaluable both to my research and pedagogy. My anthropology colleagues deserve special thanks. I met Dr. Teresa Mares early in my graduate career and her peer mentorship has been critical at every stage of my matriculation. Not only did she help me with the intellectual and logistic aspects of persisting as doctoral student, her emotional support has been an immense boon to me. Professionally, she is unflappable, and helped keep me grounded, calm and focused. Also, she is a wonderful friend whose advice, affection and humor gave me the grit I needed to persevere. Dr. David Citrin also was a kind friend with whom I shared joys and tribulations on this path. His commitment to his fieldwork and participants has been truly inspiration to me and influenced my work. I also wish to thank my chosen kin, my loving friends in Seattle. Emily Hutchinson Haley has been instrumental to the completion of this dissertation. She cheered me on, cheered me up, encouraged me, fed me well and often and offered both intellectual and emotional support at every stage of my graduate career, but especially during the last year of writing. She also proofread the final draft of this dissertation under 5 a constrained timeline. Her outstanding copy edit greatly improved the quality of my work. Victoria Coleman also deserves much credit for the completion of this dissertation. Without her healthy cooking, love and affectionate encouragement, this project would have been much more difficult. She also catered my dissertation defense, making that arduous event very special with her extraordinary culinary skills. Sam Yum has also been an incredible source of support on this journey. After long days and evenings of writing, he was there to lend a supportive ear and share a much-needed nosh. He also copy-edited Chapter 1 before my defense, providing great advice and edits. Sunday family nights at Jo Saltmarsh and Matt Lerner’s home were a saving grace for me after weekends spent writing. Exhausted, I would arrive to their home filled with my comrades and delicious spreads of food and feel uplifted and loved. I am also grateful for the love, humor and encouragement of Dana Gold, Toby Keys, Erica Gordon, Brian Mee and Paige Haley, who spoiled me during difficult moments and celebrated every milestone with me. Together, my family and my chosen kin threw me not one but two fantastic graduation parties, an incredible culmination to the last seven years of hard work. Thank you all for making this degree possible. I have wanted to earn a doctorate since I was young and I am very lucky to have had the amazing support of brilliant, openhearted and loving sponsors, family and chosen kin. Finally, I wish to thank the AAUW, the National Science Foundation, the Luce Foundation and the University of Washington Labor Center for funding my graduate school research. 6 University of Washington Abstract Cracking the Code: Navigating and Subverting Dominant Class Rule in Computer Science and Engineering Coleen M. Carrigan Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Rachel R. Chapman Anthropology My dissertation investigates the reproduction of gender-differentiated outcomes in sites of technology production and why Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) remains highly segregated. Computer technology both reflects and manufactures social values and the reproduction of systems of power in the US. I use ethnographic methods and media analysis to explore the social construction of gender, race and technology and their co-constitution of cultural norms governing labor segregation in CSE. I rely on and contribute to feminist theory from a variety of orientations - anthropology, Marxism, science and technology studies and critical race studies - to argue the overrepresentation of white males in CSE is a matter of reproductive and economic justice. My cross- sectional method illuminates barriers women face at three different stages of a CSE career. At the heart of this research are the stories of women who persist in CSE, the barriers to desegregating the field and their ideological justifications and the broad 7 cultural domains that shape and are shaped by the product, practices and applications of computer technology. In my dissertation, I advance five related arguments. First, women who navigate, resist, and subvert male hegemony to persist as workers in CSE have a unique standpoint in US society and have the potential to transform, institutionally and interpersonally, unjust social relations. Second, rites of passage (Davis Floyd 1992) in CSE, for example, interviews, long hours, precision questioning, combative work styles and the valorization of logical and abstract approaches to knowledge production over creative, material ones reproduce the ideological union between masculine ideals and competency in the field. These rituals also serve to indoctrinate CSE workers’ to the core values in computing commodity production, including constant observation, intense evaluations of others, and the devaluation of sociality. Third, participants’ emotions allowed me to locate and interpret the conflicts and contradictions of women CSE professionals. Many of these contradictions signal a rupture, women’s struggle to navigate the bifurcated nature of their workplace role – participants privileged to be agents in a powerful field and marginalized members of this field (Smith 1990).