Hi 

I thought this call might be of interest to some on this list - they are not 
just looking for academic / research papers but also portraits, testimonies, 
etc.

cheers,

Mathieu

=-=-=

Journal of Peer Production (JoPP)
CFP for Special Issue on Feminism and (Un)Hacking

Editors: Shaowen Bardzell, Lilly Nguyen, Sophie Toupin

There has been a recent growth in interest in feminist approaches to practices 
like hacking, tinkering, geeking and making. What started off as an interest in 
furthering representations of women in the technical fields of computer science 
and engineering, often along the lines of liberal feminism, has now grown into 
social, cultural, and political analyses of gendered modes of social 
reproduction, expertise, and work, among others. Practices of hacking, 
tinkering, geeking, and making have been criticized for their overtly 
masculinist approaches, often anchored in the Euro-American techno-centers of 
Silicon Valley and Cambridge that have created a culture of entrepreneurial 
heroism and a certain understanding of technopolitical liberation, or around 
the German Chaos Computer Club (CCC).

With this special issue of the Journal of Peer Production, we hope to delve 
more deeply into these critiques to imagine new forms of feminist technical 
praxis that redefine these practices and/or open up new ones. How can we 
problematize hacking, tinkering, geeking and making through feminist theories 
and epistemologies? How do these practices, in fact, change when we begin to 
consider them through a feminist prism? Can we envision new horizons of 
practice and possibility through a feminist critique?

In this call, we understand feminist perspectives to be pluralistic, including 
intersectional, trans, genderqueer, and race-sensitive viewpoints that are 
committed to the central principles of feminism--agency, fulfillment, 
empowerment, diversity, and social justice. We refer to the term hacking with a 
full understanding of its histories and limitations. That said, we use it 
provisionally to provoke, stimulate, and reimagine new possibilities for 
technical feminist practice. Hacking, as a form of subjectivity and a mode of 
techno-political engagement, has recently emerged as a site of intense debate, 
being equally lauded as a political ethos of freedom and slandered as an 
elitist form of expertise. These fervid economic and political ideals have been 
challenged and at times come under attack because they not only displace women 
and genderqueer within these technological communities but, more importantly, 
because they displace gendered forms of reflection and engagement.

Drawing on a growing community of feminist scholarship and practices, we hope 
to build on this momentum to invite submissions that reconceptualize the 
relationship between feminism and hacking. We aim to highlight feminist 
hackers, makers and geeks not only as new communities of experts, but as new 
modes of engagement and novel theoretical developments. In turn, with this 
special issue, we hope to challenge both concepts of feminism and hacking to 
ask several questions. How can feminist approaches to hacking open up new 
possibilities for technopolitics? Historically, hacking discourses center on 
political and labor aesthetics of creation, disruption, and transgression. How 
can feminist theories of political economy push technopolitical imaginaries 
towards alternate ideals of reproduction, care, and maintenance? Conversely, we 
also ask how notions of hacking can open up new possibilities for feminist 
epistemologies and modes of engagement?

We seek scholarly articles and commentaries that address any of the following 
themes and beyond. We are also interested in portraits, understood broadly, of 
feminist hackers, makers and geeks that help us better understand feminist 
hacker, maker and geek culture. We also solicit experimental formats such as 
photo essays or other media that address the special issue themes.

• What is distinctive about feminist hacking or hackers? How does feminist 
hacking practices help create a distinct feminist hacking culture?
• Why are feminist hacking practices emerging? Which constellation of factors 
help the emergence of such practices?
• What do we know about the feminist hacker spectrum? i.e. what are the 
differences among feminist hacking practices and how can we make sense of these 
distinctions?
• What tensions in hacking and/or in hacker practices and culture(s) come to 
the fore when feminist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-capitalist and/or 
anti-oppression perspectives are taken?
• What does feminist hacker ethic(s) entail?
• What kind of social imaginaries are emerging with feminist hacking and 
hackers?
• What kinds of hacking are taking place beyond the Euro-American tradition?

Submission abstracts of 300-500 words due by September 8, 2014, and should be 
sent to femh...@peerproduction.net

All peer reviewed papers will be reviewed according to Journal of Peer 
Production guidelines; see http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/process/

Full papers and materials (peer reviewed papers around 8,000 words; 
testimonies, self-portraits and experimental formats up to 4,000 words) are due 
by January 31st, 2015 for review.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1406161217929.54...@anu.edu.au

Reply via email to