Content area
Inequity in computer science and engineering (CS&E) is greater than its disproportionately misrepresentative workforce. Inequities in its social organization, pedagogy, knowledge, and institutions come from CS&E’s knowledge culture that privileges masculinist and colonial forms of knowledge and action. As a result, the efficacy of equity-based change initiatives is limited by CS&E’s commitments to social/technical dualisms and deficit-based approaches to minoritized communities.
In this dissertation, I analyze the discourses, dynamics, and socioemotional experiences of equity initiatives in CSE. I present a case study of “cultural change” in a CS&E department in a predominantly white university in the United States. In this action-oriented autoethnography, I spent two years working with a team of students, faculty, and alum to actualize their vision of systemic change through curriculum development, mentoring, and other research activities. Drawing on feminist grounded theory, I use situational analysis to analyze extensive field notes, team interviews, faculty interviews, documentation, and analytic memos.
My findings elucidate the consequences and construction of equity-based change expertise in CS&E. Change expertise is the product of (1) perceived difference, where minoritized people are assumed to embody the difference and expertise needed for change, and (2) competency in care ethics, which facilitates the reflective activities of critical technical practice. However, CS&E’s dualistic culture and history frames change expertise as the mutually exclusive complement to technical expertise. This leads engineers to disqualify their relevant experiential knowledge and defer the responsibilities of action to change experts. I describe this effect, where change experts are responsible for the initiative and their colleagues’ critical consciousness, as the mammification of change expertise. The process and efficacy of equity-based change in CS&E is structured by the mammy, a longstanding controlling image of Black women as subservient, polite, undesirable, and caring maternal figures.
In addition to providing insights into the barriers for equity-based change in CSE, this dissertation contributes to knowledge on the politics of misogynoir, the social organization of knowledge, and the culture of computing.
