Diversity and coherence in a hackerspace for people from a low socioeconomic community
Jennyfer Lawrence Taylor, Dhaval Vyas, Tony Sharp · 2017
Hackerspaces and the hacker movement1 are receiving increasing attention within the HCI research community, yet these sites also have the potential to exclude people of low socioeconomic status from participating. We present a case study of an urban Australian e-waste recycling social enterprise (Substation33) that engages volunteers and welfare recipients in the Work for The Dole program in technology disassembly, repair, and making activities. Bringing these people together in shared making practices has resulted in a high degree of diversity in the organisation's structure, mission, activities, and workforce. We identify and discuss four key factors that establish a sense of coherence using Lave and Wenger's `Communities of Practice' lens: the interdependence of activities, characteristics of the space, social relationships through peer learning, and community rules and expectations. We contribute to the discussion on new configurations of personal making and industrial production, and advocate for extending conceptualisations of hackerspaces to be more inclusive of hybrid organisations that serve the needs of people from low socioeconomic communities.