Divyanshu Kumar Singh

HCI/CSCW scholarship has actively investigated harms that are perpetuated when historical, political, and social realities are sidelined within techno-scientific development and research. One such emerging site of investigation is caste, where scholars have shown how narratives of casteless-ness are portrayed through lack of engagement with realities of caste in the world of computing. There is emerging work examining the relationship between caste and technology, such as social media and generative AI, but there is little effort to conceptualize caste within HCI/CSCW. While scholars have informally described this site of investigation as ‘Caste Computing’, yet there exists no manifesto as to what it means or what its goals/values are? Therefore, in order to understand and define Caste Computing as a field within HCI/CSCW research, we plan to gather diverse scholars, practitioners, and activists to initiate conversation around four themes: a) what is caste?, b) what is/is not caste computing?, c) what does caste as lens/framework/analytical category looks like to investigate various technologies?, and d) what is the future agenda of caste computing? This workshop provides a platform to complicate and critique the relationship between caste and techno-scientific assemblages to build anti-caste futures.