About
Héctor Beltrán is an anthropologist who studies the transnational politics of code work, manifestations of hacking, and Latinx formations.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Computer Security
- Social Science
- Gender studies
- Law
- Epistemology
- History
- Library science
- Linguistics
- Political economy
- World Wide Web
- Media studies
- Art
- Economics
- Art history
- Public relations
Selected publications
Code Work: Thinking with the System in México
American Anthropologist · 2020 · 16 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Political Science
- Sociology
ABSTRACT This article explores how young people position themselves in relation to promises of technology and progress during a time of political transition in Mexico. My fieldwork took place between 2013 and 2017, just before a newly formed leftist political party gained power after a century of rule by Mexico's “revolutionary” party. For self‐identified “disenchanted” youth in Mexico, skeptical of the promises of social mobility by means of formal education, “hacking” emerged as a way to make sense of their futures in a precarious state and economy and as a way to let their “code work” intervene in narratives that had only delivered false hopes. Coworking spaces, hackathons, entrepreneurial initiatives, and neoliberal “reforms” were seldom differentiated by politicians. By immersing themselves in the code that underlies the technologies that promise developmentalist change, I show how fundamental coding principles become good to think with, alongside the institutions and systems responsible for reinstating unequal opportunities, iteration after iteration. Hacker‐entrepreneurs used their code work to develop heuristics for analyzing the organization of entities and relationship between them, whether they were elements in a coding environment or actors in a political‐economic environment. [ technology, knowledge economy, youth, computing, precarity ]
Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience · 2020 · 17 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Sociology
- Political Science
An event advertised as the first all-women’s hackathon in Latin America was held in México in 2015. Highly ephemeral but also highly visible, the hackathon functions as a critical site to examine how communities crystallize and evaporate, and how participants actively negotiate their hacker identities and practices across boundaries of nation, gender, race, and ethnicity. Popular discourse poses inclusivity within maker/hacker groups by proposing ways to get different or “diverse” participants to join events aimed at empowering their communities. I explore how members of marked groups are called upon to construct and manage these differences themselves within hacker spaces and “maker” formations. I first highlight how participants at the women’s hackathon aligned themselves with structures of expertise as they negotiated normative constructions of gender and femininity. Hackers continue these negotiations when they get caught up in Mexican nationalist pushes for productivity. In the final section, I unpack a surprise visit by abuelitas (grandmothers), who taught everyone a lesson on the invisibilized labor that supports communities of hackers. In a space usually reserved for young makers who understand “new” technologies, they claimed their space within “progress” and reasserted undervalued domestic work as foundational for other type of work. By weaving these three threads together ethnographically, I suggest the ways in which differences become important as Latina hackers differentially position themselves, but also align themselves, with the contradictions of treating code work as coded labor.
Review: <i>Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants</i>, by Adrián Félix
Aztlán A Journal of Chicano Studies · 2020
1st authorCorresponding- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Art history
Book Review| March 01 2020 Review: Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants, by Adrián Félix SPECTERS OF BELONGING: THE POLITICAL LIFE CYCLE OF MEXICAN MIGRANTS. By Adrián Félix. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 177 pages. Hardcover $99.00, paperback$26.95. Héctor Beltrán Héctor Beltrán Massachusetts Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Aztlán (2020) 45 (1): 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2020.45.1.305 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Héctor Beltrán; Review: Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants, by Adrián Félix. Aztlán 1 March 2020; 45 (1): 305–309. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2020.45.1.305 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAztlán Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 The Regents of the University of California2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
Frequent coauthors
- 4 shared
Emilio Pérez
- 2 shared
J.C. Alfonso-Gil
Universitat Jaume I
- 2 shared
Carlos Ariño
Universitat Jaume I
- 1 shared
Aleks Attanasio
University of Leeds
- 1 shared
Joge Segarra-Tamarit
Universitat Jaume I
- 1 shared
Eloísa Cordoncillo
- 1 shared
Pablo Ayuso
Universitat Jaume I
- 1 shared
Javier González-Barreda
Universitat Jaume I
Education
- 2018
Ph.D., Anthropology
University of California Berkeley
- 2012
M.A., Folklore
University of California Berkeley
- 2007
B.S. Computer Science and Engineering, 6-3
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards & honors
- 2025 James A. and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities
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