A Rutgers review of multidisciplinary literature examining caste in India, in the context of information and technology, found engagement with caste, within the discipline of information science, is limited and underdeveloped. The review argues for caste to be framed as a key analytical framework for research within Information Science.
“We argue that information and technology are integral to how caste is reinforced and resisted, both historically and in the contemporary moment,” said co-authors Nayana Kirasur, a SC&I doctoral student, and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Britt Paris. “Given the centrality of information in the workings of caste, the various sub-areas of Information Science can make productive contributions to our understanding of caste.”
The paper, "Developing a Critical Caste Analysis within Information Science and Technology: A Research Review: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology Paper," was published open access in The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology.
Their motivation to undertake this study stemmed from their goal, Kirasur said, “to explore how information about, around, and within caste structures is created and circulated in India.”
Their goal was to answer their two primary questions: How has existing literature across disciplines studied the relationship between information and caste? Second, what methodological, theoretical, and thematic insights emerge from this literature, and how can they be useful to the field of information science and technology?
“Recent caste-based discrimination, particularly in technology companies and anti-caste efforts to address it, has compelled academia, policy, and the technology industry to better understand contemporary mechanics of caste,” Kirasur said. “However, caste remains relatively underexplored within Information Science; the literature mentions caste only sparingly, and even when it does, the treatment remains superficial, often addressing it as just another social category alongside gender and income levels."
To conduct the study, Kirasur and Paris collected and reviewed literature, mainly research articles, academic books and book chapters, and reports from non-profit and research organizations. They read and qualitatively analyzed the various ways in which caste is related to and relevant in information contexts including people’s information behavior, records and archives, data practices, and online platforms such as social media.
This paper, Kirasur said, provides an analytical framework that can help researchers and scholars make relevant methodological, thematic, and theoretical choices for critical caste inquiry.
“From the literature we surveyed, it is clear that information is central to how caste is sustained, contested, and negotiated,” Kirasur said. “This paper begins a conversation around what it means—and might mean—to bring caste into information science. Caste is a complex, enduring, and deeply embedded social hierarchy that manifests in overt, subtle, and evolving ways. Nonetheless, it is critical to begin this process—especially in a field that continues to foreground Western epistemologies and often abstracts technology from its social and historical contexts. The work here both reveals gaps and hopefully inspires more intentional, interdisciplinary, and grounded approaches to studying caste as integral to the design, use, and politics of information and related phenomena.”
