New Books in Science, Technology, and Society Caste and Tech with Murali Shanmugavelan and Sareeta Amrute
Mar 30, 2026
Murali Shanmugavelan, researcher in caste, media, and digital infrastructures, and Sareeta Amrute, scholar of race, caste, labor in global tech, discuss how caste shapes IT workspaces and communication systems. They tackle tech’s myth of being neutral. They explore AI biases that erase non-dominant cultures, gaps in moderation of caste hate, and tensions between visibility and safety in anticaste efforts.
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Grandmother's Break With Caste Shaped Research
- Sareeta recounts her maternal grandmother's story: a Brahmin widow educated at Karve's home who migrated to the U.S. and forged a life outside orthodox caste norms.
- That family history shapes Sareeta's intellectual stance toward anti-caste work in tech.
More Phones Did Not Mean More Equality
- Murali describes fieldwork in Western Ghats where every house had phones and TVs, yet increased communication access did not translate to democratic participation.
- He uses this to argue that access alone doesn't erase caste hierarchies embedded in communication infrastructures.
Tech Neutrality Is A Myth
- Tech is often framed as neutral because of a history that separates invention from social context and celebrates individual genius.
- Sareeta Amrute connects this ideology to beliefs that disembodied systems erase identity, which masks labor, infrastructure, and bias feeding those systems.