Developing a critical caste analysis within information science and technology: A research review: An annual review of information science and technology paper
Caste—an ascriptive social hierarchy in South Asia and its diaspora—is a globalized phenomenon. 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. 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 deepen the field's engagement with caste, our paper presents a hermeneutic review of multi‐disciplinary research that examines caste in the context of information and technology in India. We argue that information and technology are integral to how caste is reinforced and resisted, both historically and in the contemporary moment. 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. This paper offers thematic, methodological, and theoretical takeaways to explicitly frame caste as a key analytical framework within Information Science and Technology.