Vendors in Guatemala City
Boundary Work and Technology Use Among Guatemala Women Street and Online Vendors, AKA The Oscar Project
About the Project
Public spaces and technologies are routinely and strategically used by women microbusiness owners in the Global South and Global North to manage how they present themselves to the public, define and manage their family obligations, and turn a profit in order to make a living. To date, however, little research has focused on exactly how these ever-present yet somehow also invisible, overlooked workers do this.
In this mixed method, multi-sited research, we study women entrepreneurs in Guatemala to understand two central issues in their lives. First, how do these workers use a variety of technologies, spatio-temporality, and social practices in their daily lives, especially as they try to negotiate the boundaries between their economic, family, and other obligations? Second, how do these women’s everyday lives and views of themselves both reflect and challenge the general concept of “entrepreneur”, the work it entails, and the government’s policies of support and regulation?
Our multiple teams include Andrea Echeverria and Gustavo Fernandez in Guatemala City, Lucy Lemus in New York City, Katreen Boustani in Syracuse, NY, Anne Tally in Newport, RI, and Christena in Bloomington, IN. The fieldworkers and PhD students are funded by a generous gift from Microsoft, originally given to Oscar Lemus for his dissertation project. We lost Oscar in September of 2021, but are taking him and his work forward with this lovely endeavor. Fieldwork began in March 2023, when Andrea and Gustavo also visited IU and presented an overview of the study, the participants, and the field site to the IU community. Survey and Interview collection is expected to be completed in July of 2023 with translations completed by August 2023. Stay tuned for further announcements about works in progress - including an exciting visual collaboration with Eli and Shunying Blevis!
This project is a collaboration with Katreen Boustani, Andrea Echeverria, Gustavo Fernandez, Lucy Lemus, Oscar Lemus, and Anne C. Tally.
Publications
“Noticing the Rhythms: Women Street Vendor Regulation and Resistance in the Historical Center of Guatemala City”. Katreen Boustani, Andrea Echeverría, Gustavo Fernandez, Lucy Lemus, Christena Nippert-Eng. Accepted for “Seeing Interaction Design" issue to be published in the series Design Research Foundations, Springer. (https://www.springer.com/series/13775)
Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank our participants for their time and feedback, which made this research possible. We would also like to thank Microsoft for their generous gift funding this project and the Department of Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington for their support.