The Augmented Undercommons: A Framework for Liberatory HCI Research within Ethically Compromised Institutions

Sociocultural engineering research is being systematically attacked under the current US government, pressuring researchers to eliminate cultural inquiry from our work. These attacks present an existential crisis for HCI because technological innovation and understanding cultural impact are fundamentally intertwined. Marginalized HCI practitioners are at particular risk from these policies. Compliance with authoritarian demands is untenable. We need strategic, principled ways of resisting. We propose the augmented undercommons, a framework grounded in Harney and Moten’s undercommons that supports liberatory, culturally grounded technology development parallel and in opposition to ethically compromised institutions. We outline five guiding principles, demonstrate their use in HCI through three case studies, and reflect further on one principle’s dimensions in practice. The augmented undercommons builds upon past knowledge from oppressed scholars to offer one possible survival strategy for our current moment, while critically reflecting on the HCI community’s current and future responsibilities.