Prototyping Cultures and PPE During the Pandemic: Communication and the Economization of Civic Participation in Mexico

Abstract

This text analyzes how makers in Mexico used prototypes in the implementation and management of supply networks for the manufacture of masks for front-line personnel during the first months of the pandemic. In conversation with information theories and feminist science and technology studies, the text maintains that these prototypes had three communicative functions: (1) organizing work in a context of social distance (Suchman et al., 2002; Valentine, 2013); (2) manage uncertainty regarding contradictory health information (Corsín Jiménez, 2014; Lindtner, 2020); and (3) articulate processes of innovation and production of market value (Beckert, 2016; Eisenhardt, 1989). This triple communicative function of the prototypes made possible the articulation of civic practices and neoliberal logics, what I call, following other authors, the economization of civic participation (Lindtner, 2020; Murphy, 2017).