Coding Productive Masculinity: Gendered Meaning of Exploitation in High-Tech Corporations

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Race, Gender, Solidarity and the Changing Conditions of Work

Abstract

The project examines the labor process through which masculine character of labor power is exploited for capitalist production. By conceptualizing gendered meanings of worker subjectivity as a malleable structure that is constituted and operationalized through daily labor practices and struggles, I will look at how organizational-specific femininity and masculinity is in-the-making on contextualized work floor at the micro level to maximize productivity. This project also attempts to produce a macro level analysis by linking the micro dynamics of localized constitution of masculinized labor exploration and the macro dynamics of global capitalism in the realm of information technology industry. Through an ethnographic examination of Chinese immigrant software engineers’ gendered subjectivity in a multinational high-tech corporation in Seattle, this project will investigate why and how does masculinity matter for maximization of productivity, with a highlight on intersections of masculinizing and racialized practices and discourses? Specifically, 1) what are basic cultural frames of masculinity used by the high-tech corporations as a ground for constructing “productive masculinity”; 2) how do managers draw on and redefine original masculinity frames to produce “productive masculinity” to maximize productivity; 3) as a result of these constructions, how is “productive masculinity” interpreted, managed to achieve, or resisted by workers throughout labor process.

Author

• Tongyu Wu, University of Oregon