Revealing the unmarked

Scholars frequently recount the ups and downs, the purportedly embarrassing – although always heroically turned to account – mishaps of research. However, acknowledging that one has rethought an analysis in the absence of new data makes explicit that social science is an interpretive project, and as such is rarely discussed in print. In this article I break that taboo, analyzing how I began to doubt my claim that a global shop floor was organized around an ungendered shop-floor subject. I then detail the more contextually sensitive reading of my fieldnotes that allowed me to grasp the fundamental masculinization of the shop floor in question. In the process, I theorize the aspects of gendered structure that enabled the error at the outset. Thus, the discussion reconstructs the life history of an argument – tracing the shifting development of analysis in a particular ethnographic case. In so doing, it follows epistemic problems back to their ontological roots, looking at how the tricky, obdurate situatedness of meanings – gendered and ungendered alike – requires an ongoing analysis of context in interpreting even our most minute and focused observations

Revealing the unmarked

Scholars frequently recount the ups and downs, the purportedly embarrassing – although always heroically turned to account – mishaps of research. However, acknowledging that one has rethought an analysis in the absence of new data makes explicit that social science is an interpretive project, and as such is rarely discussed in print. In this article I break that taboo, analyzing how I began to doubt my claim that a global shop floor was organized around an ungendered shop-floor subject. I then detail the more contextually sensitive reading of my fieldnotes that allowed me to grasp the fundamental masculinization of the shop floor in question. In the process, I theorize the aspects of gendered structure that enabled the error at the outset. Thus, the discussion reconstructs the life history of an argument – tracing the shifting development of analysis in a particular ethnographic case. In so doing, it follows epistemic problems back to their ontological roots, looking at how the tricky, obdurate situatedness of meanings – gendered and ungendered alike – requires an ongoing analysis of context in interpreting even our most minute and focused observations

Sexing Homo Œconomicus: Finding Masculinity at Work

The chapter argues that neoliberal capitalism’s operations are premised upon masculinity’s persistent and persistently naturalized presence. The argument is made through three accounts. In the first case, the purportedly ungendered figure of homo œconomicus obscures the social context that enables his economic functioning and hence keeps the question of reproductive labor from coming into view. In the second case, masculine challenges and displays both undergird and fuel the operations of foreign exchange markets. And in the third, anxieties over “irrational exuberance” are projected onto the male body, sidelining discussions of institutional and regulatory failures. Together, these accounts illustrate some of the many ways that the unacknowledged gendering of the paradigmatic figure of neoliberal reason obscures the social context of the economy itself. Masculinity’s unmarked form proves to be an ideal partner for neoliberalism’s truly anti-social project