PHD Thesis Project

Title:

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the transformation of hegemonic masculinity in high-tech engineers, consultants, home workers and men in collaborative, non-capitalist environments of production (free software developers,…)

Abstract:

This paper, based on a proposal for a doctoral thesis, will analyse the changes that are produced in "hegemonic masculinity" (Connell 1995) as a result of the appearance of ICT and other transformations in society and the world of work. The proposal is to investigate three groups of men, and their characteristic types of organization, that develop their professional (and personal) activity in the "information society" (Castells, 1996, 2001). The first of these groups are the engineers or managers of high-tech companies. The second group are the self-employed or freelance (translators, consulting, advisers,…) that work from home. Finally, we are interested in analysing the changes in masculinity in the men who work in collaborative, non-capitalist environments of production (free-software developers,…).

The interest of this proposal is to analyse how these type of men negotiate the meanings and uses of the new technologies. Similarly we will investigate the kind of changes that ITC are introducing in organizations, in work and the personal and domestic sphere. We would like to find out whether this negotiation consolidates hegemonic masculinity or undoes it, offering steps to "new" masculinities. The broad aim is to explore the contexts of the new relationships between masculinity and technologies.

For this investigation we suggest a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with these three groups of men. The process will include the methodology of exploration, observation and analysis of "grounded Theory" (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and other qualitative techniques like auto-ethnography (Brochner and Ellis 2002).