Poster, Winifred, Post Doc

By Malena Gustavson on 11 Dec | 0 comments

Winifred Poster, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Washington University, St Louis, USA

Biographical Note
My training is in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley (BA), and Stanford University (PhD), and I have taught at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Washington University, St. Louis.  My interests are in the rise of the global information technology workforce, and how it impacts women, ethnic groups, and low-income communities around the world.  Sponsored by grants from the National Science Foundation, I have conducted some of the first in-depth ethnographies of outsourcing by U.S. firms to India.  Current projects examine global circuits of software engineers and computer factory workers; transnational call centers and their practices of national identity management, reversals of work time, and multi-surveillances; and the gendering of cybersecurity, including online warriors and spies.  This research has appeared in many books and journals, most recently Industrial Relations, Research in the Sociology of Work, and the American Behavioral Scientist.

GEXcel Project, Theme 2
My project raises questions about trends in the information society and their implications for forms and relations of masculinity on a global scale.  Is technology related to masculinity in the same way worldwide?  If certain masculinities are globally hegemonic, what is the “face” of this male power?  Is information technology changing the relations among masculinities, and perhaps destabilizing hegemonic masculinities, or reproducing them in new forms?

I focus on India and the U.S. to explore how “techno-masculinities” are under contestation in the contemporary global economy.  While not a uniform or comprehensive identity, “techno-masculinity” is unique from other types of masculinities in that it carries a common set of narratives for understanding manhood, such as displays of technical expertise, creativity, and a love of tinkering; it emerges from sources of power in technical tools, computers, and information; and it operates in realms of communication and information economies, such as the internet. 

The information society transforms masculinity on a transnational scale through two key dynamics – the development of information as a commodity, and the development of high-tech virtual communication.  In my project, I show how these have become platforms for empowering of techno-masculinities in the Global South, like India, relative to those in the Global North.

I would like to argue, first, that this technomasculinity is increasing in its presence globally. Economies of information are the most rapidly expanding sectors, and most new jobs in many countries are in the fields of ICTs.  This is due to several forces, which I’ll talk about in more detail tomorrow. Second, the dynamics and pattern of technomasculinity – especially as they now operate on a transnational scale -- do not conform to traditional theories of hegemonic masculinity 

If technology is associated with being a “nerd” and a social outcast in the US, or at best the underdog, this is the not the case at all india.  Not only is the male engineer the hero in India, he is the symbol of success, promise, and social mobility.  Techno-masculinity in these contexts also has different relations to women and femininity.  In the U.S., technology is unambiguously masculine; women are seen as secondary or peripheral to the technology.  However, in India, technology is not exclusively male.  There is a dominant techno-masculinity, no doubt, but technology in general (and especially compared to the US) is less embedded exclusively in either gender, and therefore is more accepted to be embraced by both.

We need to unpack exactly who is holding power, and how is it being challenged in the contemporary information economy. “Hegemonic masculinity” is often assumed to be white, and rooted in the West – U.S., Europe, etc.  I want to bring this assumption to the surface, and ask exactly how it operates.  While there is certainly a “Eurocentric” foundation for the construction of transnational masculinities and their institutionalization in the information economy, this is also being challenged, eroded, and subverted in key ways by actors in the Global South.

GEXcel Project Theme 9

ABSTRACT: I explore how information and communication technologies are posing challenges to hegemonic masculinity in military institutions of the Global North.  I ask if their capacities of democratization, virtualization, and transnationalism can erode or transcend gender dichotomies in the military.  The analysis focuses on three sites – info-czars, virtual war games, and cyber-spies – where ICTs have provided a medium for alternative masculinities and femininities that favor cross-cultural understanding and even humanitarianism.

EXTENDED OUTLINE: Being a soldier in the United States has traditionally meant being male, displaying aggressive force, and committing violence in foreign countries often in the Middle East and Global South.  With the onset of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and in the context of the War on Terror era, these features are now changing.  Skills of technical mastery are validated along side those of brute strength.  Soldiers sit in offices at the base, hooked up to computer terminals, rather than in the war field.  Enemies are now online and in virtual worlds.  Moreover, soldiers can “become” one of targets, inhabiting cyber villages and avatar bodies in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Such technology has been a friend to the military, enabling powerful kinds of surveillance and violence for the 21st century.  At the same time, technology is not necessarily a friend to military masculinity.  Rather, technology can be threatening the traditional narratives and practices of physical violence, uncritical aggression, and xenophobia.  This project explores ways in which technology poses challenges to those core precepts of hegemonic masculinity, and even opens windows for alternative narratives to emerge.  I focus on three sites where these contestations are playing out in US military institutions.

The first example is the new state info-czars who are overwhelmingly female. In perhaps one of the most striking moments of gender anomaly in the U.S. military history, many of these key positions are (or were) held by women in the last few years:  the first Senior Director of Cyberspace (aka the Cyber Czar), Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Director of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Director of Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). What kinds of changes in the masculinity of the US government enabled this recruitment of women?  What will be the orientation of these women to the dominant masculinity of their institutions?  Will they challenge or reinforce those agendas?  Do these women bring a different or similar sensibility about war, aggression, and relations with foreign peoples?

The second case is virtual war games in which soldiers practice peacekeeping instead of war.  These online multi-player simulations, or “serious games,” are increasingly used to prepare soldiers for war.  Yet some of these new games, like Adaptive Thinking & Leadership, teach communication, negotiation, consensus-building, and self-awareness.  This online exercise has a transnational role-playing component, so that participants can take the form of an Iraqi or Afghani solider or civilian.  For this purpose, US soldiers spend considerable time learning localized habits, gestures, language, and social habits of people in those countries.  Will U.S. soldiers gain an appreciation and understanding of masculinities in Global South when putting themselves in the virtual bodies of those men?  Or, will the experience reinforce stereotypes from War on Terror political rhetoric, and thereby justifying state-based aggression? 

The third case is cyber-spies who gather intelligence by posing as Iraqi militants in online chat rooms.  The individual who pioneered this field is not of Middle Eastern origin, or even a man.  It is Shannen Rossmiller, a former municipal judge from rural Montana.  Her “real” features and background couldn’t be further from those she portrays in cyperspace.  She is white, middle class, middle-aged, and has very blond hair.  She was born into a farming family, was on the cheerleading squad in high school, and is a mother of three.  Yet, since 9/11, she has exposed weapon caches, bomb plots, and cells in over 200 operations, which she handed to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.  What does it mean that a non-military woman is better at acting as an Iraqi militant than many of her male counterparts in the FBI?  Are women more skilled cyberwarriors than men, or at least, more skilled at acting out the military masculinities of the Global South?  While her virtual posing supports objectives of the War on Terror, is it also a platform where hegemonic masculinities can be contested or transformed? 

Sources for the project include original documents and websites concerning cyberwar from military offices and grassroots groups, as well as interviews with women and men in cybersecurity roles.  This project will hopefully contribute to the Theme of Gendered Sexualed Transnationalisations by deconstructing masculinity within the U.S. military as a privileged centre of the Global North.  It seeks to illuminate the contestations between dominant and subordinate masculinities within it, and interrogate how virtual sites connecting the U.S. with the Middle East are blurring the boundaries of gender and nation.