This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0891243209342406v1 23/5/665    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Sargent, C. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Playing, Shopping, and Working as Rock Musicians

Masculinities in "De-Skilled" and "Re-Skilled" Organizations

University of Virginia

Masculinities vary by organizational context, demonstrating that organizational culture shapes the gendering of work even within the same occupation. The author draws on comparative and ethnographic data collected in two retail environments (large and small musical instrument stores) to understand how a common organizational culture is differently gendered by the organization of work. In these music stores, organizational culture is driven by masculinist fantasies of the rock musician lifestyle. As the products and knowledge of the rock musician lifestyle are made popularly accessible and retail work is deskilled, a style of masculinity based on fraternization and competition takes the place of formal knowledge and experience—reaffirming rock musician as a populist, but exclusively male identity. The article concludes with a consideration of how the de-skilling of retail work reproduces gendered interactions that affirm men’s control over work and its products, even as retail work is presumed to be feminizing.

Key Words: men • masculinity • culture • organizations

This version was published on October 1, 2009

Gender & Society, Vol. 23, No. 5, 665-687 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243209342406


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?