Crafting masculinities: gender, culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

Warren, Andrew

doi:10.1080/0966369x.2014.991702

Cited by 36 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Warren's recent () study of surfboard makers illustrates the implications of the “ Strength and Stamina ” norm of the masculinity contest culture as the workers describe their jobs in distinctly physical ways as “hard,” “tiring,” “physical,” “messy,” and “dirty.” Warren notes that “…‘strong’ heterosexual bodies were wrapped up with understandings of surfing subculture” and that “women were discussed in terms of sexual desire and conquest.” In addition to the derogation of women frequently documented alongside hegemonic masculinity, men who appeared not to comply with heterosexual male norms were also disparaged.…”

Section: Hypothesis Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How “Win or Die” Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership

Matos¹,

O’Neill

Lei

2018

Journal of Social Issues

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Recent years have witnessed an increase in scholarly and practitioner interest in the effects of toxic forms of leadership and “win or die” organizational cultures in which employees seek to maintain their own status at all costs, yet there is little research examining the interaction of this type of leadership style and organizational culture. In this survey study of working adults, we demonstrate an association between perceptions of toxic leadership and “masculinity contest cultures” (Berdahl, Cooper, Glick, Livingston, & Williams, 2018).norms, rituals, and belief systems valorizing social dominance, work above other parts of life, physical strength, and the avoidance of weakness. Independently, masculinity contest cultures were associated with higher stress, work/life conflict, intention to job search, work engagement and job meaning, while toxic leadership was associated with lower work engagement and job meaning and higher intention to job search. However, results show a slight increase in work engagement and meaningfulness among men (but not women) who viewed their workplace as a masculinity contest and who reported having a toxic leader. These surprising results provide important insights into how toxic cultures retain employees despite their largely detrimental effects on job attitudes and well‐being.

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Section: Hypothesis Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How “Win or Die” Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership

Matos¹,

O’Neill

Lei

2018

Journal of Social Issues

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“…Consistent with similar studies of craft and creative work (e.g. Watson 2013;Warren 2015), in-depth interviews were conducted with owners of workshops and waged bootmakers within the spaces of production (a total of twenty bootmaking workshops). Invariably, interviews led to "workshop tours" (cf.…”

Section: A Note On Empirical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Inheritances: How Place, Materiality, and Labor Process Underpin the Path-dependent Evolution of Contemporary Craft Production

Gibson

2015

Economic Geography

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This article explores the historic-geographic evolution of contemporary craft production, with sensitivity to materiality of labor process, product design, and accompanying place mythologies. Craft productionincreasingly interpolated as a form of creative work-is shaped by concerns about retrieving archaic tools and ways of making things, celebrating provenance and the haptic skills of makers, and delivering (and marketing) manual labor process. In contrast to evolutionary economic geography's seeming immateriality and abstraction, attention is drawn to material aspects of place and path dependence that undergird geographies of new craft industries: how labor process evolves, in iteration with technical lock-ins that stem from production method, product design, and capacities of component materials, but also how legacies of mass manufacturing linger in putatively authentic places-shaping new geographic concentrations. An especially vivid case is explored: a cluster of cowboy bootmaking workshops in El Paso, Texas. Bootmaking has metamorphosed from artisanal to factory to a craft-based creative mode of production. Crucial were continuity in product design and evolution of labor process. So, too, was geography: an iconic borderland city location with historic legacies of labor intensive mass manufacturing; migrant workers with requisite embodied skills; antique tools; and significant stocks of leather, the core input material that must be seen, felt, and smelt by makers before fabrication. I argue for a grounded, critical evolutionary economic geography that requires stronger intersection with labor process, with the cultural logics infusing capitalism, and with greater recognition of material inheritances that are reconfigured in place over successive generations. AbstractThis article explores the historical-geographical evolution of contemporary craft production, with sensitivity to materiality of labor process, product design, and accompanying place mythologies. Craft production -increasingly interpolated as a form of creative work -is shaped by concerns to retrieve archaic ways of making things, to celebrate provenance and the haptic skills of makers, and to render visible (and to market) manual labor process. In contrast to evolutionary economic geography's seeming immateriality and abstraction, attention is drawn to material aspects of place and path dependence that undergird geographies of "new" craft industries: how labor process evolves, in iteration with technical lock-ins that stem from production method, product design and capacities of component materials; but also how legacies of mass manufacturing linger in putatively "authentic" places -shaping new geographic concentrations. An especially vivid case is explored: a cluster of cowboy bootmaking workshops in El Paso, Texas. Bootmaking has metamorphosed from artisanal to factory to a craft-based creative mode of production. Crucial were continuity in product design and evolution of labor process. So too was geography: an iconic borderland city...

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“…However, a hierarchy is in place that helps to reinforce a masculinized occupational identity. Warren and Gibson (2014) and Warren (2016) provide particularly helpful studies of the importance of emotions for men working in the male-dominated occupational setting of the surf industry.…”

Section: Men Masculinity and Emotional Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

The gendered emotional labor of male professional ‘freesurfers’ digital media work

Evers

2018

Sport in Society

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Male professional 'freesurfers' are paid to live an aspirational lifestyle and communicate this through media. In this article I argue that a 'stoke imperative' championed by the surf industry necessitates emotional labor. Stoke is surf vernacular for a clustering of feeling thrilled, joyful, pleased, happy, optimistic, excited, and satisfied. The surf industry manufactures and commodifies stoke to profit from it. Emotional labor is often assumed to be what women are 'naturally' predisposed to and 'better at.' While numerous studies argue that men have complex emotional lives, we still have some way to go to better understand how these play out through emotional labor, as men negotiate social, economic, spatial, cultural, and ecological contingencies. It is found that male professional freesurfers are competent at employing strategies for doing emotional labor when doing digital labor, such as microcelebrity. However, this involves negotiating shifting but also conflicting expectations, traits, and values of masculinity. It is also found that digital media technologies direct a professional sport 'technosoma' that comes to be a material digital networking of emotional labor for profit. The article extends what is currently a small body of literature on how emotional labor is experienced and practiced in relation to masculinity in male-dominated industries as new economic and social conditions of possibility emerge. A clearer understanding of what is taking place hopefully helps to interrupt any smooth reproduction of inequities borne of gendered stereotypes in the sport industry and through digital labor, which is nested in the new economy.

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Crafting masculinities: gender, culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

Cited by 36 publications

References 55 publications

Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How “Win or Die” Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership

Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How “Win or Die” Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership

Material Inheritances: How Place, Materiality, and Labor Process Underpin the Path-dependent Evolution of Contemporary Craft Production

The gendered emotional labor of male professional ‘freesurfers’ digital media work

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