Pleasure, Power and Technology: Some Tales of Gender, Engineering, and the Cooperative Workplace

Pleasure, Power and Technology: Some Tales of Gender, Engineering, and the Cooperative Workplace
ISBN-10
1351995928
ISBN-13
9781351995924
Category
Business & Economics
Pages
206
Language
English
Published
2017-01-06
Publisher
Routledge
Author
Sally Hacker

Description

How are the pleasures of making things work turned into processes of domination? Are there links between gender and military institutions? Does eroticism have something to do with engineering? In this book, first published in 1989, Sally Hacker explores the answers to these and other provocative questions about our attitudes toward work and leisure. Drawing from her broad experience as a sociologist, feminist and student of engineering, Hacker helps us to understand the impact of technology on our society and how feminist principles can be used to make work life more egalitarian and more humane. In the first part of the book, the author examines various examples of the masculinization of power, ranging from military institutions to the mechanisation of farm labour, computer technology and affirmative action. In the second part, Hacker presents the results of her research on Mondragon, the world’s largest cooperative workplace, located in Spain. Hacker reaches surprising conclusions about gender and technology at Mondragon, where, in spite of the community’s egalitarian philosophy, gender inequality was as pervasive as in capitalist and socialist systems.

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