This ethnographic project investigates the construction of working-class masculinities in the context of advanced knowledge-intensive manufacturing work. Shift towards knowledge-intensity of manufacturing work is structured by the broader transformation in capitalist system, where the accumulation of wealth is increasingly based on exploiting employees' cognitive, communicative and affective capacities rather than brute manual labor. The project asks, what kind of forms of working-class masculinity is emerging in the situation where employees are increasingly expected to enact combination of "middle-class" cognitive skills such as problem-solving with "feminine" co-operative skills and dexterity. The objective of the study is to produce more diverse and nuanced knowledge on working-class masculinities by challenging the dichotomized and often morally loaded ways of describing the practices and experiences of working-class men.

2022

2025