Some Introductory Remarks

This special issue is concerned with the social and cultural aligning of technologies and masculinities—how it happens and how we might make sense of it. Technology is an extremely significant site of gender negotiations in relation to occupations, symbols, and identities, and gender in all these areas has an extremely significant shaping influence on the design and use of technologies. As Cynthia Cockburn has argued (1992), since technology and gender are both socially constructed and socially pervasive, we can never fully understand one without also understanding the other. By the same token, since men and masculinities are particularly prominent within gendertechnology relations, technology should be a vital strand within the field of men/masculinity studies, and masculinities should be a vital strand within the field of technology studies. Yet relationships between men/masculinities and technologies are seriously underresearched in both fields. The relative dearth of related research in men and masculinities studies is surprising given that science and technology are widely acknowledged as powerful motifs of hegemonic masculinity. Useful studies of blue-collar occupations where men work closely with technologies have been collected in a special issue of Men and Masculinities, titled “Boys and Their Toys.” But we have not seen similar scrutiny of other sites in which men encounter technologies or of the cultural equations drawn between masculinity and technology and the roles these may play in wider gender relations. The relative dearth of research on masculinities and technologies within technology studies is surprising given the frequent acknowledgment that powerful technological roles are predominantly occupied by men who thereby have a disproportionate influence in shaping new technologies. But only recently have men/masculinities become a distinct theme of feminist technology studies (see below). We chose to compile this special issue in part to stimulate research on the topic and in part because we believe that both men/masculinities studies and feminist technology studies have much to contribute and learn from one