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Being the “Go-To Guy”: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley

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Abstract

Based upon in-depth interviews with fathers who are employed as knowledge workers in Silicon Valley, this article argues that a newly constituted masculinity has emerged that coincides with the new way work is organized in the new economy. The article examines the relationship among this gendered subjectivity, processes of labor control, and fathering. It finds that the new masculinity functions as a key mechanism of control in high-tech workplaces that rely on identity-based forms of control and that the enactment of this new masculinity impacts the way fathers think about, experience, and manage their work and family lives.

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Cooper, M. Being the “Go-To Guy”: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley. Qualitative Sociology 23, 379–405 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005522707921

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