Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble: Activism, Identity, and Low-power FM Radio

Christina Dunbar-Hester spent about 2 years skulking around Prometheus and making herself useful around the office and the barnraisings.  She followed us like an anthropologist and examined our quaint customs and practices as we attempted to demystify technology and the political system that makes the laws around who could own radio stations. A great snapshot of what we were trying to do and how we were trying to do it.

Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble: Activism, Identity, and Low-power FM Radio
Christina Dunbar-Hester
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 38, No. 2, 201-232 (2008)

Abstract below, or contact author for a copy: c.dunbarhester<at>gmail.com

In this paper, I consider the activities of a group of individuals who tinker with and build radio hardware in an informal setting called `Geek Group'. They conceive of Geek Group as a radical pedagogical activity, which constitutes an aspect of activism surrounding citizenaccess to low-power FM radio. They are also concerned with combating the gendered nature of hardware skills, yet in spite of their efforts men tend to have more skill and familiarity with radio hardware than women. Radio tinkering has a long history as a masculine undertaking and a site of masculine identity construction. I argue that this case represents an interplay between geek, activist, and gendered identities, all of which are salient for this group, but which do not occur together without some tension.