Gear Cultures, Masculinity, and Performed Connoisseurship

Drawing on extensive research to be published in Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies (co-authored with A/Prof Eliot Bates, CUNY, forthcoming from The MIT Press), this paper examines professional audio recording technologies–gear–its cultures, masculinity, and the performance of connoisseurship by men within those cultures. Theoretically situated in masculinity studies, this paper first addresses the hegemonic masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Holland et al, 1998 )–and the work that is undertaken to build, maintain and uphold them–within gear cultures. Secondly, the paper shows how hegemonic masculinities cut across numerous gear culture fora, to include online, trade shows, in trade press and retail catalogues, and events. Thirdly, the paper addresses how the purpose of hegemonic masculinities is to conduct effective boundary maintenance, to keep certain demographics–mainly women and LGBTQIA+ people–excluded from gear cultures, and to conceal the vast technological labour undertaken by anyone outside of the boundary. Lastly, the paper addresses the terms of engagement of who gets to participate in gear cultures, how and to what extent, under what terms and conditions, and what values and beliefs must be expressed. Here, the paper will introduce a new term, performed connoisseurship, to describe a particular formation of commodity fetishism that lies at the very heart of gear cultures. As required in fine art, this social practice usually requires deep knowledge of history and stylistic attributes of an object (Ebitz, 1988 ). However, in gear cultures, it is used as a game that must be learned, played–and won.