“Making coin” and the networker: Masculine self-making in the Australian professional managerial class

In this article I unpack the labour of “networking” to understand the changes in sociality and worker identity that have occurred in the Australian professional managerial class workforce under post-Fordism. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken at the interface of the pubic service and private consultancy firms in Canberra, I break from dominant readings of intimacy in post-Fordism which preference either a downwards imposition of “ways of being” from capital to worker, or a reactive self-regulation in line with objective external structures. Networking, I argue, is as much about being recognised as patron as it is about any tangible economic benefits. The intimate relations and self-fashioning of networking constitute attempts to embody particular classed, sexualised, gendered fantasies of the figure of “the networker” in post-Fordist Australian business culture. This interpretation does not necessitate overlooking the tangible results of networking, and I discuss too, how masculine fantasy structures the topography of workplaces.