done

Organizing a critical communicology of gender and work

KAREN LEE ASHCRAFT AND DENNIS K. MUMBY

Abstract

This article engages in two broad tasks. First, it articulates the basic prem-

ises of a ‘‘critical communicology of gender and work,’’ suggesting a com-

munication-oriented model for examining the relationships among gender,

discourse, organizing, and power. The four basic elements of this model

are (1) a postmodern feminist conception of subjectivity, (2) a dialectical

conception of the relationship between power and resistance, (3) a dia-

chronic perspective on gender and work, emphasizing the importance of

historical context for gender analyses of organizing, and (4) a dialectical

view of the relationship between discursive and material worlds. Second, the

article demonstrates the heuristic value of this model through an empirical

analysis of professional airline pilot identities. Drawing on both archival

and interview data, the analysis shows how these identities are far from

fixed and unitary, but are actually complex discursive constructions pro-

duced by myriad historical, cultural, political, and economic forces. The

analysis positions gender, not as a marginal feature of organizational life,

but as a constitutive feature of the relations among power, discourse, iden-

tity, and organizing.

1. Introduction

Although scholars have studied gender in organizations for over three

decades, comparatively little research has examined the ways in which

organizations are fundamentally gendered. In recent years, however, crit-

ical and feminist scholars have begun to theorize gender as a fundamental

organizing principle. For example, Acker (1990) proposed a sociology

of gendered organization, arguing that ‘‘advantage and disadvantage,

exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are

0165–2516/04/0166–0019

6 Walter de Gruyter Int’l. J. Soc. Lang. 166 (2004), pp. 19–43

patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female,

masculine and feminine’’ (Acker 1990: 146). A number of scholars have

extended Acker’s framework, exploring the complex relations among

gender, power, discourse and organizing (e.g., Alvesson 1998; Britton

1997; Ehlers 1998; Gregg 1993; Martin 1990). Indeed, much of the re-

search conducted in the last ten years or so has married theoretical so-

phistication with ‘‘thick description’’ to provide insight into the gendered character of everyday organizational life (e.g., Holmer Nadesan 1996;

Martin et al. 1998; Scheibel 1996; Trethewey 1997).

While we position our e¤orts firmly within this body of literature, the

present study stems from two observations about the growing research

on gendered organization. First, we see much of it as reflecting a general

proclivity toward the physical site of work. This focus downplays par-

allel (and intersecting) formations that organize work, such as labor per-

formed beyond traditional work sites ( Rollins 1997), popular representa- tions of work and leisure (Graham 1999; Triece 1999), the historical

emergence of working subjects (Jacques 1996), and the social construction

of the professions (Macdonald 1995). Second, although the sociology of

gendered organization has yielded compelling critiques of macrolevel

structural forces (e.g., Ferguson 1984; Kanter 1977), only recently has it

begun to address the relationship between those forces and the microlevel

practices that produce, maintain, and transform them (e.g., Kerfoot and

Knights 1993, 1998; Knights 1997; Willmott 1994). Such ‘‘postdualistic’’ analyses recognize the dialectical interplay of micro- and macrolevel pro-

cesses and structures.

Consistent with these observations, we pursue two goals in this essay:

(a) to expand the usual scope of analysis to include work formations that

exceed conventional organization boundaries and (b) to enhance under-

standing of how gender and organizing are accomplished dialectically

through the intersection of micro- and macrolevel processes. Scholars in

the field of organizational communication are particularly well equipped to pursue these tasks, given their interests in collectively produced mes-

sages and meanings, structural processes, and communication across pri-

vate, public, mundane, and mediated contexts. Furthermore, organiza-

tional communication scholars have begun to address gender and power

in complex ways (Clair 1993, 1994; Edley 2000; Holmer Nadesan 1996).

Much of this work, however, highlights femininities in professional

workplace settings (for exceptions, see Holmer Nadesan and Trethewey

2000; Trethewey 2001). We aim to advance this research in two ways: first, by extending and developing the conceptual tools necessary to ex-

amine gendered communicative processes; and second, by shifting the

gendered lens to examine the intersection of masculinity and professional

20 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

identity, using the first author’s in-progress research with US commercial

airline pilots.

Our main concern, then, is to provide a framework for a distinctively

communicative reading of human organizing processes, while at the same

time recognizing that such processes take on resonance only within a di-

alectical, diachronic, materially grounded set of premises. Our conceptual

framework maintains that communication constitutes organizing yet ac- knowledges that this process unfolds within a particular political econ-

omy of work and professional life. In broader terms, our model is an

attempt to negotiate some of the more intractable philosophical debates

that have arisen in the wake of the postmodern/linguistic turn (although

the two are not isomorphic) and to suggest how scholars can both treat

the human world as essentially discursive and as concrete, real and incor-

rigible.

2. A critical communicology of gender and work

While gender is constitutive of organizing processes, this relationship is

not simple or causal. At the root of our communicology of gender and

work is the assumption that gender is a complex, fragmentary, ongoing,

and contradictory accomplishment that unfolds at the intersection of communication and organizing. Any model that attempts to make sense

of gendered organizing processes necessarily must address these complex

relations. Moreover, we do not read gender as a purely discursive or

‘‘textual’’ phenomenon, but rather as situated, embodied communicative

praxis (Schrag 1986) enacted in a complex field of discursive and non-

discursive relations of power, accommodation, and resistance (Jermier

et al. 1994). Such a view requires a communicological framework that

generates insight into the dialectical tensions between microlevel social practices and macrolevel institutional processes of reproduction and

transformation.

In this context, we conceive of communication as ‘‘the ongoing, situ-

ated process of invoking and/or transforming available discourses to

(re)craft gendered selves and settings’’ ( Kondo 1990). Communication is

therefore not a mere cipher or conduit for the enactment of discourses;

rather, it is the process through which those selves and settings are con-

stituted. That is, it is in the act of communicative praxis that iden- tities and meaning structures are enacted, maintained, and transformed

(Schrag 1986, 1997). In this sense, communication is inherently political

due to the ways in which social actors and groups struggle to ‘‘fix’’ and

Organizing a critical communicology 21

articulate meanings in particular ways via contexts ranging from mun-

dane interaction to the public and mediated messages of popular culture.

In this section, then, we sketch out the guiding — and nonexhaustive

— principles of such a model. The four principles outlined here are as

follows: (1) a postmodern feminist account of subjectivity; (2) a dialectical

conception of the relationship between power and resistance; (3) a histor-

ically and politically situated view of gendered communicative praxis; and (4) a conception of discursive and material practices as mutually

constitutive.

2.1. Feminism, postmodernism, and subjectivity

The significance of the relationship between feminism and postmodernism

resides as much in their tensions and contradictions as in their con- tinuities and coherence ( Butler 1990; Flax 1990). Indeed, while some

feminists have embraced postmodernism as consistent with the feminist

project, others have excoriated its apparent rejection of any strong sense

of agency and its ostensible capitulation to capitalism ( Brodribb 1992;

Hartsock 1996). We would argue, however, that these two perspectives

are far from irreconcilable; indeed, together they represent a powerful

conception of subjectivity. The juxtaposition of the feminist concern with

agency and identity, and the postmodern concern to ‘‘decenter the sub- ject,’’ actually enables a conception of the ‘‘speaking subject’’ of commu-

nication as contingent, fragmented, and yet teeming with agentic possi-

bilities ( Holmer Nadesan 1996; Kondo 1990). In this sense, far from

‘‘getting rid of ’’ the subject, postmodernism actually takes it seriously by

refusing to accept as given the relationship between communication and

subjectivity.

Guided by the premise that power is neither monolithic nor inherently

oppressive, postmodernism examines the complex relations of discourse, institutions, identity, and communication (Clegg 1989, 1994; Grossberg

1986; Holmer Nadesan 1996). By ‘‘discourse,’’ we refer to ‘‘conditions of

possibility’’ — temporarily fixed (i.e., predictable but not determined),

coherent (though also conflicted), abstract and dispersed social narratives

about people, objects, and events ( Laclau and Mou¤e 1985). Multiple

discourses (e.g., of masculinity and race) circulate and intersect at once,

although some enjoy greater institutional support, and so ‘‘look’’ and

‘‘feel’’ more persuasive than others ( Hall 1985, 1997). For example, Roy Jacques’s (1996) analysis of the emergence of the ‘‘employee’’ as a subject

and object of managerial discourse illustrates how the employee is both

a discursively constructed subject position that social actors occupy and

22 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

play out and the object of numerous discourses that attempt to control

and normalize social actors. Indeed, one could argue that much of man-

agement studies discourse is an e¤ort to constitute and shape particular

conditions of possibility (and limit others) for organization members (see,

e.g., O’Connor 1999a; Townley 1993). In a related fashion, Deetz’s (1992)

‘‘corporate colonization’’ thesis argues that the present day discourse of

‘‘managerialism’’ has profoundly shaped meaning and identity formation in the workplace, with a discourse of instrumentality as the primary

framing mechanism for conditions of possibility.

In sum, postmodern feminist theory rejects the notion of essential

identity, treating subjectivity as an unstable discursive product or e¤ect

— what Schrag (1997) calls the ‘‘who’’ of discourse. Put simply, gender

identity is characterized by ‘‘process subjectivity’’ ( Weedon 1987), en-

abled by discourse and (re)fashioned as multiple discursive threads are

provisionally sewn together and severed (Gherardi 1994, 1995; West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and Zimmerman 1987).

2.2. A dialectic of power and resistance

A critical communicology of gender and work also embodies a dialectical

approach to the relationship between power and resistance. One of the

limitations of much critical research in organization studies has been the tendency to focus either on processes of domination and organizational

control on the one hand, or processes of resistance on the other. In the

former, the emphasis is usually on the ways in which organizational

mechanisms of control work to inculcate in its members the dominant

values and premises of the organization ( Burawoy 1979; Jermier 1998).

While the possibility for employee resistance is often acknowledged and

perhaps explored, such resistance is generally interpreted as ultimately

reproducing the dominant mechanisms of control. Indeed, Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony has generally been framed in this way; that

is, as highlighting process of domination though the active consent of

subordinated groups. In the latter case, critical researchers have tended to

focus on resistance at the individual level, with little explication of how

such acts may be implicated in larger political, historical and economic

structures ( Bell and Forbes 1994; Hossfeld 1993). In either case, the vari-

ous tensions, conflicts, and contradictions that characterize the dialectic

of control and resistance tend to get smoothed out or undertheorized. In contrast, we suggest that a dialectical approach to power and resis-

tance requires attention to dynamic power relations as played out in

disjunctive and contradictory ways through everyday communicative

Organizing a critical communicology 23

practices (Collinson 1992; Mumby 1997). Framed in this manner, dis-

courses are neither inherently dominant nor resistant, but become part of

complex struggles amongst di¤erent interest groups. Indeed, as Collinson

(1992) suggests in his critical ethnography of blue-collar engineers, certain

discourses can be simultaneously dominant and resistant. In his analysis,

the dominant discourse of hegemonic working class masculinity serves to

both articulate resistance to management e¤orts to shape the culture and increase productivity, and to shape conformity to that discourse of mas-

culinity. Conceived dialectically, hegemony therefore refers to a dynamic

process of discursive struggle as various groups compete to secure mean-

ings in conflictual contexts (Mumby 1997). Accordingly, a dialectical

stance draws attention to irony, ambiguity and contradiction in gender-

work relations as they are manifest in the connections between microlevel

communicative processes and macrolevel discursive, political, and eco-

nomic forces ( Kondo 1990; Trethewey 1999).

2.3. Historical context

A critical communicology of gendered organization addresses historical

context. That is, it seeks to build a diachronic perspective on gender and

work, couching organizational communication processes within the po-

litical economy of the day. While most management and organization studies research has tended to be ahistorical, some scholars have begun to

address the ways in which dominant discourses arise out of particular

historical exigencies (e.g., Banta 1993; Jacques 1996). Ellen O’Connor

(1999b), for example, provides intriguing insights into the emergence

of the human relations school of thought in her analysis of the various

personal, political, and economic factors that led to Elton Mayo’s long

association with the Harvard Business School. O’Connor shows how

an alliance amongst Wallace Donham ( Dean of the Harvard Business School), Mayo, business leaders, and social commentators of the day led

to a highly conservative framing of political and industrial unrest in the

USA after the First World War, helping to shape the political context for

the emergence of human relations theory.

By situating critical analyses of gender and work historically, then, we

can illustrate the ways in which the relationship between gender and work

is subject to shifting social, political, economic, and historical forces that

significantly shape the construction of gendered work identities. One of our main concerns here is to show that discourses do not simply emerge

fully formed out of social bodies or formal institutions. Rather, the very

form of a particular discourse arises out of a complex, ongoing political

24 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

struggle amongst various interest groups and in competition with other,

already established discourses. Furthermore, such a historical perspective

is able to demonstrate that discourses do not remain stable, but rather

must respond to shifting political, economic, and cultural landscapes.

2.4. The discursive-material dialectic

Finally, a critical communicology of gender and work recognizes both

the materiality of discourse and communication processes, and the dis-

cursive character of the material world. While some critical organiza-

tional scholars privilege the discursive/textual over the material (Calás

1992; Calás and Smircich 1993), and others argue for a privileging of the

materiality of organizing (Cloud 2001), we propose a communicological

approach that examines the reciprocal, dialectical, and mutually defining character of the symbolic/discursive and material conditions of the or-

ganizing process. By ‘‘material,’’ we refer not only to ‘‘macro’’ economic

and political arrangements, but also to ‘‘micro’’ practices, including those

relative to the body and sexuality ( Bordo 1992, 1999). We see this move

as theoretically and analytically important in two ways.

First, in the wake of the ‘‘linguistic turn,’’ organization studies has

over the last twenty years ‘‘discovered’’ the discursive character of orga-

nizational life. Viewing organizations as constituted through discourse, many studies have explored the ways in which the most mundane features

of organizational life ( jokes, storytelling, informal rituals, etc.) provide

essential insights into the organizing process (Mumby 1987; Pacanowsky

and O’Donnell-Trujillo 1982; Scheibel 1999; Trujillo and Dionisopoulos

1987). Postmodern, deconstructive analyses have been at the forefront of

this e¤ort, taking to heart Derrida’s (1976) claim that ‘‘there is nothing

outside of the text’’ and viewing organizational life as ‘‘nothing but’’ dis-

course ( Boje 1995; Calas and Smircich 1991; Martin 1990). However, while this theoretical development has been extremely important in deep-

ening our understanding of discourse as constituting organizing, it has

tended to obscure the ways in which such discourse is meaningful only

within the material, political context within which it occurs. As such, part

of our goal in this article is to ‘‘rehabilitate’’ the material by viewing

communicative processes as enacted by real people in concrete settings.

Such a position does not suggest a regression to some form of positivism,

but rather avoids precisely the kind of ‘‘text positivism’’ to which the Derridian position sometimes falls prey.

Framed materially, discourse is therefore communicatively enacted in

the day-to-day practices of social actors. Performatively speaking, social

Organizing a critical communicology 25

actors take up discourses (of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.) and enact

them in particular ways in various social contexts. In this sense, people

‘‘do’’ identity and di¤erence in very real and concrete ways in specific

social contexts ( West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and Zimmerman

1987). For example, Scheibel’s (1992) analysis of the communicative per-

formance of a ‘‘fake ID’’ by underage female students attempting to gain

entrance to a bar illustrates well how identity is a complexly choreo- graphed, situational, and perhaps even fleeting phenomenon (needing

only to survive the scrutiny of the bouncer at the door). In addition, dis-

course is material in its interpellation of social actors (Althusser 1971).

That is, discourse does not merely embody a set of ideas, beliefs, and

values that people take on; rather, it creates the very possibility of par-

ticular subject positions. In Althusser’s terms, people recognize them-

selves as subjects by virtue of the process of interpellation — or hailing —

through various discursive forms. Organizational narratives, for example, do not simply inform members about appropriate or inappropriate be-

havior, but rather provide fundamental organizing frames that people

take on, accommodate, resist, and transform ( Ehrenhaus 1993; Fisher

1984; Helmer 1993; Mumby 1987).

Second, the symbolic/material dialectic is important in that it allows

us to explore the ways in which the ‘‘material’’ world itself is subject to

and defined by human discursive possibilities. As such, our sense of the

materiality of the world only takes on meaning and resonance within the frame of various discourses that enable us to make sense of that materi-

ality. For example, the concrete, material reality of an organizational

meeting has substance only insofar as there is a discourse that enables

us to enact, engage in, and make sense of such an event as meaningful.

Everything of substance about an organization — parking lots, o‰ces,

desks, restrooms, people, etc. — is always already meaningful within an

interpretive frame that shapes the conditions of possibility and constraint

for organizational sense making and behavior. Discourse, then, enacts and makes possible material changes in the world.

In sum, a critical communicology of gendered organizing examines how

work and gender become entwined, how this relationship is e¤ectively

sustained and altered over time and across arenas of human symbolic

activity, and how communication functions as medium and outcome of

institutionalized power. Perhaps most importantly, a communicological

perspective illuminates diverse processes through which gendered organi-

zation is (re)produced. In the second half of this article, then, we apply these principles to data collected by the first author in an ongoing study

of commercial airline pilots. The goal here is to provide an account of

pilot identity as the product of a complex, fragmentary, and contradic-

26 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

tory array of discursive possibilities that arise out of particular economic,

political, and cultural milieux.

3. Crafting gendered professionals: airline pilot subjectivity across public,

institutional, and individual discourse

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue,

I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

(John Gillespie Magee, Jr. wrote High Flight on the back of a personal letter in

1941)

Gillespie’s High Flight, lovingly referenced by participants in the present

study, rhapsodizes the romantic, even spiritual experience of flight. How

has this pastime captured our social imagination, and how did we come

to know and admire those who make it their livelihood? How did the

aviator become symbolically and materially nestled in a white male body,

and how did he secure unprecedented professional standing? How do

contemporary airline pilots invoke and rework this discursive legacy to-

ward tangible outcomes? The current analysis is part of an ongoing project addressed to such

questions. The first author is in the process of gathering data that address

the US production of ‘‘airline pilot’’ in two senses: (1) as it evolved across

seemingly discrete spheres of organizing activity ( popular culture, com-

mercial aviation organizations, individual pilot experience, and so on)

and (2) as it became entangled with gender, race, and class formations.

She has examined flight museum exhibits and archival texts that represent

commercial aviators. She has also conducted in-depth interviews with eighteen airline pilots from various airlines, seniorities, and ranks. These

sessions, averaging 2.5 hours, probe pilots’ experiences of the work and

culture of flying and its relation to their public and private identities.

Organizing a critical communicology 27

The account to follow is not meant as a comprehensive analysis of

these data. Rather, we present exemplars that illustrate the application

and promise of the communicology perspective sketched above. To begin,

we take the idealized identity and professional status of airline pilots as

a provisional product of shifting, competing, and historical discourses,

which have been (dis)organized through communication across various

social arenas. Relevant institutional contexts may include, for example, airlines, labor unions, federal interventions and regulatory agencies, mili-

tary organizations, certification programs, air and space museums, Hol-

lywood films, and career socialization in families. Here, we draw atten-

tion to early representational patterns across popular and trade discourse,

as well as contemporary airline pilots’ interpersonal e¤orts to represent

themselves. With an eye for common threads and tensions, we examine

how institutions and individuals (have) work(ed) to secure the status of

airline pilots as venerated professionals.

3.1. Historical visions and vulnerabilities of the aviator: the dual problem

of safety and professionalism

In the first few decades of the twentieth century, public narratives of flight

and fliers produced an array of cultural knowledge about pilots. Turn-of-

the-century depictions of aviation ‘‘pioneers’’ like the Wrights, for exam- ple, tapped a beloved US icon: the ‘‘inventor-tinkerer’’ ( Wecter 1941).

These initial images of fliers a‰rmed social faith in the progressive union

of science with American adventure, risk, and practicality. Soon, the ‘‘in-

trepid birdman,’’ a moniker in wide circulation by 1910, came to capture

the flashy flier of air meets and shows. Trade magazines and the popular

press celebrated this figure as a superman, unafraid of death and con-

summately athletic, his body and mind a perfect specimen: ‘‘an extra-

ordinary combination of active energy, courage, decision of purpose, a quick eye, clearness of judgment, the utmost presence of mind, and great

physical dexterity’’ (Corn 1979: 558). Some even posited flight as the

exclusive evolutionary capacity of those rare humans lucky enough to

descend from birds (Corn 1979). Alongside awe for his form and skill,

many people esteemed birdmen as peculiar, unpredictable characters, en-

titled to eccentricity by the sheer feat of their artistry. In this sense, the

birdman was comparable to a circus performer or rock star, cloaked in

the ‘‘flamboyant and colorful quirks of character and dress common to show-business people’’ ( Hopkins 1971: 8).

The First World War brought a solemn face to the flier and stirred

public fervor for the fatalistic but gallant ‘‘ace,’’ as he embodied ‘‘the an-

28 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

cient notions of bravery, camaraderie, and adventure, which so curiously

merge in war’’ ( Hopkins 1971: 9). Despite their relative insignificance to

war outcomes, pilots like Eddie Rickenbacker and the infamous ‘‘Red

Baron’’ became household heroes, e¤ectively diverting attention from the

atrocities of battle on the ground. Not long after the war, many military

pilots who wished to fly for a living became traveling salesmen of flight.

O¤ering rides and lessons to locals, they generally improvised farm fields as airstrips. These so-called ‘‘barnstormers’’ came to epitomize the primi-

tive, unregulated, dangerous days of flight. Most often, the barnstormer

was (and is) rendered as a lone, rugged, risk-taking, hot-tempered dare-

devil.

In the years following the First World War, a host of civilian and mil-

itary pilots achieved celebrity status, adding a layer of elegance to the

swashbuckling image of aces and barnstormers. Featured prominently in

Hollywood films, advertisements, and other popular texts, celebrity pilots often appeared as ‘‘hard-living, hard-drinking playboys’’ who magically

merged physical perfection and (hetero)sexual potency with an eternal

life of excess. For example, a 1936 Literary Digest characterized fliers

as technological marvels unto themselves: ‘‘Sleek in mind and body as

the streamlined machines they pilot through the skies, these modern day

mercuries are sorted out of the common run of humanity by a selfless

elimination process which tolerates no flaw of body, nerve, or character’’

(Flying supermen and superwomen 1936: 22). And Fortune magazine later declared that, ‘‘something has kept these chaps young, and it isn’t

asceticism either. When they play poker they play all night. When they

smoke they smoke too much. When they drink their glasses leak, and

when they make love complaints are rare’’ ( Lay 1941).

By the late 1920s, the prestigious profile of airmail aviators had also

shaped the widespread perception of pilot as cultural idol. Renowned for

his bravery, individualism, skill, and intolerance of bureaucratic nuisance,

the airmail pilot enjoyed near-demigod status. ‘‘Popular magazines se- rialized his exploit, and he bore many of the hallmarks of hero worship

which a later generation would transfer to astronauts’’ ( Hopkins 1971:

20). Not surprisingly, despite the risk and regular fatalities entailed in

early postal aviation, young male applicants abounded.

In sum, the airplane appeared to symbolize ‘‘the perfect blending of

idea and technology, and the man who sat at its controls personified un-

told centuries of human wonderment at the concept of flight’’ ( Hopkins

1971: 8). Available discourses of flight and flier wove distinctively mas- culine themes of physical and sexual prowess, individualism, debonair

courage, and rugged adventure, peppered with a dash of science. The first

US airline pilots emerged from this manly mystique, which bestowed

Organizing a critical communicology 29

on them symbolic resources and vulnerabilities. ‘‘Suave superman’’ they

could pull o¤, for instance, but surely not ‘‘reliable professional.’’ As

Hopkins (1971: 15) explained, the flier’s aura ‘‘stemmed from sources

which were distinctly nonprofessional. Self-taught inventors, daredevil

birdmen, and hard-living celebrity fliers were in many respects the an-

tithesis of the formally educated man with a college degree’’. However

adored, the flier’s body appeared robust, untamed, even excessive — a far cry from the muted, stable bureaucratic body. The pilot’s exceptional

physicality and bold individuality presented at least two problems. Re-

spectively, these features distanced him from the conventional work cul-

tures of white-collar professionals and organized labor. Moreover, they

encouraged public fascination with and fear of flight. These problems

converged in the burgeoning airline industry.

3.2. To save an industry, to close a cockpit: the discourse of pilot as

professional

Due largely to belief in the pilot’s superhuman capacities, few people

perceived flight as a safe and normal human activity. Toward the late

1920s, the airline industry responded with a public relations campaign

designed to boost confidence in aviation safety and, thus, to attract a

passenger population. Central to the e¤ort was the reconstruction of pilots as legitimate professionals. Airlines began to stress the pilot’s tech-

nical skills, carefully honed through rigorous training and testing. In a

kind of reverse logic, they cited his high salary as a sure marker of pro-

fessional credibility. At the core of this campaign, however, stood the

pilot’s body. He underwent a makeover, literally re-dressed and supplied

with props to facilitate professional performance. Specifically, several

airlines designed pilot uniforms to mimic that of a sea captain and, ac-

cordingly, to invoke a tradition of authority, rational decision-making, and technical expertise previously associated with o‰cers. Crew members

were assigned formal rank titles, such as ‘‘Captain’’ and ‘‘First O‰cer.’’

Some airlines installed loudspeakers to enable air captains to communi-

cate with passengers like their sea counterparts. Aviation, the dominant

trade magazine, consistently praised these strategic moves, arguing that

customers would recoil if pilots dressed in ‘‘grease-stained or rough and

tumble clothing’’ ( Hopkins 1971: 17). Crucial to professional depend-

ability, the uniformed body was also white and male, with the ‘‘clean-cut Anglo-American’’ type generally preferred ( Northrup 1947: 569–570).

Indeed, on the grounds that nonwhite members would soil the precarious

professional image of pilots, the Air Line Pilot’s Association (ALPA) ad-

30 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

hered to a formal whites-only clause until 1942, retaining a tacit prohibi-

tion for some time thereafter (Hopkins 1971).1

Attention to women fliers during the same historical period illuminates

the requisite masculinity of the airline pilot. Corn (1979) examined a

concurrent aviation industry campaign designed to make flight palatable

to the masses and so, to ensure the commercial viability of aviation. At

the heart of this publicity crusade was the white, (upper) middle-class ‘‘lady-flier,’’ whose e¤ortless — and seemingly brainless — performance

personified the ease and safety of flight. Typically, the lady-flier took

pains to preserve a feminine persona by, for example, donning special

flight apparel, applying make-up in public after flight, attributing me-

chanical di‰culties to personal inadequacy, and posing as a social but-

terfly. Commonly, lady-fliers were also rendered (and depicted them-

selves) as ‘‘aerial housekeepers,’’ purveyors of ‘‘safe and sane’’ flight,

mothers of the next generation of aviators — in brief, figures of ‘‘aerial domesticity’’ (Corn 1979: 564). As expected, the lady-flier captivated au-

diences and soothed the anxieties of would-be passengers.

While the industry thrived due to her presence, the lady-flier seemed at

once to create opportunity for women aviators and to risk feminizing a

pilot’s work. Corn (1979) claimed that neither happened — that, surpris-

ingly, the opposite occurred. A host of institutional tactics converged to

sever flight from femininity. For instance, after the first woman airline

pilot ( Helen Richey) was hired in 1934, male airline pilots lobbied vocif- erously against female fliers, citing the unpredictable behavioral e¤ects of

menstrual cycles. The Air Commerce Department responded by restrict-

ing women to fair-weather airline operations. In protest, Richey resigned

by the end of 1935. It would be 38 years before a US airline hired another

female pilot. In Corn’s succinct summary, ‘‘In no other branch of avia-

tion did discrimination and the limits of woman’s place in the air show so

clearly’’ (Corn 1979: 562).

Arguably, such tangible exclusionary tactics were enabled by the gender symbolism that bound seemingly disparate publicity campaigns.

Placed alongside one another, the airline professionalism and lady-flier

crusades virtually ensured that ‘‘woman airline pilot’’ would appear as

oxymoron. Consider the increasingly popular image of uniformed ‘‘Cap-

tains’’ and ‘‘First O‰cers,’’ radiating scientific know-how and polished

professionalism. Against this profile, the lady-flier ironically undermined

her own right to fly. Her frivolous and mechanically inept identity at once

assured the public that anyone could fly and obliterated their trust in her capacity to do so in any reliable capacity. With its emphasis on domes-

ticating flight, the lady-flier image actually evoked the feminine figure

that supplanted her. In fact, it was in the early 1930s that airlines began

Organizing a critical communicology 31

to employ attractive, amiable nurses in the service of passengers’ in-flight

comfort. As Corn (1979) explained, ‘‘Stewardesses, in short, were profes-

sional nurturers, hired pursuant to the same business strategy of exploit-

ing sex to make air travel seem safe and comfortable as were women

pilots.’’ The lady-flier ‘‘of the late 1920s and 1930s was the first to render

the sky friendly and hospitable,’’ yet ultimately, she unwittingly set the

stage for her own replacement by the stewardess (Corn 1979: 571). The airline pilot’s new professional image did more than pacify a flying

public. Airline pilots themselves began to deploy the bodily — and, spe-

cifically, gender and race — bases of professionalism to seduce congres-

sional support and secure professional monopoly. For example, in an

early analysis of pilots’ remarkable success at collective bargaining,

Northup (1947) speculated that ALPA achieved its strength by master-

fully wielding the pilot’s image: ‘‘Despite its limited numbers (and votes),

it (ALPA) has won the aid of Congress to a degree which has been exceeded by few organizations. Taking full advantage of the ‘romantic

allure’ of the industry and jobs, pilots, lobbying in their smart uniforms,

have impressed the legislators time and again’’ ( Northup 1947: 574).

Hopkins (1971) concurred, arguing that airline pilots climbed by ‘‘ma-

nipulating the masculinity symbols which were so blatantly a part of avi-

ation’’ ( Hopkins 1971: 2). Even ALPA’s founder, David Behncke, recog-

nized the material consequences of such symbolism. In an address at the

1934 ALPA convention, he observed,

Before we organized there was no such thing as an air line pilot . . . It has all been

created by publicity . . . What we have done, we have taken the air transport pilots

that fly on the lines, we have given them their real names, we have given them

their birth right, they are air line pilots . . . Cartoons setting forth the air line pilot

and . . . words blazing across the papers . . . have set you up separate and distinct

with high qualifications and high in the economic set up of this country. That is

worth plenty. (cited in Hopkins 1971: 17–18)

In sum, airlines and airline pilots e¤ectively manufactured the aviator’s

professional prestige as a path to industry viability and occupational sta-

tus. They sold commercial flight and fliers, in large part, by fashioning a

professional body around a particular model of white masculinity —

technical, rational, paternal, commanding, and civilized. The develop-

ing notion of professional airline pilot played o¤ the larger aviation in-

dustry’s image of the lady-flier, as well as the emerging identity of the airline stewardess, ultimately denying women’s legitimate role in the pro-

fessionalized cockpit. Archival research suggests that the discourse of

pilots as professionals who embody technical, physical, and emotional

32 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

mastery found considerable staying power. For at least forty years, it

was reproduced across domains of social activity, ranging from airline

advertising campaigns and documentaries to (auto)biographies of airline

captains to children’s books. But this is not to imply that pilots have oc-

cupied an entirely stable position. Even those who ‘‘touched the face of

God’’ can fall from grace.

3.3. Persistent tensions: the airline pilot’s unique class dialectic

To be sure, the professional airline pilot did not reject his heritage; he re-

tained much of the character of his ancestors — namely, an adventurous,

anti-bureaucratic sensibility. As such, he embraced and distanced himself

from white- and blue-collar labor cultures. For example, after much con-

sideration and with some reluctance, the budding airline pilot’s union opted in 1931 to o‰cially a‰liate with the American Federation of Labor

in an e¤ort to borrow on the institutional muscle of organized labor. Pilot

leaders chose the AFL over the more prestigious Brotherhood of Loco-

motive Engineers because the former o¤ered greater organizational au-

tonomy ( Hopkins 1971). Even today, airline pilots walk the picket lines

clad in o‰cers’ suits. As these observations suggest, pilots have long

straddled conflicting class symbolism. More specifically, they embody an

ongoing dialectic between what we self-consciously call the ‘‘civilized’’ masculinity of professionals and the ‘‘primitive’’ masculinity of organized

labor (Ashcraft and Flores 2003). Alternately, and sometimes all at once,

airline aviators are businessmen with white collars, ‘‘outspoken rugged

individualists,’’ and ‘‘close-lipped advocates of union solidarity’’ ( Hop-

kins 1971: 2). In this sense, the airline pilot can be understood as both a

unique and precarious discursive construction.

The capacity to blend contradictory labor symbolism is a tremendous

resource, if for no other reason than sheer flexibility. That is, it allows selective access to the arguments and advantages usually reserved for

divergent labor groups. Yet such blends are also di‰cult to manage, for

they require delicate acts of balance and risk the production of incoherent

work identities. During labor negotiations, for example, the airline pilot’s

body can oddly mutate into that of a weary skilled laborer left to defend

his assaulted interests. The image of uniformed o‰cers on strike has been

known to irk the public and incite depictions of greedy, ‘‘uppity’’ corpo-

rate aviators (Canyon 1999a). Conversely, as Northup (1947) remarked about the first airline pilot strike, ‘‘In the eyes of the public and the Con-

gress, it reduced a group considered ‘‘professional’’ to the regular em-

ployee level and stripped them of their glamour’’ ( Northup 1947: 575).

Organizing a critical communicology 33

Written over fifty years later, Canyon’s (1999b) e¤ort to defend striking

pilots grapples with a similar class dialectic:

How many government-mandated tests a year does your average brain surgeon

take? Blue-collar workers? . . . Airline pilots are blue-collar labor: hourly workers

who operate under a labor contract, just like coal miners or teamsters. Even

though airline company managements tell us how grateful they are for our pro-

fessionalism, at contract time they treat us like the hourly labor we really are . . .

Our goal is to return safely from every trip and with enough money to support the

people we love. This is the same goal that the unionized coal miner, the farm

worker and the teamster have — and probably the same goal that you have at

your job. Pilots would always rather fly than fight, but we will fight if we feel

threatened, endangered, or cheated. (Canyon 1999b: 60)

Canyon’s account rests on a sort of ‘‘every working man’’ discourse of

protector and provider, spiced up by the metaphor of an animal in-

stinctually defending itself from undue provocation. Simultaneously, such

claims can appear suspect when juxtaposed with a captain’s rational, so-

phisticated professionalism, not to mention his six-figure salary.

Likewise, the accounts of many contemporary airline pilots reflect class

tensions. In the interviews conducted thus far, they have overwhelmingly aligned their identification with an informal college of airline pilots, dis-

sociating from airline management and unions. One recently retired cap-

tain explained that,

Back in the early 70s, if you became an 890 [similar to a line instructor], that

meant you were on a track to go into management, because, you know, you’re

going into an o‰ce. I wanted to fly. Yeah, they told me, ‘‘Eventually, if you do

this, we’re gonna make you into a suit.’’ That was always the joke, ‘‘Oh, now

you’ll be a suit.’’ ‘‘Those suits.’’ I just wanted to fly.

Similarly, most of the pilots interviewed shunned aspirations to manage-

ment, noting their passion for ‘‘flying the line’’ — for being ‘‘a doer, not

someone who watches the other guys do.’’ Lest this sentiment be read as

anti-management and prolabor, it is worth noting that participants did not take themselves for union enthusiasts either. One pilot abridged a

common view: ‘‘I’m occasionally thankful to them (ALPA) because they

do a function that I don’t want to do, but I’m not the union type. I’m not

a clubby, and I just like to not have a boss and do my own thing . . .

ALPA is just more administration.’’ In similar shades, most interviewees

painted unionization as an unfortunate necessity. A few even described

twinges of shame triggered by reading union material: ‘‘A lot of times,

honestly, the union mindset is pretty embarrassing to me. It’s ridiculous, I

34 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

mean, it’s just not professional. You should see some of the materials

they distribute, stu¤ that isn’t spelled right all over it. It’s just embarrass-

ing, and several of us laugh about it a lot.’’

Airline pilots also characterize the nature of their work as ‘‘not quite’’

or ‘‘both’’ blue- and white-collar labor. When pressed to distinguish these

categories and situate themselves accordingly, all participants echoed the

pithy voice of one: ‘‘It kind of falls in between.’’ One elaborated color- fully,

Well, there’s a funny old saying: How do you know the di¤erence between a

mechanic and a technician? The mechanic washes his hands before he pisses, and

a technician washes them afterward. So if you’re talking white-collar and blue-

collar work, I would almost consider my job as being both. Any white-collar job

that deals with the diversity of people a captain has to deal with — airplane

cleaners . . . to airport managers . . . Or the kinds of problems I have to deal with

in the air. You’re the whole show when you’re in the air, so I’ve had to crawl

around in the belly of the plane on an overseas flight to figure out electrical

problems. Blue-collar kind of work. You sort of do it all.

Although participants struggled to apply labor categories to their actual

work, most concurred that the general public categorically perceives air-

line pilots as white-collar professionals. Respondents varied widely in at-

tempts to justify their high occupational status, but most touched on one or more of the following rationales: (1) high-risk environment requiring

complex problem-solving under pressure, (2) responsibility for many

lives, (3) responsibility for expensive equipment, (4) extensive training;

and (5) high pay (note the similarity to what we called earlier the ‘‘reverse

logic’’ of the initial airline professionalism campaign). That individual

pilots internalize these rationales quite di¤erently is evident in the range

of occupations to which they compared their own: traveling salesman,

truck driver, doctor or surgeon, lawyer, ship captain, artist or musician, and world leader, to name a few.

When pressed to support their rationales, most participants eventually

granted that airline pilot status appeared to rest on somewhat arbitrary

ground. Many turned to the pilot’s traditionally glamorous public profile:

‘‘There’s an image that may not fit the reality about the job . . . for men,

it’s the idea of freedom, the uniform, there’s a certain amount of power

and authority and respect associated with it.’’ Most described such popu-

lar perceptions as half-truths, ‘‘probably partly true, but probably partly folklore.’’ After one especially lively exchange on the relative economic

position of pilots and mechanics, one respondent quipped with a satirical

smile, ‘‘I don’t know, really. But I’ll tell you this . . . my feeling is, let’s not

Organizing a critical communicology 35

change the game now that I’m playing it by these rules, you know what

I’m saying?’’

But the rules are changing, and many participants expressed keen

awareness of that point. When asked to identify major trends shaping the

airline pilot profession today, several respondents named the push to in-

crease the number of female and minority pilots as the most significant

shift underway. Not surprisingly, they disagreed on the consequences, which ranged from lowered standards and decreased safety (due to a

dearth of qualified candidates) to diminished cockpit bonding to the ad-

dition of crucial new skills and perspectives. A few bared politically risky

yet poignant feelings, as in this interview exchange:

(A is pilot, Q is researcher)

A: You’d like to think of this job as something that’s real, like you say, it kind

of becomes something that takes a lot of skill . . . And then you see this, some

little slight gal, you know, flying away, flying this big airplane . . . You kind

of think, shit! . . . In fact, when I see one of these, sometimes when I see some

of these gals . . . I’ve thought, well, boy, you know, now if she can be a cap-

tain and do the job, hey, what do I, what’s the big, what have I been sweating

all this time, you know?

Q: And what do you mean, ‘‘Boy, if she’s a captain, what have I been sweat-

ing?’’ What do you mean?

A: Well, it’s just — There’s the male-female thing for you. It’s like, it’s just like

if you were going into combat, you know, and it’s a big thing for you. You

gotta well up the courage and determination to go fight that enemy, and

you’re thinking like that this could only be done by some hard, prepared guy.

And then all of a sudden you see some woman walking out of the fray of the

battle, holding a machine gun on her shoulder. And you realize, hey, how in

the hell did you do that?

Q: And it hurts a little bit?

A: It does. Yeah. It does hurt just a tad. It pricks something.

This pilot (who had overcome physical obstacles to land his airline job,

and was now only a few years from retirement) proceeded to explain that

women in the cockpit unraveled the cherished feeling of manly accom- plishment and social relevance he derived from flying. At the same time,

he insisted that he flew with superb female pilots and firmly believed that

women should be able to fly. Somehow, he said, this intellectual appreci-

ation did not ease his sense of loss. With less frankness, other pilots con-

fessed a vague sense of personal deflation at the sight of pilot diversity

and, especially, of female pilots. For these fliers, a woman pilot appears

to expose the potent o‰cer as mere posturing, to shatter the myth of a

necessarily closed cockpit. More than the unsteady, dialectical character

36 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

of professional identity is revealed by such an analysis, for it also brings

home the point that the meeting of labor and class is a profoundly gen-

dered and raced matter.

4. Conclusion

This article proposed a critical communicology of the knotty relations

among discourse, identity, communication, and power. Our central aim

was to further the study of gender and work, first, by bringing within its

scope forms of organizational communication that exceed the workplace

and, second, by illuminating dialectical, historical, and material proper-

ties of discourse. In closing, we consider how our analysis of the discur-

sive construction of US airline pilots illustrates the potential of this

approach. Applying a postmodern feminist view of subjectivity, our analysis be-

gan by destabilizing the notion that airline pilot is a fixed or self-evident

category of worker, whose labor is naturally conducive to professional

esteem and simply happens to be performed by white men. Rather, as

revealed by the contrast between early visions of fliers and the later pro-

fessionalism campaign, airline pilots’ identity can be aligned with multi-

ple, even opposed, gender and class meanings. Because discourse and

materiality are mutually constitutive, which meanings come to hold sway is a consequential matter. Hence, the identity of the airline pilot is a site

of discursive and political contest; institutions and individuals perceiving

tangible stakes in the outcome vie to define him.

It is in this sense that discourses arise in response to political exigencies.

For the aviation industry of the early twentieth century, the public’s fear

of flight and subsequent refusal to buy passenger tickets posed one such

pressure. Public relations crusades designed to comfort and seduce the

public — one with lady-fliers and another, with airline pilot professionals — demonstrate the varied yet overlapping discourses that emerge to an-

swer a single exigency. In this case, seemingly contradictory constructions

of the pilot (i.e., ‘‘if a woman can fly, anyone can’’ vs. ‘‘only qualified

technical experts can fly’’) worked in concert to entrust white, (upper)

middle-class men with control of the airline cockpit and white, middle-

class women with the work of in-flight domesticity. Although pilot iden-

tity retained its manliness, the specific character of that masculinity al-

tered dramatically. Airline pilot organizers also grasped the potency of masculine professionalism and brandished this image to obtain unparal-

leled occupational status and economic reward. Particularly notable is

the way in which airline pilot professionalism, now taken-for-granted,

Organizing a critical communicology 37

was virtually invented out of thin air. Using the borrowed tools of o‰cer

symbolism, the flier’s daring, fast-living, and anti-bureaucratic body was

remodeled into that of a refined, reliable professional.

Such historical context is vital, not only because it reveals the political

and economic demands that prompt discursive maneuvers, but because it

denaturalizes present labor arrangements, unearthing their symbolic

roots. Moreover, historical context exposes the ongoing dialectal struggle that underlies seemingly stable work identities and relations; it also helps

to explain how abiding tensions become embedded in a given discourse.

As we have shown, the airline pilot professional did not entirely dismiss

his ancestry. Instead, his brand of professionalism retained a manly pas-

sion for autonomous adventure and so, resisted the development of bu-

reaucratic sensibilities, even as it also shied away from a‰liation with

working-class culture. Our analysis pointed to this class contradiction as

a pivotal dialectic of airline pilot subjectivity — a persistent tension that requires ongoing negotiation and o¤ers simultaneous advantages and

susceptibilities, possibilities for control and resistance.

So far, then, we note at least two ways in which discourse can be un-

derstood materially. First, discourses arise in response to ( perceived) ma-

terial conditions, as in the case of a financially faltering airline industry,

or of pilots who marshal their symbolic resources to resist managerial

control and preserve high salaries. Second, discourse takes the material

world as its material. In particular, discursive formations are inscribed on the body and performed in concrete practices; as such, discourse gen-

erates ways of being, seeing, feeling, and acting in the world. The phys-

ical overhaul of the airline pilot provides a compelling example of the

productive capacity of discourse across institutions and individuals.

Prominently displayed in an o‰cer’s uniform by airline management, the

pilot’s body exuded technical competence, professional confidence, and

emotional mastery. This embodied discipline generated feelings of safety

among ( potential) passengers, boosting consumer confidence and ticket sales. Additionally, airline pilots themselves began to mobilize the pilot’s

body as a symbolic resource in the quest for tangible professional priv-

ileges.

These examples suggest a third material quality of discourse. Namely,

discourse produces material conditions beyond lived subjectivities. By

this, we mean to say more than that discourse lends meaning to an exist-

ing material world. Taking a step further, we suggest that discourse

can literally create material conditions. Our analysis suggested that ma- nipulating professional symbolism enabled airline pilots to consistently

negotiate an enviable labor position. Similarly, the discourses of the lady-

flier and the pilot as professional allowed a financially shaky industry to

38 K. Lee Ashcraft and D. K. Mumby

achieve economic viability by situating itself persuasively within public

consciousness. The cumulative impact of the aviation industry’s success is

di‰cult to underestimate, for it has dramatically altered the way societies

and individuals experience time and distance, as well as communication

with and connectedness to the larger world.

At the heart of these discursive and material transformations lie deeply

gendered characters and the consequential emotions they ignite — the dashing male specimen who arouses our fascination with flight, the

whimsical girl whose guts shame us all into flying, the authoritative pro-

fessional who soothes our worries with fatherly protection, the charming

wife devoted to our every need in the air. While these figures are framed

in relation to public or passenger perceptions, our analysis indicated that

the gendered nature of airline work is as important to pilots as to those

who consume their services. Consider, for example, the airline pilots

who confessed mixed feelings about women in the cockpit. However one may read their reflections, their voices suggest a complex form of resis-

tance to occupational diversification, wherein beneficiaries of professional

privilege — however well-intentioned — struggle with the deeply emo-

tional experience of privilege under challenge or in decline. For at least

some airline pilots, masculinity (for example, belonging to an elite manly

club or performing the role of protective father) is pivotal to the pleasure

of flying. The question then becomes, (how) can more inclusive work

identities yield alternate pleasures, not based on relations of dominance and subordination? This issue becomes all the more daunting in light of a

previous implication of our analysis: work identities can engender mate-

rial conditions. As sketched here, the contested meaning of a pilot’s labor,

body, and self is more than a squabble over possible identities. It is a

discursive struggle over the right for occupational control, claims to pro-

fessionalism, and the political, economic, and social standing of a job. If

so, the diversification of pilot identity means much more than revising

the occupational identity and culture of airline pilots. That is to say, in- clusiveness may prove costly, for it will likely cast suspicion on long-

standing material systems of value and reward.

Chiefly, our analysis demonstrated that gender is a fundamental prin-

ciple in the organization of working subjectivities, not an incidental (or

coincidental) player or product. Since the inception of flight in the US,

gender and race have been crucial to the social construction of fliers and,

eventually, to the creation and maintenance of a much-romanticized pro-

fession. Moreover, the study of gendered labor is about more than pres- ent organizational identities, roles, and cultures. Gendered symbolism is

intimately bound up with material arrangements, such as the economic

status and bodily practices of airline pilots. And the dialectical relation

Organizing a critical communicology 39

between discursive and material worlds reflects a complex history of po-

litical pressure and struggle, as in the strategic e¤orts of airlines and pilot

associations to remake the pilot image and restrict access to the cockpit.

The approach outlined in this essay a¤ords one way to conduct analysis

across micro- and macrolevel processes and historical and contemporary

contexts. As it expands the usual scope of gendered organization studies,

a critical communicology can yield more extensive and textured theories of gender and work.

University of Utah

University of North Carolina

Note

1. ALPA is the first and still-reigning airline pilots’ union.

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Organizing a critical communicology 43

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