Listening and/as Technology in British Gibraltar, 1940-2013
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Date
2015-08-18
Authors
Peake, Bryce
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the somatic politics of postcolonial masculinity and mass
media in British Gibraltar. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic and archival research over the
course of 5 years in Gibraltar and London, I trace the interconnections between the ways of
listening promoted by colonial administrators and scientists in Gibraltar during the post-World
War II democratization of mass media and the contemporary listening practices of Gibraltarian
men as they engage with, think about, and decry the use of emerging media technologies
among women and children. Using a practice theoretical framework developed out of women's
studies, anthropology, and science and technology studies, I move beyond "reading" the sounds
that represent intersecting gender, race, and class stereotypes; instead, I examine how
Gibraltarian men's media listening practices are both product and productive of a complex calculus of
colonial masculine domination that legitimates British colonial violence - symbolic and physical
- in Gibraltar today. In this way, listening to media technologies is transformed into a political
technology for the maintenance and operationalization of colonialism in Gibraltar.
Description
Keywords
Colonialism, Gibraltar, Listening, Science, Sound, Technology