Making engineers tell their stories? Masculinity, whiteness and heteronormativity "at work" in life history interviews in irrigation in Nepal

Abstract

Feminist scholars have long observed the intimate relation between technology, engineers and masculinity in development. As a professional field dominated by male engineers, the world of irrigation and water resources provides a lens through which to study masculinity in development. In this chapter, I discuss the use of the life history interview as a means to expose and challenge this link. Unlike women in engineering, male engineers often provide no account of their choice to become one (i.e., to become an engineer). Life history interviews can make male engineers talk, and, in theory, help challenge the status quo. As a male irrigation expert and trained engineer, I describe how the act of interviewing helped build rapport with male engineers in Nepal. It helped to expose masculinity in the profession, but it came at a cost: in the act of interviewing, participants performed embodiments of masculinity, whiteness and heteronormativity, and thus, reinforced those embodiments. This dynamic underscores how knowledge production in the irrigation development profession, and water governance at large, is tied to gender, race and sexuality. It can never be disconnected from either the practice of engineering, the researcher and the research method itself, nor from the social encounters that both engineering and qualitative research embody.