As the project name signals, the notion of “gatekeeping” is important to our project. Who is allowed into the geek community and who is locked out? But how does geek gatekeeping actually work? Andreas Ottemo here reflects on this issue, based on experience from ongoing fieldwork at a maker space.
“When you say that you’re interested in gatekeeping, what do you mean by that?”
This question comes from a maker at one of the maker spaces I am currently visiting for our fieldwork for the project. As part of introducing myself and our project I have shared that we are interested in investigating how “geekiness” comes in many forms, but that previous interest in the “geek” stereotype in educational research has largely been shaped by focusing on the geek as a gatekeeper.
I then get to explain what that has usually meant, namely that one considers it a position that only some people can adopt and that is “privileged” in relation to some fields of study. This of course works to the disadvantage of people that might want to participate in an activity or a field but that for various reasons may not be comfortable with or allowed to adopt a position as “geek”. I also explain that one rationale for our ongoing project is that this logic might have shifted, given that the meaning and status of “geekiness” seem to have been undergoing changes lately.
“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” he says, “and I can certainly see that if you take for instance a particular gamer community that has invested a lot in their identity as gamers and want that to be something exclusive, then of course when someone comes along and wants to join in, they might react defensively and want to preserve their status. But are you also interested in instances of gatekeeping that might have similar effects but that function quite differently?”
“Of course I am,” I reply, and he goes on to explain that he thinks gatekeeping also works in a different way. Sharing a personal experience, he explains that there are also instances when someone with “geeky” interests might genuinely want to invite others to share those interests, but are at the same time worried that sharing such interests might result in unwanted reactions. For example, that one is positioned as a geek in a negative sense.
“Naturally,” he explains, “being reluctant to share one’s ‘geeky’ interests can also have gatekeeping effects but the motives behind it seem very different to me.”
The double character of the geek
This little anecdote in my view, again, points to the ambivalent character of the geek. As my project colleague Heather Mendick has noted together with Becky Francis in an excellent “dialogically” structured Viewpoint article in Gender & Education, the geek can be considered both abject and privileged depending on educational context.
In their piece, they relate this mostly to age and level of education, but as the maker I quoted above explains, this double character of the geek plays out differently in relation to other contexts as well. To us in the project, it therefore seems important to be sensitised in relation to both these logics when trying to pinpoint to what degree and how the geek is potentially involved in gatekeeping particular communities or fields of study. We are also eager to hear from you what other logics might underpin geek gatekeeping and that we should hence be looking out for.