Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement: Unmanned Aviation: Gender, Skill, and the Transformation of Pilot Work

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This doctoral dissertation improvement project will focus on the rise of unmanned aviation and its implications for what it means to be a pilot. Even as commercial pilots in the United States face furloughs and other forms of economic insecurity, a growing civilian market for unmanned aircraft promises to create new opportunities for pilots willing to trade in their cockpits for ground-based computer terminals. This study examines how the virtualization of pilot work paradoxically produces new forms of embodied skill, and explores whether the shift toward unmanned systems signals the feminization of an historically male-dominated profession.The research will be carried out in a Midwestern state. The study populations will include unmanned pilot trainees, instructors, and curriculum designers, as well as policymakers and aerospace executives. General aviation pilots have emerged as an important source of opposition to unmanned aircraft development, and the study will develop a comparative account of their values, beliefs, and work practices. Research methods will include direct observation of unmanned pilot training, semi-structured interviews, archival research, and an attitudinal survey of general aviation pilots. This research is important because it extends the analysis of unmanned technologies beyond discussions of surveillance or state violence, by situating them within an existing ecology of civilian aviation. Conducting the study in the Midwest, where farming and now oil, dominate the economy, positions it to contribute to theoretical work on the future of rural livelihoods. This award will also contribute to the scientific training of a promising graduate student.