Degrees of Masculinity: Working and Middle-Class Undergraduate Students’ Constructions of Masculine Identities (original) (raw)
Related papers
New masculinities in universities? Discourses, ambivalence and potential change
Gender, Work and Organization, 2019
In this paper, we explore forms and possible implications of new masculinities in universities, and elucidate how they relate to hegemonic masculinity. "New masculinities" coins a particular tradition of naming in Nordic masculinity studies. In the Nordic context, gendered social relations are shaped by State policies and equality discourses, which are increasingly embracing father friendly initiatives. New masculinities refers to the increased involvement of men in caring practices and especially in fathering. Our empirical study comprises in-depth interviews with young male academics in a Finnish business school. We elucidate, first, the ambivalence and struggles between masculinities in the discourses of these men and, second, how the construction of masculinities is specific to societal, socio-cultural, and local contexts. Relations of class, and middle class notions of the "good life" in particular, emerge as central for understanding the experiences of these men. Beyond the Nordic countries, we argue that while the change potential of caring masculinity stems from particular contexts, the concept of new masculinities is helpful in capturing the ambivalence and struggles between hegemonic and caring masculinities rather than dismissing the latter as subordinate to the former.
Sociological Research Online, 2024
Historically, upwardly mobile working-class men have navigated the binary distinctions between a cerebral middle-class masculinity and a manual working-class masculinity. However, within an increasingly globalised world, the boundaries between the two are increasingly blurred and, therefore, distinctions between the two can often be quite complex. Part of the reason for this is the onset of post-industrialisation and increases in low-skilled service work which require certain facets of working-class masculinity to be readjusted. This conceptual article draws on existing historical and contemporary scholarship to delineate aspects of the borderlands between a working and middle-class manhood. We are interested in the identity work that occurs at the borderlands and what this may mean for upwardly mobile working-class men. The article acknowledges the role of sociological theory but instead foregrounds a social anthropological approach where we consider what the conceptual lens of liminality has to offer in light of historic and contemporary research.
Troublesome Masculinities: Masculinity in Trouble
IDS Bulletin, 2009
This article explores the notion of 'troublesome' masculinities that characterise much of the policy discourse and programme thinking on problems of young men and gender. It critiques the dimorphism that shapes this view of young men's gender trouble, and the 'culturalism' that constrains the perception of the troubled times in which many young men live. The article argues that young men can be enlisted in the feminist struggle to transform ideologies and institutions of male power, but only by troubling both the notions of masculinity that underpin them as well as the structural inequalities within which they are enmeshed.
What Threatens, Defines: Tracing the Symbolic Boundaries of Contemporary Masculinity
Sex Roles, 2018
A robust literature ties emasculation to a range of compensatory behaviors. The present study shifts focus away from the effects of masculinity threat toward an understanding of young adult men's experiences of emasculation in their own words. Drawing on 42 in-depth interviews with undergraduate men attending a selective U.S. university, we examine the behaviors, situations, and narratives-both experienced and hypothetical-that privileged young men perceive as threatening. We use these data not only to contribute to the empirical literature on masculinity threat, but also as a novel approach for theorizing about the meaning and structure of masculinity more broadly. This is an important task given recent social and economic changes that may have altered contemporary definitions of masculinity. Emasculation accounts provide unique analytical leverage for revealing men's often unspoken understandings of acceptable masculine behavior. We find that, while many interviewees superficially espoused egalitarian and anti-homophobic beliefs, their emasculation narratives implicitly call for the subordination of women and other men. These performances consequently obscure and maintain traditional, hegemonic power relations. We discuss the implications of our finding for scholars, practitioners, and individual men who desire a more equitable gender structure.
Understanding Men and Masculinity in Modern Society
SCIKNOW publications, 2013
Research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation. More books and articles have been published on this study area alone as well as the introduction of two specialized journals and the creation of several websites all providing different explanations of their understanding of men and masculinity at the millennium age. Masculinity is an area of sociology that has, since the mid-1950s, drawn on many theories, including structural functionalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical structuralism, and more recently, post-structuralism and theories of the post-modern (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001). Within popular culture, the media have also come across the perceived 'crisis of masculinity' in Western cultures – newspapers, documentaries and talk shows have increasingly pondered the changing meaning of manhood in our modern age (Alsop et al, 2002). The purpose of this writing is to understand men and masculinity in the modern world putting into consideration the sociology of masculinity, the social construction of masculinity, the crisis within masculinity as well as a fair contrast with masculinity and feminism.
Sociology, 2013
This article contributes to the literature concerning the construction of working-class masculine identity in a context of unprecedented social transformation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 24 young men currently employed in the retail sector, this study finds that contrary to much research on masculinities young working-class men are able to resist dominant and hegemonic cultural ideals. The respondents demonstrate a very different attitude towards the 'emotional labour' required in the service sector than is often documented, while also rejecting notions of traditional gendered domestic responsibilities in respect of their futures as potential partners and parents. Congruent with other emerging research in this area, the reference point for an 'acceptable' masculine identity appears to have shifted, with some young working-class men's lives, at least, illustrating an attenuated or softened version of masculinity. Downloaded from Sociology 47(4) masculinity, even its possible redundancy . However, the story has remained the same: working-class boys and young men, it appears, behave badly at school, retain their distance from, and are dismissive of, potential service sector employment , and preserve the domestic gendered division of labour . This is well captured by McDowell who, even after revealing multiple ways of 'doing' masculinity, still identified a 'dominance of a version of traditional, sexist masculinity, in both laddish behaviours exhibited in leisure arenas and in the domestic attitudes that affect workplace attitudes ' (2003: 226). It is, perhaps, no wonder that many people often find themselves saying, hearing, reading or imagining that, as the saying goes, 'boys will be boys', even when describing the behaviour of adult men.
Gender and Education, 2001
This article draws on discussion group data collected with 64 ethnically diverse working-class men who were predominantly not participating, or planning to participate, in higher education. The article identi es how the men drew on various discourses of masculinity in their arguments for and against higher education participation, and discusses potential implications of these discourses upon working-class men's continued underrepresentation in higher education. Analysis also highlights how the men's various constructions were framed/constrained by their locations within multiple, interlocking systems of inequality. Questions are raised with regard to future widening participation initiatives.