Redundant Masculinities?


Book Description

Redundant Masculinities? investigates the links between the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' and contemporary changes in the labour market through the lives of young working class men. Allows the voices of poorly-educated young men to be heard. Looks at how the labour market is changing. Emphasises the social construction of gender and racial identities. Dispels popular myths about the crisis in masculinity.




Redundant Masculinities


Book Description

Redundant Masculinities? investigates the links between the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' and contemporary changes in the labour market through the lives of young working class men. Allows the voices of poorly-educated young men to be heard. Looks at how the labour market is changing. Emphasises the social construction of gender and racial identities. Dispels popular myths about the crisis in masculinity.




Marginalized Masculinities


Book Description

This volume explores how men in precarious positions in different countries and social contexts understand and experience their masculinities, focusing on men who are viewed as being marginal in a range of fields in society including the family, work, the media, and school. It provides a range of stakeholders including students, academics, researchers, and policy makers with an informed understanding of what it means to experience marginalization.




Spaces of Masculinities


Book Description

Changing circumstances in Western and global societies have introduced new constraints and opportunities for men and the formation of male identities. Meanwhile, the emerging diversity of 'atypical' identities ('atypical' when compared with traditional conceptions of middle-class, white, heterosexual men) poses new challenges for the production and use of spaces. Spaces of Masculinities provides a comprehensive introduction to the innovative and diverse research on spaces of masculinity. Drawing on a variety of geographical research projects, the central concern of the book is to highlight the significance of research on masculinity in sociological and geographical work dealing with constructions of gender.




Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism


Book Description

This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men’s experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies—from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria—that move beyond discourses positing a ‘masculinity crisis’ or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family.




SUICIDE IN MEN


Book Description

The goal of this book is to explore the phenomenon of suicide, focusing on males who are at a greater risk than females. Scholars and mental health professionals continue to have the tendency to ignore men and focus instead on the more narrow demographic groups. Attention is drawn to the lack of help-seeking behavior exhibited by men as well as the numerous recommendations for the prevention of male suicide. The issues specific to male suicide includes the atypical nature of male depression, the role of loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, the male hormone (testosterone), and men’s preferred method for suicide (guns). Suicide in specific groups of men, including male athletes, soldiers, mass and serial murderers, suicide bombers, murder-suicides, and famous creative men, is discussed in great detail. In addition, the text explores the many and varied reasons for suicide in gay men and in ethnic minorities. The invited contributors provide a cross-cultural viewpoint with essays on male suicide in Australia, China, Ghana, Palestine, and Uganda. Two examples are given for potential programs that appear to be effective for men: Mates in Construction which was designed to help construction workers in Australia, and Question, Persuade and Refer (QPR) training. The book concludes with discussions of how to prevent suicide in men, a group known to deny the existence of personal problems and is reluctant to seek help. With three illustrations and 19 tables, this book will be an excellent resource for crisis interveners, researchers, counseling centers, mental health professionals, and human service providers.




White Masculinity in Contemporary Australia


Book Description

Spanning the disciplines of sociology, history, media and cultural studies, and popular culture, this book offers a historical exploration of Australian masculine tropes and an examination of contemporary representations of masculinity in the media. With attention to a range of thematic issues, including race, gender, sexuality, mythmaking, media representation, class, and nationality, it draws on new qualitative research and interview material to investigate the ways in which everyday Australian men take up or reject such ideas. White Masculinity in Contemporary Australia thus explores the contradictory resistance to and adoration of ideals of masculinity, forms of Othering used to differentiate the practice of "good" masculinity from that of "bad" masculinity, the relationship between heterosexuality, masculinity and Australian sporting culture as central to ideals of masculinity, and the existence of differing pressures to be masculine. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in gender and sexuality, Australian studies, and contemporary popular culture.




Young Working-Class Men in Transition


Book Description

Young Working Class Men in Transition uses a unique blend of concepts from the sociologies of youth and masculinity combined with Bourdieusian social theory to investigate British young working-class men’s transition to adulthood. Indeed, utilising data from biographical interviews as well as an ethnographic observation of social media activity, this volume provides novel insights by following young men across a seven-year time period. Against the grain of prominent popular discourses that position young working-class men as in ‘crisis’ or as adhering to negative forms of traditional masculinity, this book consequently documents subtle yet positive shifts in the performance of masculinity among this generation. Underpinned by a commitment to a much more expansive array of emotionality than has previously been revealed in such studies, young men are shown to be engaged in school, open to so called ‘women’s work’ in the service sector, and committed to relatively egalitarian divisions of labour in the family home. Despite this, class inequalities inflect their transition to adulthood with the ‘toxicity’ of neoliberalism - rather than toxic masculinity - being core to this reality. Problematising how working-class masculinity is often represented, Young Working Class Men in Transition both demonstrates and challenges the portrayal of working class masculinity as a repository of homophobia, sexism and anti-feminine acting. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as youth studies, masculinity studies, gender studies, sociology of education and sociology of work.




Nine Centuries of Man


Book Description

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries?Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ahard man has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of what masculinity actually means for men (and women) in a Scottish context. This interdisciplinary collection explores a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, examining the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour.How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romance, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men a work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce a the book also illustrates the range of masculinities which affected or were internalised by men. Together, they illustrate some of the ways Scotlands gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how more generally masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history.ContributorsLynn Abrams, University of GlasgowKatie Barclay, University of AdelaideAngela Bartiem University of EdinburghRosalind Carr, University of East LondonTanya Cheadle, University of GlasgowHarriet Cornell, University of EdinburghSarah Dunnigan, University of EdinburghElizabeth Ewan, University of GuelphAlistair Fraser, University of GlasgowSergi Mainer, University of EdinburghJeffrey Meek, University of GlasgowCynthia J. Neville, Dalhousie University Janay Nugent, University of Lethbridge Tawny Paul, Northumbria University




The Men and the Boys


Book Description

In recent years, questions about men and boys have aroused remarkable media interest, public concern and controversy. Across the world, health services are noticing the relevance of men’s gender to problems as diverse as road accidents, diet and sexually transmitted disease. Teachers are increasingly preoccupied with the poor educational performance of boys, and criminologists have begun to explore why men and boys continue to dominate the crime statistics. In this timely new volume, one of the world’s leading authorities on masculinity helps us to understand these developments, and make sense of the multiplying issues about men and boys. Five years on from the publication of the seminal study Masculinities, this book reflects on the growing social scientific research in this area. Connell assesses its strengths and weaknesses and explores its implications for contemporary problems from boys’ education and men’s health to international peacemaking. Written in a lively and accessible way, this book will be essential reading for all students of sociology, politics and gender studies, as well as anyone interested in the future of gender relations.