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Studying Men and Masculinities
The late-twentieth-century anxiety about a ‘crisis in masculinity’ still persists today, particularly in English-speaking cultures. Studying Men and Masculinities offers an engaging and comprehensive overview of masculinity. Drawing on a wide range of cultural practices and texts from different genres and media, David Buchbinder examines the notion of patriarchy and the challenges to patriarchal power, including queer theory. The book considers whether crisis may in fact be built into the very structure of the masculine, and examines emergent masculinities post-9/11. Theoretical positions within the field are clearly explained and applied to real life case studies from literature, film, and television. Interspersed in each chapter are a series of questions and tasks aimed at encouraging the reader to engage her/himself in the study of masculinities in everyday life and popular culture. This topical and thought-provoking book will be an invaluable resource for students of masculinities studies, sexuality studies, cultural studies, and gender theory.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 9, 2018
020119: and i forgot to mention the fun of actually laughing out loud at passages quoted in an academic text! material for comic routines yes, but did not someone maintain that the philosophy that will answer everything cannot fail but be universal joke...
081218 first review: i have grown up relatively near the core of the ‘hegemonic’ masculinity investigated here, but this was mostly without ‘studying’. i have my own particular psychological history but this individual trauma is seen through common culture of males, for example, when young having doubts i would become ‘masculine’ enough, though i did not follow noted models held up as ideals. i was convinced that i was different, i am not so much...
i was never too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too shy, too aggressive... basically ‘too’ anything. i cannot claim to have been athletic, though i did make the basketball team this was primarily because i had friends who played, who knew i could play, who would perhaps have been insulted if i was not ‘one of the guys’. i was always seen as the ‘artsy one’ but, of course being a jock meant only fellow jocks would compete with you. i was never comfortable being artistic, less comfortable being smart enough, so downplayed both unfortunate aspects in the interest of ‘being a man’, which in retrospect seems absurd. but it was only through confirmation by girls that i felt a boy, for to them my male masculine anxieties were and are essentially absurd...
so i was alerted early on that masculinity is a ‘performance’ but since i seemed relatively competent, i never much studied it. in fact, i adopted many terms such as ‘patriarchy’ without thought, and this book, intended probably for undergraduate students, has been enlightening for me, who has practiced both aware and unaware ‘acts’ to confirm my masculinity. which, again, is not so different...
081218 first review: i have grown up relatively near the core of the ‘hegemonic’ masculinity investigated here, but this was mostly without ‘studying’. i have my own particular psychological history but this individual trauma is seen through common culture of males, for example, when young having doubts i would become ‘masculine’ enough, though i did not follow noted models held up as ideals. i was convinced that i was different, i am not so much...
i was never too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too shy, too aggressive... basically ‘too’ anything. i cannot claim to have been athletic, though i did make the basketball team this was primarily because i had friends who played, who knew i could play, who would perhaps have been insulted if i was not ‘one of the guys’. i was always seen as the ‘artsy one’ but, of course being a jock meant only fellow jocks would compete with you. i was never comfortable being artistic, less comfortable being smart enough, so downplayed both unfortunate aspects in the interest of ‘being a man’, which in retrospect seems absurd. but it was only through confirmation by girls that i felt a boy, for to them my male masculine anxieties were and are essentially absurd...
so i was alerted early on that masculinity is a ‘performance’ but since i seemed relatively competent, i never much studied it. in fact, i adopted many terms such as ‘patriarchy’ without thought, and this book, intended probably for undergraduate students, has been enlightening for me, who has practiced both aware and unaware ‘acts’ to confirm my masculinity. which, again, is not so different...
December 1, 2017
There's several views on "maculinity" in this book, different perspectives, that I liked. The author, seemed to me, wrote with little to no bias and did a good job in presenting relevant information on the subject, an interesting study, in other words.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews