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Part 1
Theories and perspectives
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1
The institutionalization of (critical) studies on men and masculinities
Geopolitical perspectives
Jeff Hearn and Richard Howson
Introduction
Studies on men and masculinities are, in one sense, ancient. Men have studied men for centuries, though often as an ‘absent presence’. Men have historically dominated the written word, in academia, research, science, histories, literature, religion and many further arenas. Often this domination has taken the shape of men writing about men, and for men, generally implicitly so. And even when men have written on and about women, this has often been largely for an audience of men. Meanwhile, for a long time, ‘gender’ was largely seen as a matter of and for women; men were generally seen as ungendered, natural or naturalized. This absent presence and naturalized understanding that has operated through much of history is taken up in Genevieve Lloyd’s (1984) thesis on the relationship between man and reason. Thus, men and masculinity become the benchmark against which everything else about human nature is explained, and ‘men’ and ‘masculinities’ as individuals, groups or categories have typically not been problematized. This is now no longer the case, as exemplified in the relatively rapid growth of various kinds of studies on men and masculinities: some less critical, some more critical; some framed outside, even antagonistically to, feminist, Women’s or Gender Studies, some framed within those studies.
The broad approach and framing we focus on here, namely, critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), highlights how the gendering, yet absent presence, of men and masculinities is located within systems and relations of gender power and domination, and how understanding this necessitates drawing on the full range of feminist and critical gender and sexuality scholarship, as part of feminist, women’s and gender studies. So, while studying men and/or masculinities does not in itself guarantee criticality, CSMM foregrounds the critical impulse, unlike some other approaches to the object of study, such as those men’s studies that include men’s rights and some men’s movement positionings.
In this chapter, we examine the institutionalization of explicitly gendered studies on men and masculinities, that is, the making, reproduction and change in more durable academic activities, structures and interventions. Whilst acknowledging our Anglophone bias, we seek to understand these developments within a geopolitical perspective. In this, we make some connections with policy and activism, and to substantive and theoretical developments in CSMM, but to explore those areas more fully would require two further chapters.
Naming and framing
Different studies on men and masculinities pass under a number of names, including ‘men’s studies’, ‘masculinity studies’, ‘critical masculinity studies’, ‘critical men’s studies’, ‘male dominance studies’, ‘studies on men and masculinities’, ‘critical studies on men’, or simply ‘men and masculinities’, or – our preferred term – ‘critical studies on men and masculinities’. These different namings may seem innocent, but they are also associated with, and thus index, different orientations to men and masculinities – and indeed different ontologies, epistemologies and relationships with feminisms.
Let us start here with the term ‘men’s studies’. The term may seem the most obvious and innocent enough, but it is not; indeed naming can be politically dangerous. The term is used in different ways, even within the Anglophone world, as well as in other languages. Sometimes it is almost an equivalent to CSMM, especially when prefixed as critical men’s studies. More often, ‘men’s studies’ is ambiguous – are these studies on and about men or studies that ‘belong’ to men, a form of homosocial arena, even if comprising men defined as progressive? Are ‘men’s studies’ intended to be an equivalent, a parallel, a competitor to women’s studies, or even gender studies? Are these ‘men’s studies’ to be done critically at all and/or in relation to feminism? Sometimes, explicit, gendered studies on men and masculinities are conducted without reference to feminism or criticality or gender emancipation, or speak against feminism, giving men another platform to exercise their voice. Imagine if (non-critical) white studies were championed by white people against black studies. For these reasons, CSMM, conducted by women, men and further genders, as part of feminist, Women’s and Gender Studies, are necessary (Hearn, 1997, 2004). CSMM encompass various orientations, including that labelled (critical) masculinity studies, even if those strands usually focus their critique more on masculinity than men. Significantly, in contrast to some ‘men’s studies’, women have, in some parts of the world, for example, Central and Eastern Europe, been leading the development of CSMM, as part of feminist theorizing and praxis (for example, Blagojević, 2000/2005).
There are many reasons why studies on men and masculinities are developed, and these may be very often different for women, men, queer or trans people. There is a long history of women writing (critically) about men. This can be traced back to the so-called First Wave of feminism and to the voluminous writings of Second Wave feminism. Hanmer (1990) reported 54 feminist texts published by 1975 on women’s lives and their relationships to men. Additionally, different feminisms have different grounds, ontologies and epistemologies for studying men, as suggested in the question, ‘Can men be subjects of feminist thought?’ (Harding, 1998, p. 71): becoming ‘truly rational men’ in line with feminist empiricism; criticizing bourgeois, sexist ideology, in line with Marxist feminism; refusing to be men, following radical feminism; becoming historically situated feminist men, as according to socialist feminism; and developing multicultural, global feminist analyses on and by men. In such various ways, some men may claim to be ‘feminist’, and some women may attribute ‘feminist’ to some men. Ironically, liberal feminists, who may have most ease in allying with men, may have the least reason to theorize men; radical feminists who may keep the most distance from men, socially and intellectually, may have a stronger motivation to analyze men, not least because subversive analyses of men as a gendered social category are part of that political and academic project. Meanwhile, Messner (1997) outlined different motivations for men to become interested in gender politics, and that would clearly include feminism and gender equality, ranging from the costs of masculinity to the recognition of difference and to the search and support for gender justice (see Egeberg Holmgren & Hearn, 2009). Furthermore, men adopt different discursive positions in relation to (other) men (Hearn, 1998).
Critical studies on men and masculinities
Critical studies on men and masculinities specifically present critical, explicitly gendered accounts, descriptions and explanations of men and masculinities in their social and societal contexts that bring them into sharper relief as objects of theory and critique. The idea that gendering men and masculinities derives from a fixed inner trait or core is problematic, even antagonistic, within CSMM; men are not to be essentialized and reified. CSMM have developed in part through critique of the (inter)personalization of gender relations and men, and specifically sex role approaches, to the completion of multiple local ethnographies, as in the ‘ethnographic moment’ (Connell, 1998). Key early texts include the feminist collection On the Problem of Men (Friedman & Sarah, 1983) and texts by gay/bisexual/straight men (Snodgrass, 1977; Tolson, 1977). There are obviously different narratives about the sub-field, for example, to what extent social science research is emphasized. For instance, a relatively early expression/intervention within the humanities occurred at sessions on men, feminism and feminist theory at the 1984 Modern Languages Association (MLA) convention, leading to the volume Men in Feminism (Jardine & Smith, 1987).
The 1980s saw many texts on black and minority ethnic men and masculinities that contributed to the demythologizing of racist stereotypes and discourses. Gender-subversive concerns have figured throughout, as with such questions as what is/counts as a ‘man’? In developing CSMM, certain themes have been stressed that have often been in contradiction with definitions that privilege and prioritize men; as such, they have exposed and examined issues often ignored, such as local, personal, bodily/embodied or immediate/present. This has led to questions about sexuality, family, fatherhood, emotions, everyday life and so on, which in turn have attracted more attention than the ‘big (socio-political) picture’ (Connell, 1993).
In all of this, the development of masculinities theory from the late 1970s onwards, most famously through the work of Connell (1995) and colleagues, has been central in the institutionalization of CSMM, particularly through the employment of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, in its various interpretations, uses and critiques, including those of the hegemony of men (Hearn, 2004) and manhood acts (Schwalbe, 2014). The concepts of masculinity and masculinities have been at times difficult to define, in that they can refer variously to: practices, configurations or assemblages of practice, identities, types, structures, institutions, processes, psychodynamics, discursive and so on. A key complication is that masculinity is often linked to men and/or male bodies; sometimes, there is a separation of masculinity from men/male bodies, as in female masculinity (Halberstam, 1998); and a further critical position is that the concept of masculinity, like femininity, is to be used sparingly, if at all, in seeking to move beyond binary positions, languages and attributions.
In Cultures of Masculinity, Edwards (2006) outlines three phases in the development of studies on men and masculinities: a first based on the sex role paradigm in 1970s, in which men and masculinity were understood in relatively static, culture-bound and/or micro-sociological ways; a second emerging in the 1980s primarily out of criticism of the first, with a more political rationale, emphasizing power relations; and a third clearly influenced by post-structural theory, particularly questions of normativity, performativity and sexuality. These map somewhat onto distinctions between more liberal reformist, structural resistance and deconstructive rebellious framings and feminisms (Lorber, 2005) that suggest different approaches to changing men, men as subjects, men as objects and men’s relationships to feminist, Women’s Studies and Gender Studies scholarship – and thus tensions within CSMM.
These various characterizations are an over-simplification, but not a gross one. Recent years have seen further diverse influences on CSMM, from different feminist traditions, globalization, postmodernism, transgender studies, postcolonialism, queer studies and science and technology studies. Arguably, we are now witnessing a fourth phase of CSMM, with greater attention to international, comparative, supranational, global, postcolonial and transnational approaches (including migration, global inequality, war and so on), materialist-discursive, new materialist analysis and approaches and more rebellious positions on gender hegemony. There has been an important expansion of studies on or from the ‘global South’ (for example, Cornwall & Lindisfarne, 1994; Ouzgane & Coleman, 1998; Cleaver, 2002; Pease & Pringle, 2002; Jones, 2006; Donaldson et al., 2009; Cornwall et al., 2011, 2015; Ruspini et al., 2011; van der Gaag, 2014).
While not playing down differences between different investigative and epistemological traditions, the broad critical approach to studying men and masculinities can be characterized by:
- an explicit and specific focus on men and masculinities;
- taking account of feminist, gay, queer and other critical gender and sexuality scholarship;
- recognizing men and masculinities as explicitly gendered;
- understanding men and masculinities as socially constructed, produced and reproduced, rather than as somehow just ‘naturally’ one way or another;
- seeing men and masculinities as variable and changing across time (history) and space (culture), within societies, through life courses and biographies;
- emphasizing men’s relations, albeit differentially, to gendered power;
- spanning both the material and the discursive;
- interrogating men and masculinities through intersections with other social divisions.
To summarize, CSMM, methodologically, emphasizes historical, cultural, relational, materialist, anti-essentialist, de-reified and deconstructive studies on men and masculinities and is committed to developing studies along those lines. Overall, CSMM resists the potential to re-centre men’s power and moves, if only implicitly, towards the de-centring, the othering, of men, through both naming and deconstruction. Whatever the exact forms these interventions take, a material-discursive space is opened up for further critical inquiry.
Conditions of development
In terms of academic institutionalization, a geopolitics perspective is important in understanding what drives, differentially, the development of CSMM globally. Explicitly gendered critical studies on men and masculinities developed initially in 1960s and 1970s by women and men in Australia, North America and Northwest Europe. This Anglophone hegemony within CSMM is now being challenged, with increasing emphasis on the establishment of clear non-Anglophone research traditions and on the growing body of work produced and being produced across Europe, Latin America, North, South and East Asia and Southern Africa (for example, Gutmann, 2009; Vigoya, 2018; Novikova & Kambourov, 2003; Morrell, 2001; Shefer et al., 2007). Increasingly, transnational concerns across borders are on research agendas, often with attention to globalizing/glocalizing men and masculinities.
In considering what might be the conditions that are giving rise to CSMM and its diverse development, it may be useful to locate it in relation to some more general societal features. Especially important here are the geopolitical positionings of men and masculinities within the processes of globalization, neoliberalism, (post)colonialism, (post)imperialism and the structures of metropoles, semi-peripheries and peripheries or margins (Blagojević, 2009). ...
