> I don't know Connell. Maybe you could tell me more about him.
I know little, but here's a few readings:
Australian Journal of Sociology, Aug-91 "Live Fast and Die Young: The Construction of Masculinity among Young Working-Class Men on the Margin of the Labour Market" R.W. Connell
Abstract: Life-history method offers a way to explore the politics of change in contemporary masculinity. The life histories of five unemployed young men are studied, and compared with three men from similar backgrounds but different positions in class and sexual politics. The labour market (rather than labour process) and the state play a major part in framing the development of a 'protest' masculinity, a stressed version of hegemonic masculinity, sustained as a collective practice in milieux such as bike clubs. But dramatic rejections of masculinity, as well as low-keyed 'complicit' masculinity, emerge from the same social context by different class/gender praxes. Contrasting political prospects are raised by these differing trajectories. --- Australian Journal of Sociology, Mar-93 "A Bastard of a Life: Homosexual Desire and Practice among Men in Working-class Milieux" R.W. Connell, M.D. Davis, G.W. Dowsett --- Connell, R.W. 1998 "Masculinities and globalization", Men and Masculinities, 1(1), July --- and probably the book which might be of most interest to you:
R.W. Connell, Masculinities, Allen and Unwin, 1995 Reviewed by Neville Millen
Professor Bob Connell, who will be known to many of our readers as the former Chair of sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is currently Professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The depth of his scholarship on masculinities in particular, and gender relations in general, is revealed in this latest book, which has been heralded as a landmark publication in the studies of men and masculinity. Some critics have equated it with the work of Kate Millett in the 1970s and the impact she had in setting the agenda for the womens' movement by looking critically at the influence of patriarchy on women's lives.
Masculinities is essentially a compendium of his recent cases studies fused into the centre of a text which examines the philosophical underpinnings of the search for masculinity and the roles of men in the modern world, often tested under challenges threats to their masculine selfhood from the aggressiveness of the Womens Movement over the past three decades.
The first section examines in detail the ways of understanding masculinity by looking back at the main attempts over the past century to create both a science and social science of masculinity, most noticeably the psycho-analytic tradition of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Connell also looks at the political movements which appeared in tandem with such 'scientific endeavours' and their relationship with the various analyses of masculinity. In particular he looks intently at the emergent 'men's movement' derived principally from the interpretations of Jung's texts, centred as these have been on the divided sexuality of men: essentially the contests between the masculine 'persona' and a feminine 'anima'.
The next four chapters are devoted to case studies conducted over the past decade. Here we see evidence of how men in varying social classes and with different biographical make-up have, in most cases, undergone changes to their masculinity. Connell compares the lives of working class men (Ch 4: Live Fast and Die Young) to middle class professionals (Ch 7: Men of Reason) to shows how each group of men have worked through differing lifestyle expectations in social and cultural space to bring about new attitudes to gender relations; some more successfully than others. I found this section a bit disappointing because it doesn't hold together as a coherent whole and the theoretical perspectives outlined in the first section do not provide a 'neat fit' in many of the case studies examined.
In the final section Connell, returns to what he is best at: theory and evaluation of societal trends and the effect on masculinity perceptions. He examines the global history of masculinities in recent centuries and most important the specific forms of masculinity politics which have emerged in contemporary Western nations. This final section covers both the men's movement and the role of the media and social institutions in creating what are seen most as the modern forms of masculinities.
Masculinities is first and foremost a social theory text held together at its centre with more easily followed case studies. Connell's work provides a valuable sociological counterweight, adding balance and a source of both historical and cultural ideations about masculinity formation and research, to stand alongside the flush of pop-pyscho-therapeutical 'how to discover yourself' books for men which have flooded the market in recent years. ---
given your interests, I think connell might be very close to the topics you cited. connell's also done a lot of work with terry Irving on australian labour history, with which I'm more familiar. I'll also send a piece from the aust humanities e-journal which might add to the above.
> what do you think is the relationship between class identification and
being a
> boy?
it's not something I've thought about on its own. in some ways, I'd say that class identification is a highly problematic concept, since it already assumes a kind of absence/presence of what has already been defined by the researcher in advance as constituting (real) class identity. that is, I don't think I could say that someone who defines themselves as (say) 'American' and not 'a worker' is not for all that articulating something about class identity -- it may simply take on certain privileged motifs precisely because of the specific place of american labour in global capitalism, and their location relative to that of other workers within america as geography but defined as (truly, ie., ideologically) american relative to others because of the history and organisation of the labour process, the labour market, the politics of union and worker organisation, the modes of extraction of the surplus, ... I suspect, for instance, that the AFL-CIO always appealed to and helped constitute a certain patriotic masculinity...
having said that, I can only hazard a guess that the relation is one that operates through the organisation of the labour process, the forms of class organisation, and as the eternalisation (naturalisation) of specific modalities of these, always with contradictory effects, since the calling up of masculinity in linking particular forms of class and work organisation to the (organisation of the) bodies of men can always be either a source of resistance or acquiescence, and usually in differing ways relative to others. the AFL-CIO's patriotic masculinity might well have served as a source of resistance but simultaneously as one premised on exclusion (of women, black men, immigrants...)
so then, I think you're right about the presence of homophobia within ostensibly oppositional forms of masculinity. but also maybe one which acknowledges (and because of this must place declared limits on) the actuality of homosexual desire within any terrain which is defined as masculine perhaps. that of course, is a banality, but one that might be more interesting if discussed within a particular history of masculine identity and its relations to class composition.
Angela _________