The BSC Critical Criminology Network’s Book of the Year 2016 Why do some men use physical violence against others? How do some men come to value physical violence as a resource? Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research conducted with men involved in serious violence and crime over a period of two years in the North of England, Anthony Ellis addresses these questions and the complex relationship between these men and their use of physical violence against others. Using detailed life-history interviews and extended periods of observation with these men, Men, Masculinities and Violence describes their ‘inner’ subjective lives and experiences, exploring how they came to value violence, why they are willing to use it against others and risk serious harm to themselves in the process. Over the course of the book a picture emerges of a group of men that have experienced and perpetrated serious violence throughout their lives. This book advances a critical psychosocial understanding of such violence by situating these masculine biographies within their immediate contexts of de-industrialisation, fracturing working class community and culture, and broader shifts within the political economy of liberal capitalism. With its synthesis of rich ethnographic material and new developments in criminological theory, this book is essential reading for students and academics interested in issues of gender and violence.
This book contributes to the growing literature on men and masculinities, but does so through a methodological lens. It addresses methodological approaches and challenges for feminist and pro-feminist studies of men and masculinities.
This book explores the socio-historical and cultural formation, enactment and representation of masculinities in a range of sites, both in the past and today. In so doing, the author draws on a wide range of resources, including literature, film, historical material, before giving students ideas and guidelines to enable them to carry out their own research.
A comprehensive collection of texts that maps out the field of Critical Men's Studies in Religion. It contains 35 key texts that engage with the position of men in society and church, the ideals of masculinity as engendered by religious discourse, and alternative trajectories of being in the world, whether spiritually, relationally or sexually.
Mairtin Mac an Ghaill explores how boys learn to be men in schools while policing their own and others' sexuality. The text focuses on the students' confusions and contradictions in their gendered experiences; and upon how schools actively produce, through the official and hidden curriculum, a range of masculinities which young men come to inhabit. The author attempts to do full justice to the complex phenomenon of male heterosexual subjectivities and to the role of schooling in forming sexual identities.
In spite of all the attention that has been devoted to men's identity in recent years, the links between men and the military have until now remained unquestioned, and thus unexplored. This groundbreaking volume deconstructs the traditional stereotypes of military identity and makes a strong case for a plurality of identities within a range of theoretical and empirical contexts. The contributors consider the ways in which military masculine identities are created and sustained in the armed forces and the societies in which they operate. Though mainly focused on the British army, this volume explores universal issues such as violence among military communities, the identity of women in the military, and the treatment of conscientious objectors.
Much work has been produced in recent years regarding the critical studies of men's practices utilizing various feminist and pro-feminist perspectives. This book widens what has hitherto been a dialogue primarily within the Western democracies. The editors have brought together a number of established and new scholars to provide a broader critical analysis of men's practices across a wide range of socio-cultural settings.