A Relational Approach for the Understanding of the Hegemonic Masculinities. Insights from Pierre Bourdieu, Georg Simmel and Marianne Weber

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of relationality between man and woman and how this can undermine the forms of masculine hegemony in the society. Simmel’s relational approach, rooted in an essentialist vision of gender construction, and Bourdieu’s constructivist realism, seem not effective in questioning the gender relation in itself. Indeed, both are more concerned to how hegemony works in crystallizing gendered roles in the society and less on how this changes or can change. The binary scheme that informs Simmel’s and Bourdieu’s efforts in understanding power in gender relations is, in line with Marianne Weber’s statement, the main obstacle that hides relations generative of social transformations. Nowadays the symbolic negotiations between the pluralities of gender configurations require a focus on the relationality and we share this analytical perspective. Indeed, it is from the point of view of the social construction of gender that it seems to be possible to approach the hegemonic masculinity and how it changes in different times and places. Keywords: masculine hegemony, objective culture, objective relations, social change.