Beyond Honour and Achieved Hegemony: Violence and the Everyday Masculinities of Young Men

David Gadd,Stephen Tomsen

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.v8i2.1117

Abstract

Mainstream criminology has stressed the importance of flawed notions of personal honour among disadvantaged and minority group men in interactive social disputes that escalate into serious violence. Recent gender studies and critical criminology have been concerned with wider structures of power and the links between hegemonic masculinity and violence directed against women or occurring between men. Our focus group study of views about violence among a mixed cohort of young men suggests the relevance of both these approaches as causal explanations. Nevertheless, violence was also narrated and understood through the sharp moral distinctions between illegitimate and wrongful enactments, and idealised accounts of violent events as measured, fair and just. Anti-violence initiatives need to anticipate the shifting ways by which young men distance themselves and their own violence from negative meanings, along with a continuing belief in a category of male violence that they deem legitimate, admirable, or even heroic.

Highlights

Male honourGlobally, male-perpetrated violence against women and other men comprises the great bulk of reported and recorded assaults and homicides
Major sociocultural explanations of violence suggest displays of physical aggression and violence are a crucial means of shoring up and attaining masculine status and power. These concerns have major significance for young and socially marginal men responding to perceived affronts to moral worth in their social relations and everyday interactions, or those engaged in hyper-masculine protest in a faltering attempt to emulate the privileges secured by other men
Our analysis of how groups of young men understand their own violence and that perpetrated by other men often resonated with these models regarding the protection of social reputation and a seeking of masculine power and hegemony

Summary

Introduction

Male honourGlobally, male-perpetrated violence against women and other men comprises the great bulk of reported and recorded assaults and homicides. Their focus is not a historical male code drawn from traditional notions of chivalry, but a commonplace view among men of appropriate social relations grounded in everyday understandings of respect and disrespect, as these are reflected in their interaction with others.

Results

Conclusion