Abstract
In the scientific literature, interest in male aggression is driven by views that consuming alcohol increases the likelihood of fighting. This literature mostly focuses on barrooms. Ethnographic research generally stays clear of associating bars with fighting by exploring the expressive dimensions of drunken comportment and/or (less often) the antecedents to fighting, which may take place in a variety of settings. Based on long-term fieldwork among farm laborers across the Eastern and Midwestern United States, and an analysis of field data from one agricultural home-base community, this article examines implications of fighting among farmworkers who spend time in bars and taverns (la cantina) and/or the street (la calle). Street settings were found to be more volatile than bars and taverns in agricultural areas in relation to “scrapping” among men, and, thus, more likely to end in fight-related injury. Nonetheless, men often engaged in forms of impression management that expressed their masculinity, as well as effectively avoided potential violence and possible injury.
Highlights
Another genre for generating an image of masculinity is drunken comportment. Each of these behaviors appears possible with limitations on protagonists, with the first enacted by a pair of individuals and the second performed by one individual. Both share in common the important role of a co-present audience, which leads back to Goffman’s postulation on “impression management” and “co-presence” (Giddens, 2009), it is its dyadic composition by which a fight differs from the drunken comportment of one person
Aggression in the form of “inter-personal violence” (Pernanen, 1991) in contrast ranges from scenarios of abusive relationships within domestic households to fighting in commercialized venues in sport arenas
Unexpected but imagined/real dangers and risks exist in gathering places and favorite spots where migrants gather in agricultural areas of the rural South
Summary
Its unfolding may follow one of several paths available to men for maintaining an image of manhood appropriate to a particular socio-cultural setting. Men in socio-cultural settings where fighting takes place, engage purposively in sustaining an image of manhood, by enacting an embodied masculinity in male-dominated settings. These settings may be places where sports are enacted (Ripley, 2018), as well as barrooms and taverns as places associated with a potential for aggressive behavior among men
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