Masculinity

Abstract

To know what men are, anthropologists look beyond dictionary definitions, personal experience, and opinions and study societies across the globe and throughout history. They study not only people who call themselves men, but also people who call themselves men only some of the time, people who have testicles but know they’re not men, people with ovaries who know they are men, and many more. Until the early 1980s, anthropology’s contribution to the understanding of men, maleness, and masculinities was more talk than actual empirical study of men as having gender. Among the major anthropological contributions to the study of gender and society in general are grounded ethnographies of men as gendered human beings (i.e. ‘men-as-men’), as well as synthetic work across subdisciplines, linking cultural and biological, contemporary and historical approaches to issues like reproductive health, aggression, and fatherhood. Anthropologists pay special attention to the language used in reference to men and masculinities, including terms such as ‘toxic’, ‘dominant’, ‘traditional’, ‘alpha’, etc. They try to understand not only what, if anything, biology tells us about maleness, but also what people may believe biology says about men and masculinities. This entry provides an overview of this work and examines whether anyone is indeed better served by labels like ‘alternative’, ‘emerging’, and ‘new’ masculinities, and whether it may be more useful to avoid sweeping categories like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in the first place.