Performance Of Masculinity Research Articles

Gendering Web2.0 Sociotechnical Affordances of Far-Right Metapolitics

This study examines the ways in which Web2.0 sociotechnical affordances of far-right metapolitics are gendered. Specifically, I focus on a key Swedish far-right entity that is not only an extensive publisher of far-right intellectual output, but also organizes a political salon that unites various actors from the European transnational far-right ecosystem. My explicit interests are in the performances of far-right masculinity at work in this metapolitical project. Consequently, the article makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to the field. Empirically, the study provides a digital ethnography of the manner in which far-right performances of masculinity consolidate digital fraternities around a shared transnational far-right ethos of the underdog “us.” In so doing, they exploit Web2.0 sociotechnical affordances, presenting their capability of skillfully weaponizing the digital landscape for their metapolitical project. These performances of masculinity aim to re-naturalize the domination, hierarchy, and privilege of White cis heterosexual masculinities across such intersectional axes of inequality as gender, sexuality, race, and social class. This is underpinned by a syncretic theoretical construct, at the heart of which lies the concept of masculinity of crises, buttressed by a superordinate intersectionality perspective. This combination enables a more sophisticated analysis of Web2.0 sociotechnical affordances, highlighting the intersectional underpinnings of the co-constitutive dynamic between far-right performances of masculinity and crises.

Performing hard money: monetary policy, metaphor and masculinity in the making of EMU

ABSTRACT Since the global financial crisis, the relationships between gender and political economy have received renewed attention, emphasising change as well as continuities. Similarly, a recent return of attention to the interrelation between masculinity and neoliberalism has stressed historicity and specificity in the nature of these relationships. However, the question how articulations of gender and the economy are socially and politically made within a contested field of economic governance has not yet received attention. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature with the concept of gendered performative agency, which can be used to specify the link between masculinities and political economy, and inform a gendered analysis of important politico-economic events. Empirically, it contributes a study of the making of the monetary policy principles of the European Monetary Union (EMU), analysing the gendered performative agency of the governors of the German Bundesbank in their public discourse from 1988 to 1998. It argues that by mobilising metaphors of disciplinary masculinity in their discourse of monetary policy and in their performances of identity, the governors fostered legitimacy for their policy positions. Thus, the performance of masculinity contributed to performing monetary policy and to shaping the EMU.

The gendered semiotics of far-right populism on Instagram: A case from Spain

Perhaps more than any other online social-networking platform, Instagram facilitates the construction and management of public image, serving as a potentially effective tool for political actors; nevertheless, it remains relatively understudied among digital communication strategies. In this article, I investigate the platform’s use by far-right populist politicians, turning to Santiago Abascal of Spain as a case study. Performing detailed analysis on a corpus of Abascal’s most popular posts determined by their “engagement rate,” I expose the gendered mode of self-presentation that resonates with Abascal’s public. In the second part of the article, I consider an equivalent corpus from President Pedro Sánchez, one of Abascal’s main political rivals at the time of writing. This comparative juxtaposition illustrates stark differences in approaches to social media and underscores how effective particular performances of masculinity can be for populist politicians. Ultimately, I aim to shed insight on the specific ways that Instagram serves far-right political projects, both in Spain and beyond.

Jazz Feminism is to Soul as Purple is to Lavender

Jazz Feminism is to <i>Soul</i> as Purple is to Lavender

The Shapes of Dissent: Protest, Masculinities, and Nuclear Expertise

Scholars have paid significant attention to the role of gender in social movements, especially in the women’s health and other feminist protest organizations. Gender issues have been less studied in other social movements, such as the anti-nuclear movement, and when they have, then almost always with a focus on the role of women. This paper explores the role of men and the performance of masculinities in protests against civilian nuclear energy. During the 1970s–1990s, activists performed three distinct forms of protest (sabotage, counter-information, and counter-expertise) in dissent against Superphénix, an experimental nuclear reactor built in Creys-Malville, France. This paper looks at how these different forms of protest were grounded in traditional Western views of masculinity, especially virility and paternalism. By comparing and contrasting counter-expertise in the anti-nuclear and the women’s health movement, the paper argues that anti-nuclear counter-expertise was less about providing an alternative view of nature, than personally discrediting official experts in a fight of “man against man” (Lewontin 1968, 2). Finally, it reflects on the consequences of these types of confrontational masculinity on the possibility of science-based dissent.

Performing masculinity and the micropolitics of youth cafés in Ireland: an ethnography

This paper contributes to the literature on geographies of masculinities by examining how young men’s (aged 12–18) performances of masculinity through humour was mutually constitutive of and constituted by the spaces of the Fusion and Retro youth cafés in the city and suburbs of Cork in the south of Ireland. Research on open access youth provision such as youth clubs, centres and youth cafés have found that they can afford young people the opportunity to ‘be themselves’, reflecting the ideals of safety and inclusivity that are meant to be sustained in these spaces. Using ethnographic observations, this paper shows that such ideals are never a given as the inequality embedded in gendered performances mean the spaces must be continually (re)produced as inclusive. It contributes to an understanding of youth cafés as micropolitical spaces of becoming that shape and are shaped by negotiations over meanings of gender and masculinity in particular. Furthermore, it advances two new concepts - ‘humorous improprieties’ and ‘humour bombing’ - to the performative geographies literature, highlighting two nuanced ways in which young men construct themselves as men in relation to space.

"You see this thing is hard… ey, this thing is painful": The burden of the provider role and construction of masculinities amongst Black male mineworkers in Marikana, South Africa.

In this paper we examine men's insights on how migration and minework affect their perceptions and performances of masculinity in the settings of minework and in their "real home" communities and explore the potential consequences of masculinity constructions for their own and their family's health. This study used qualitative methodology. Findings are based on 13 in-depth interviews conducted over two phases of data collection with adult men who were either working or seeking work in the mines in North-West province, South Africa. Data suggest that for these men, migration to and working in the mines meant they must straddle the temporal space of work and the rural home space. For these men, the role of provider was an inescapable demand and, resulting from migration for work, their experience of fatherhood was solely centred on material provision with little or no emotional involvement with their children. Findings further illustrate the impact of minework on men's health and livelihoods-resulting in some men reimagining and seeking to create alternative career paths for their children. There is pressing need for labour reforms on the employment conditions of low-paid mine workers to enable them to reinforce their livelihoods and secure better futures for their families. Gender-transformative interventions which aim to transform ideas of masculinity that emphasize providing rather than emotional involvement with children are also needed.

Gender and the navigation of STEM careers in higher education institutions: Narratives of female faculty in post-Soviet Tajikistan

ABSTRACT The underrepresentation of female faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is a globally acknowledged gender equity concern; however, it remains under-researched in post-Soviet contexts. Using a theoretically informed analysis, this paper explores how female STEM faculty members navigate their gender identities in domestic and academic spheres in post-Soviet Tajikistan. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 female faculty members. The results indicated that parental discourses and family circumstances enabled female faculty members to defy the gendered oppositional inscription of STEM, while the performance of non-hegemonic masculinities by spouses, male mentors, and academic supervisors supported their career advancement. However, the gendered micropolitics of higher education institutions significantly undermined the performance of female STEM faculty members’ identity and subjected them to discrimination, marginalisation, and isolation.

Macho populists versus COVID: Comparing political masculinities

This article uses a feminist lens to examine Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and former United States President Donald Trump’s responses to COVID-19. It argues that both populist leaders mobilised masculinity as a resource in statecraft. Both initially responded to the pandemic with dismissiveness and denialism. For the rest of his term, Trump diminished the harms of COVID and emphasised ‘protecting the economy’. Duterte, however, eventually embraced the fear of COVID, imposed a strict lockdown, and secured emergency powers. This article first analyses differences in the masculinities the two politicians performed. It then explores how this performance of masculinity contributed to structuring public discourses in relation to the pandemic and situates it in neoliberal governance more broadly. For example, the performance of invincibility constructed others’ vulnerability and illness as an individual weakness rather than socially and relationally produced. Trump’s co-optation of the language of freedom encouraged protests against health measures and positioned medical experts as the ‘real threat’. In contrast, Duterte’s securitised approach made it difficult for citizens to protest repressive laws enacted by his government. Duterte’s ‘war on COVID’ was marked by his demand for obedience and discipline, thereby constituting anyone who questioned the harmful effects of a police-led lockdown as a threat to national security. Finally, the article reflects on the ways China’s growing role in global politics affects notions and practices of populist masculinities. Both leaders flexed diplomatic masculinity differently in relation to China: Duterte touted his personal closeness to China as a path to securing resources for the Philippines, while Trump’s vilification of China constructed COVID as a ‘foreign enemy’ as opposed to a crisis he was responsible for. Ultimately, these masculine responses undermined dissent and centred muscularity, either in the form of individual resilience or securitisation and policing, as the solution to the pandemic.

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

Re-Imagining Masculinity Through Social Empathy

The language of crises speaks differently for both men and women. With women, children, and the elders having to face the impacts more prominently, these groups of people are constantly marginalised, especially during troubled times. During this COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most concerning crises that arise is the crisis that involves societal life, gender relations, and masculinity performances, heightening the issue of gender inequality. The increasing number of domestic violence in particular countries shows that the essentialist idea of masculinity plays a big part in shaping men's response to the socio-gender crisis. This paper discusses how masculinity can be reimagined towards behaviours that embrace social empathy.

The characteristics of street codes and competing performances of masculinity on an inner-city housing estate

ABSTRACT With analysis occurring during a heightened concern with the Black Lives Matter movement and knife crime in the U.K., this paper aims to delineate the characteristics of a street code, constituting a specific dominant and often hegemonic form of ‘street masculinity’ found on an inner-city housing estate in London called Maxwell. The fieldwork ran over nine months in 2019, involving 48 Black, Asian, and minority ethnic men aged 18–22. Using an ethnographic methodology, the principal methods of data generation were observations, interviews and informal conversations. The main theories this study draws on to understand ‘street masculinity’ were Connell’s and Messerschmidt’s dominant, hegemonic, subordinate and complicit masculinity forms. Findings centre on data from two young men who exemplify different patterns of masculinity performing the street code. Findings are presented under a series of characteristics that make up the game of the ‘on-road’ street masculinity and include (1) authenticity, ‘swagger’ and not being ‘pussy’; (2) a preparedness for violence; (3) knife-carrying; (4) a presence on the digital street. Although this way of living drove a desire for respect and group status, there was also an underlying and pervasive sense of vulnerability derived from risk-taking and anticipation of danger.

Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones

Book Review| April 01 2022 Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha LolaJones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. viii, 346 pp. Birgitta J. Johnson Birgitta J. Johnson BIRGITTA J. JOHNSON is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the School of Music and the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include music in African American churches, change and identity in Black popular music, and gospel archiving. She has published articles in the Black Music Research Journal, Ethnomusicology Forum, Liturgy, Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies, and The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2022) 75 (1): 163–167. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.163 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Birgitta J. Johnson; Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2022; 75 (1): 163–167. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.163 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance is an innovative contribution to contemporary Black sacred music and religious life scholarship. Jones uses multi-sited ethnographic research to anchor her analysis of the layered nuances of race, sexuality, gender, and gender presentation in Black Pentecostal religious communities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The diverse settings for musical and rhetorical performances of Black masculinity, gender, and sexuality that Jones traverses in Flaming? are timely additions to an emerging area of Black music research in America. Throughout the book’s eight chapters, she uses insightful case studies to center the spoken and unspoken sentiments of Black male Christian musicians living and working in a society in which their humanity has been historically and violently contested. At the same time, these men are members of a religious community in which Black masculinity is often lionized in overtly... You do not currently have access to this content.

Lovelace's “Gloomy Scheme of Death”: Suffering, Dueling, and Suicide in Richardson's Clarissa

This article uses Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747–48) as a case study in order to expose the relationship between dueling and suicide in eighteenth-century literature and culture. By examining the novel alongside contemporary documents concerning dueling, I make the case that Lovelace's fatal duel with Morden is a covert form of self-destruction, one that allows him to disguise and ultimately escape his sufferings while maintaining his masculine honor and reputation. While many critics have focused on Clarissa's suicide in Richardson's novel, few have considered the nature of Lovelace's own self-willed death at length. The following consideration of Lovelace's “gloomy scheme of death” reveals the violence necessary for performances of masculinity in the early to mid-eighteenth century and suggests that the duel is at the heart at such efforts at self-display.

English

This paper examines the interconnectedness of masculinity and setting in African fiction by a close reading of Coetzee&rsquo;s Disgrace. The negative effects of subscribing to a single masculinity have been discussed in scholarly works since masculinity studies were given mainstream attention over two decades ago. However, the importance of setting to the formation of and subscription to masculine archetypes has not been carried over from men&rsquo;s studies (the sociological antecedent of literary masculinity studies) to masculinity studies. The author argues for the importance of setting to masculine identification by showing the ways the performance of masculinity changes based on differences in place and time. Specifically, this work analyzes the traumatic effects of the abrupt change of masculine performance on men due to the change of setting.&nbsp; &nbsp; Key words: Africa, masculinity, setting, performance, trauma.

The Everyday Makings of Heteronormativity: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

The Everyday Makings of Heteronormativity: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

A Forgivable Enthusiasm

A Forgivable Enthusiasm

“Omelora”: Orthodox and Disciplinary Masculinities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’sPurple Hibiscus

This paper examines the connections between masculinity and orthodoxy in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus to underscore the intersections of gender, class, religion, and ethnicity. Adichie depicts two contradictory figures of Catholic orthodoxy, namely, Eugene and Father Amadi and the consequences of their performances of masculinity. Where Eugene enacts violence on his family in the name of piety, Father Amadi demonstrates receptivity to human suffering as crucial to piety. I draw on the ideas of Michel Foucault and Raewyn Connell to demonstrate how discipline, control, and male power operate in the domestic sphere and their effects on subjectivities and bodies. Adichie’s portrayal of Eugene articulates a model of disciplinary power undergirded by orthodoxy. Eugene, therefore, dramatizes orthodox masculinity. I argue that Adichie envisions a redefinition of masculinity by presenting Father Amadi as an alternative to Eugene’s enactments of orthodoxy. I conclude that Adichie provides us with an understanding of how people can deploy violence in the name of piety and religion. Indeed, Adichie emphasizes the need to redefine masculinity cognizant of the dignity of all humanity.

Men’s Football Fandom and the Performance of Progressive and Misogynistic Masculinities in a ‘New Age’ of UK Women’s Sport

This article offers an original contribution as the first to focus empirically on men football fans’ attitudes towards women’s sport in a ‘new age’ of UK media coverage, in which women’s sport has experienced a significantly increased and more positive media profile. We draw on online survey responses from 1950 men football fans of different age groups from across the UK. Our methodological approach used techniques emerging out of the principles of grounded theory. We develop a new, three-fold, theoretical model, covering men football fans’ attitudes to women in the sports nexus and men’s performances of masculinities. Our findings show evidence of a change in attitudes towards women in sport, with men performing progressive masculinities. However, there were also signs of a backlash against advances in gender equality, with men performing overtly misogynistic masculinities and covertly misogynistic masculinities.

Police soldiers, elite squads, and militia: militarized masculinities and public security discourses in Rio de Janeiro (1995–2018)

ABSTRACT This article investigates how gender representations were mobilized within security discourses by state authorities in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1995 to 2018. First, we present the state of the art of the feminist international relations debate on gender performativity and militarized masculinities. Then, we analyze political statements and speeches by state authorities, offering new insights into the gendered nature of approaches to security policies in Rio de Janeiro. Our findings suggest that performances of militarized masculinity were crucial elements of public security discourses during the period analyzed. Significantly, we distinguish three main phases of public security policies, characterized by different performances of masculinity: (1) the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, characterized by the representation of law enforcement agents as “police soldiers”; (2) the period of the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) program (2008–2014), characterized by the duality of a more feminine, human rights-centered security discourse and the continuation of the masculine militaristic logic, embodied by “elite squad” units; and (3) a return to the masculine war logic in public security during the federal intervention (2018). We contend that these performances of militarized masculinity contributed to the maintenance of a war logic as a central element of public security throughout Brazil’s democratic period, undercutting non-military approaches to governance and demanding tolerance of authoritarian measures and human rights abuses.