Stuart Hall: "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" –summary

The first part of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is an historical account of the development of British popular culture in late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This period, according to Stuart Hall, saw some deep cultural changes in urban working classes with the appearance of cultural industries products and technologies. Hall holds that this period is characterized by questions which remain relevant to this day regarding the relation between corporate produced culture and the image of popular culture as belonging to the masses.  

In the main part of "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" Hall is discussing the problematic meaning of the word "popular" in "popular culture". Hall analyzes two common understandings of this concept. The first meaning of "popular" is the one of wide circulation and commerciality. Subscribers of this view often tie popular culture with manipulative consumerism and regard it as falsification and even degradation of authentic working class cultural content and tradition. Stuart Hall only partially accepts this view for on the one hand it views working class members as easily manipulated passive consumers while on the other hand seeking an "authentic" or "original" working class culture which does not really exist. Hall prefers a more dynamic and changing description of popular content and forms.

The second definition of popular culture scrutinized by Hall is the one which views popular culture as all the cultural activities of "the people". This definition is in fact a massive inventory list of various cultural and leisure activities. Hall is critical of this perspective as well for its essentialist view and it being based on the binary distinction between "the people" and the "elite".

Towards the end of "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" Stuart Hall offers another definition of popular culture which stresses its dynamic nature and constant tension and struggle. Hall understands popular culture as an ongoing process, similar the concept of Hegemony offered by Gramsci, is which relations of control and subordination are constantly shifting and certain cultural forms gain and lose support from institutions. Preferred of marginalized cultural content and forms are not fixed, according to Hall there is a constant movement and interchange between them as a result of shifting power relations, the assimilation of poplar content into "high culture" and vice versa. What Stuart Hall is essentially offering in "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is a neo-Gramscian view of the power relation between high and popular culture, with a more mutual perspective of the assimilatory take originally offered by Gramsci who thought the high hegemonic culture assimilates and sterilizes popular culture. 

see: A review of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular"

Suggested reading:

Stuart Hall: "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" –review

Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" initially appeared in "People's History and Socialist Theory" (1981) – a collection of essays concerned with socialism in its British contexts. Therefore Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" relies on British popular culture and its significance to the lower working class. But since Hall is attempting to deconstruct stereotypical connections between popular culture and the working class, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" has theoretical value in relation to the understanding of popular culture as a modern phenomenon in industrialized countries.

Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" works within the tension between the perception of popular culture as something that emanates from the working class and therefore has something authentic about it, and the understanding of popular culture as an exploitative, commercial and mass communication based ally of modern capitalism. Hall's Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" criticizes views that regard popular culture as an authentic expression of the working class and as a site for cultural resistance. Hall favors a more dynamic approach which views popular culture as changing field and as a site for struggle between different social forces over the meaning and value ascribed to popular culture.

"Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" opens with an historical account of the development of British Popular culture. Stuart Hall then proceeds to discuss the meaning of the term "popular" in the phrase "popular culture". Hall is offering three different definitions of "popular" in relation to culture, and his main point in "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is to try and point to the complexity of the relation between cultural products and content associated with "the common people" and the products and content of the culture industry. Hall points to the power relation that determine both high culture and popular culture as opposed concepts, while criticizing any attempt for an essentialist view of culture in general and popular culture in particular, and any steady association of content and cultural products with a specific social class.

see: A summary of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular"

culture industry

Suggested reading:

  

Richard Shusterman: "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" – summary and review

Richard Shusterman's "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" (in "pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking art" 1992) is a defense on popular culture or popular art's statutes as an aesthetic and artistic field. Philosophy of aesthetics has often refused to relate to popular culture as a form of art on account of it lacking certain aesthetic qualities. Richard Shusterman is attempting to demonstrate how these qualities do exist in popular art, and he uses the example of rap music to demonstrate his case.

Shusterman counts six common arguments against popular art:

That popular art offers no aesthetic satisfaction; that popular art does not provide as aesthetic challenge of promote an active response; that popular art is superficial and does not appeal to the intellect; that popular art is not creative and is not innovative in its forms and styles; that popular art is non-critical, conformist and formula based; and that popular art is not stylistically developed.

For every one of these arguments against the aesthetic value of popular art Shusterman is offering a counter example or claim in order to show how popular art (in his case, rap music) does have the traits that on account of their absence popular art is denied aesthetic value.

Richard Shusterman's "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" and large parts of his aesthetic philosophy thought aims to oppose the elitist take against popular art, such as Dwight Macdonald's "A theory of Mass culture" which sees popular art as a threat to the "high arts" and the public's intellect. Shusterman does not subscribe to a normative judgment of high or popular art, but rather wishes to base aesthetic judgments on art's concrete everyday function in society.

suggested reading:

Richard Shusterman."Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" .in "pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking art" 1992. Cambridge: Blackwell

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Contemporary politics of masculinity

In the epilogue of "Masculinities" R.W. Connell is attempting to describe the politics of masculinity in contemporary times, flowing the works of Goode and Godenzi which show that despite openness to challenging claims made by feminism, men still have a strong hold in the material world and the equality is still far away. Connell is suggesting a model that has four dimensions of gender relation to try to account for the interests of men in contemporary patriarchy:

Power: man have favorable positions in business, state affairs, public spaces, the family, enforcement agencies and the means to generate violence. On the other hand: men are usually the ones who are arrested and executed, they are the main target of military violence and of liberal economic competition.

Division of labor: men's income is twice that of women and they enjoy favorable position in the economy and have better access to opportunities in the men dominated system. On the other hand hazardous works are mostly held by men and they rate higher as sole-providers. They pay more taxes while welfare divides state income to their disadvantage.

Cathexis: men are given unreturned emotional support from women. Society (for instance the media and culture) favors men's pleasure over women's and legitimizes their sexual freedom. On the other hand men's sexuality is more alienated and restrained. There are less free to express their emotions and they are excluded from contact with their children during their early years.

The symbolic level: men control most of the cultural institutions and enjoy a higher level of recognition. On the other hand humanities studies are becoming more and more a feminine field and mothers enjoy greater legitimization as parents.

in relation to the body Connell notes how men's occupations make them more vulnerable to physical injury while on the other hand they are not required to wear restricting cloths or spend time and money on their appearance.

This "checks and balances" approach might give the illusion that the benefits of masculinity even out with its costs, but Connell makes sure to note that the advantages of masculinity often serve men who are not the same as those who suffers from its drawbacks, and this is where gender crosses with other categories such as race and class. If Connell is talking about a variety of masculinities, than there is a variety of social position that those masculinities provide. But this, for Connell, does not mean we should abandon the category of men all together.  

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Degendering and recomposing hegemonic masculinity and gender relations

 In chapter 10 of "Masculinities" (practice and utopia) R.W. Connell suggests the strategy of "degendering" as a means for social justice in gender relations. Degendering is not to be carried out just at the level of culture and institutions but should also work on the bodies themselves. The mission of such degendering politics is according to Connell to bring about change in the practice of bodily reflection and working through the agency of the body in order to find new ways for men to use their masculine bodies.

The argument for dgendering echoes out of the feminist debate about equality and difference and the fear that equality would result in assimilation. For Connell the same problem holds for the will to criticize hegemonic masculinity that, if indeed degendered, might lose some of its more positive things and throw out the baby with the bath water. For Connell, in order to call for social justice in gender relations we must call for difference and degendering at the same time. Research and Connell's discussion shows that gendered traits and practices are common to both genders and the symbolic reintegration of these can be rather simple: body builders can work at kindergartens, lesbians can wear leather jackets etc.

Forms of Action

Following Andrew Tolson Connell points to the fact the various men's groups (the general men's liberation movement) are problematic in the sense that you cannot adopt emancipatory strategies if you are the dominating group. Anti-chauvinistic male politics that seeks social justice actually works against the interests of those man who take part in it, and such a stance should aim at breaking men's unity, not reinforce it.

But for Connell such a form of politics is still possible, especially outside pure gender politics. Male solidarity for males' sake is problematic, but solidarity (with women) for other sakes has a lot of potential for change in gender relations. The crossing of class and gender politics (and ethnic politics as well) is especially interesting for Connell for the possibility it holds for unity which is not absolute male unity. Instead of a men's movement this will be a politics of alliances, with the struggle for social justice depending on the intersection of interests.

Education for Connell is one of the prime sites for this degendering politics. She holds that every education program must address a variety of masculinities and the crossing of race, ethnicity, nationality and class. Connell calls for a reorganization of knowledge from the point of view of the oppressed and for the pluralization of sources in education programs. Another requirement is the capacity for empathy often so lacking in hegemonic masculinity. 

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Practice and Utopia

Chapter 10 of R.W. Connell's Masculinities discusses the meaning of knowledge about masculinity to questions of social justice in gender relation. For this end Connell holds that both existing practice and possible utopia are in need of scrutiny.

Connell research in Masculinities showed some changes in awareness towards gender relations starting from the 70's; however she holds that patriarchy is still very much the order of the day in contemporary western cultures, and that the change in historical consciousness is not yet manifested in the breakdown of the institutional and material structures of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity.

The discussion of gender relations in the past two centuries are close, according to Connell, to introduce the demise of masculinity as we know it, with the wheels of change already in motion. Even reactionary stances regarding masculinity acknowledge the fact that masculinity is the subject of social transformation and is something which is currently under negotiation. Connell argues that no one assumes, and no one can any longer assume, that man and masculinity are just what they are.

In surveying the possible purposes of political action in the field of gender Connell distinguishes liberal pluralism and postmodernism. Both approaches according to Connell fail to bring into account the importance of practice, and not just politics or consciousness, in generating change or sustaining the current state of affairs. In the context of gender relations working towards social justice means to undermine straight men's favorable positions in social structures. This does not mean striving for uniformity, and Connell relies on Michael Walzer and his notion of complex equality in order to imagine the possibility of gender equality. Masculinity, in other words, does not need to be abolished but rather repositioned in the political and economical structure.  

But focusing on hegemonic masculinity's material and political gains alone will, for Connell, miss the point. For patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity, as demonstrated again and again throughout "Masculinities", in sustained through bodily division which are themselves sustained through reflexive bodily practices. The social organization of these practices into a patriarchic gender order is the cause of the hierarchic social order. All this leads R.W. Connell to argue for the strategy of degendering – the dismantlement of hegemonic masculinity and the decomposition of gender relations. 

see also:

Degendering and recomposing hegemonic masculinity and gender relations

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Masculinity Politics

Politics of Men and Politics of Masculinity

R.W. Connell opens chapter 9 of "Masculinities", titled "Masculinity Politics" by indicating the fact the public politics is masculine politics in almost every sense. Even in western countries women are still heavily underrepresented in power position, with a variety of formal barriers and hidden strategies to keep them out of the public sphere. Feminism has failed to mend to inequality but did manage to draw attention to it, and men's position regarding gender relations has become an object of politics.

Connell defines masculinity politics as all those process and struggles regarding the male gender and its position within gender relations. It is masculinity in need of an answer. Masculine politics for Connell wishes to trace the production and accumulation of gendered power, which for her stands at the base of some of the most crucial political questions of our time.

As stressed time and time again in Connell's Masculinities, there is no one masculinity but rather a number, not unlimited, of masculinities which are surveyed throughout 'Masculine Politics":

A therapy of masculinity

The challenges brought about by the feminist attack on patriarchy have led to the formation of a type of masculine politics which focuses on healing the wounds caused to heterosexual men by changes in gender relation. Connell describes the emergence of therapy groups and literature which attempt to reconcile men's denounced position and to soften their guild caused by feminist criticism.

The therapy of masculinity, according to Connell, is not so much about supporting the reform of gender relation as it is about finding a relevant political position within it. The foundation of this politics is that of cooperative masculinity (Masculinities, chapter 3), which does not comply but does cooperate with hegemonic masculinity. In this stance, the men do nor bear the blame for the wrongs of hegemonic masculinity, but are also not oppressed by it. The therapeutic practice and the images of the mytho-poetic movement tend to narrow the gap between men and women and to allow for adaptation in the field of personal relationships, unlike the more inflexible types of masculine politics which follow.

The Gun Lobby: Defending Hegemonic Masculinity

For Connell to preserve to rule of hegemonic masculinity is to preserve a whole institutional and ideological system. She relates to the example of the gun lobby and the NRA which has strong masculine characteristics and which ties masculinity with firearms and heroism. Despite some evidence against the link between masculinity and the heroic violence, Connell holds that the images of male heroism bear cultural relevance. They produce epitomes of masculinity which are an essential part of the politics of hegemonic masculinity. Defending hegemonic masculinity is not a unified campaign, but rather one which takes place in a variety of, often contradicting, contexts and institutions, all working to preserve men's prominent role in all spheres of society.   

Gay Liberation

R.W. Connell holds that the main alternative to hegemonic masculinity in western recent history is that of gay masculinity, and that the most explicit political opposition to hegemonic masculinity was articulated by the homosexual liberation movement. The initial objectives of the gay movement regarded mostly private rights, but have slowly, especially with the breakout of AIDS, began to form a politics of pressure groups reminiscent of those of ethnic minorities, seeking collective rights. Connell argues that masculine politics is inseparable from the gay presence around it. Yet the homosexual community is not an automatically opposition to hegemonic masculinity, but rather an alternative which has a presence that prompts a dynamic of change and negotiation within masculine politics.

Exit Politics

The concept of practice implies that social action is always creative, and for Connell this means that straight men can also resist hegemonic masculinity and fight patriarchy. The men liberation movement attempted, since the 70's, to create new gender relations based on social justice. Though ambivalently accepted by feminism, attempts to organize male movements in support of the women and gay liberation movements, "refusing to be a man", have been prevalent. This anti-chauvinistic politics sometimes resorted to gender vagueness such as cross-dressing and drag shows as a form of cultural protest. Connell argues that masculinity is shaped in relation to a comprehensive structure of power and in relation to general symbolization of difference. Anti-chauvinistic male politics is directed towards to former, while crossing gender lines is directed towards to latter. According to Connell exit politics operates at the edges of mass sexual politics, as the possibility of negating hegemonic masculinity. For Connell this type of masculine politics represents the most significant chance for change in the gender order of our time. 

suggested reading:

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": The History of Masculinity: Present day masculinity

In the concluding segment of chapter eight of "Masculinities" (1995) titled "The History of Masculinity" R.W. Connell offers a perspective through which to examine changes in the global network of gender relations and modern masculinities.

Connell holds that the deepest change on the global scale is the exportation of Euro-American gender order to the colonial world, especially with capitalistic mode of production creating local versions of western patriarchic institutions. These conditions provide a place for transforming gender ideology and its corresponding images, and the disappearance of traditional local forms of masculinity.

These changes, the imposition of western hegemonic masculinity on the rest of the world has also induced counter reactions, such as in Muslim countries where traditional masculinity is reasserted with a growing discrimination of women.

Urban western men are the prime beneficiaries of the new economical world order, as for Connell, of the new gender world order. Giving these circumstances, Connell is not surprised that men are very aware of the changes in their position and the claims that undermine their privileged status. 

R.W. Connell suggests that the massive growth in material possession of men in metropolitan countries was accompanied by an escalation in the crisis of masculinity, the legitimacy of patriarchy and gender order. The feminist challenge to western masculinity has brought about tension with the third world regarding the western-originated tradition of racism and chauvinism. In the local context, oppositional movements opened the door for a variety of gender relations, types of masculinities and sexual identities. Connell finds ample evidence for these developments in contemporary popular culture.

Connell argues that men in metropolitan countries occupy a paradoxical moment in the history of masculinity. On the one hand they possess the greatest power in history to shape their own future; however, on the other hand, the category of "men" in rich countries does not indicate a group which is able to chose and execute a single historical course. For R.W. Connell this is a moment is the history of masculinity in which men have achieved ultimate power only to find themselves fragmented as a gender, with a multitude of masculinities replacing a single uniform notion of masculinity.

see also:

modern changes in masculinity 

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": The History of Masculinity: Modern changes

Over the past 200 years hegemonic masculinity has giving way to new varying forms of masculinity, this is due, according to R.W. Connell to challenges on the patriarchal order posed by women, the logic of the gendered accumulation process of industrialized capitalism and changes in imperial power relations.

The rise of modern professional armies tied violence with rationality and bureaucratic organization. Fascism was for Connell the bare imposing of masculine domination in societies that were moving towards women's liberation, and its defeat at WW2 closed the lid on this type of hegemonic masculinity.

Technological and economical development brought technical skill and knowledge to the forefront and created a new tension between control based masculinity and skill based masculinity. With metropolitan masculinities going through a process of rationalization, violence was slowly pushed aside to the colonies. Men at the front were very different from men in the city.

The late 19^th century saw a sexual cleansing of masculinity, with homosexuality defined, medically and legally, as a social type.

Industrialism separated the domestic space from the workplace and accompanied with the dominant role of wage changed the institution of family, with a new type of masculinity arranged around earning abilities. A massive continental relocation of workforce had for Connell an important implication on the formation of modern masculinities. With black masculinity viewed by white masculinity as a social and sexual threat, a harsh gendered and racial regime was enforced in these places. Relocated white working-class workforce, encountering massive hardships, formed a new development in the history of masculinity which was now again based on solidarity and not individualism and competition.

Colonial power, according to Connell, played an important role in the history of masculinity in colonial states, creating types of local masculinities in India, South America and Africa.

R.W. Connell concludes her survey of the history of masculinity in modern time with the assertion that that the history of masculinity is not linear but rather a complex process of interacting masculinities with dominant hegemonic masculinities, subjected and marginalized masculinities all constantly interacting.

see also:

The History of Masculinity

Present day masculinity

suggested reading:

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": A Whole New World

After examining the masculine protest type in chapter 4 of "Masculinities", R.W. Connell turns to address a radically different type of masculinity in chapter 5 of "Masculinities" titled "A Whole New World", the "wimps" – men who have tried to reshape their masculinity following feminist critique. In this chapter Connell surveys the life stories of six heterosexual men who were involved with environmental activism, a field that she correlates with the rise of feminism.

All of the men in Connell's study initially tied themselves at least to some extant to hegemonic masculinity. Yet all these men have developed what Connell terms "heterosexual sensitivity" that at least in one case study evolved out of identification with the mother which led to identification with other women, and all men had some significant role played by powerful women in the course of their early lives. 

The men all became active members of the environmental movement in different ways. Connell describes how it offered them a powerful mixture of personal relationships and cultural vision. She argues that being active served a number of needs such as solidarity, moral action a sense of personal value. For Connell, this type of activity performed a valuable function in the production of gender politics.

Connell argues that the environmental movement challenged the hegemonic masculinity on a number of its principles, such as a practice and ideology of equality, an emphasis on solidarity and collectiveness, a practice and ideology of personal growth and one of organic wholeness. But while being fertile ground for challenging hegemonic masculinity, these aspects still needed the help of feminism.

Some of the men in Connell's study experienced feminism with guilt, and most of them interpreted it as relating to personal relationship and not large scale politics. The encounter with feminism prompted a process of personal change and redefinition of the men's masculinity. Connell notes that the moment of separation from hegemonic masculinity was for the men essentially a passive choice, as opposed to the assertive control of hegemonic masculinity. They also gave up on their careers to become more dependent on others, women of course included. Giving up on the benefits of hegemonic masculinity was for these men a way to develop new desirable characteristics, especially emotional openness and sensitivity.        

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Live Fast Die Young - summary

In chapter four of Masculinities ("Live Fast Die Young") R.W. Connell examines the life stories of young working class men. She notes how the working class was usually viewed as sexually conservative but to the contrary it was the working class who historically brought about new family structures.

Connell argues that conditions in the capitalistic workplace influence the construction of masculinity and examines contemporary patterns of employment and their implications on masculinity.

The narratives of all the young men interviewed by Connell display similar starting points and some similar characteristics such as the importance of family ties in the lower labor market, a tendency for radical pragmatism , an experience of violence, both initiated (and sometimes glorified) and state violence. Most of the men in Connell's study experienced the education system as foreign power and have begun to shape their masculinity in relation to this power, sometimes leading them to meet the power of the police and corrective systems. Connell concludes that state power is not an abstraction in the lives of these men, but rather a concrete material power.

Connell argues that heterosexuality is enforced on the men interviewed, although some of them have experienced homosexual relations and one of them eventually discovered himself as a cross-dresser. The ideology which surrounded the life stories of the men in Connell's study is characterized according to her by strong contradictions and tensions such as a scornful attitude towards women and admiration of them.

Connell employs Alfred Adler's concept of masculine protest as resulting of an experience of helplessness in early life and manifested later on with exaggerated and sometimes aggressive claims to power.

The biographical narratives in Connell's study indicate similar starting points but diverge later on in life. Masculine protest is a masculinity which borrows themes of hegemonic masculinity and co-opts them in the context of poverty and hardship. Some of the men had a relationship of cooperation with hegemonic masculinity and enjoyed its benefits while others rejected it and have moved outside of the common masculine identity.

According to Connell the key to understanding the differences between the men in her study is the political nature of their process. Most of the men were deprived of the benefits of patriarchy due to their low starting points, if they accept this lose they justify their deprivation, if they protest against it they are blocked by the state's power. One of the ways to resolve these tensions described by Connell is to embrace marginality in a highly extrovert manner. Another strategy is to completely distance oneself from hegemonic masculinity. An interesting note that Connell makes is that despite the chauvinistic attitude of some of the men in her study, many of them actually experience domestic equality. 

suggested reading:

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": men's bodies - summary (part 2)

part 1 - 2 

R.W. Connell, in chapter two of "Masculinities" titled "Men's Bodies", argues that physical experiences shape us, with the example of sports in which masculinity is manifested in the pattern of developing and working the body. The institutional organization of sport dictates defined social relations: competition and hierarchy for men, exclusion or subjection for women. Sports serves, according to Connell, as an instrument in the hand of hegemonic masculinity in its war against feminism as a symbolic proof of men's superiority. The same aspect can be found in manual labor which specified a type of tough masculinity the although, as illustrated in Paul Willis's "Learning to Labor", served for class exploitation, has also served to prove men's superiority. But also the link between masculinity and manual labor, with its economic roots in the industrial period, has changed with the shift to post-industrial modes of production, and with it masculinity is also changing.

Connell argues that the body is an inevitable element in the construction of masculinity, but its inevitability does not fix its position. The bodily process combines with the social process to become a part of (both personal and collective) history and a possible object for political interference. This does not mean that we have to go back to the perception of men's bodies as a passive platform, for the body has a variety of means to oppose social symbolization and control.

Connell draws attention to the simple fact that there is no one human body, but a lot of bodies which are in a constant state of change in their personal courses in time. Men's bodies, according to Connell, not only change but also have the capacity to object and refuse various suggestions to participate in social life.  

Connell brings biographical stories of men who had their life course imprinting a permanent mark on their body. She quotes Michel Messner who noted how the use of the body as weapon (in relation to sport) eventually leads to violence directed to the body itself. All this, as well as the bodily price of industrial workers, emphasizes for Connell the materiality of the body in relation to its participation in social practices.         

Connell argues that social gender theory in fact excludes the physical body by viewing it as just an object for symbolic imprinting, but not as a participant in the gender game. Therefore Connell wishes to argue for the statues of bodies as action agents in social processes.  Connell's point is that once bodies function as both objects of social practice and its agents, and in the conditions in which that practice creates the structures that define and appropriates the bodies, we are faced with a pattern that exceeds the formula accepted in social theory. Connell calls this pattern a practice of bodily reflection.

In this reflection man is at once inside and outside his own body, performing while being aware of his performance in relation to social conventions. The bodily reflection moves from the personal to the social, and the way the body functions influences the way it is constructed, and vice versa. For R.W. Connell practice generated the reality in which we live, and practice always involves the body and its materiality. The world which is created through the gender practices of bodily reflection is a political sphere, and so gender politics is for Connell a politics manifested in the body. 

part 1 - 2 

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": men's bodies - summary

part 1 - 2 

In chapter two of "Masculinities" titled "Men's Bodies" R.W. Connell deals with the relation between the male body and masculinity. At the beginning of "Men's Bodies" she negates the argument, widely held in different spheres in society, that men cannot change on account of them having a sort of essential nature. She describes how true masculinity is always perceived as something which stems from men's bodies – true masculinity is engraved in the male body or expresses something in regards to that body.

 For Connell such views represent the strategic array of modern gender ideology, and therefore the sociological task of understanding masculinity starts with understanding the male body and its relation to masculinity and gender. The tendency of research in this field was for the most part shifting back and forth in the discussion of nature versus nurture, with a compromise which holds that both biology and society partner together in the shaping of genders. Connell thinks that all three approaches are wrong.

According to Connell sociobiology has replaced religion in justifying hegemonic gender ideology. However sociobiology cannot produce sufficient evidence to the existence of biological determination of sex differences and is faced with a vast array of contrary evidence in the form of cultural and historical diversities in the construction of gender. For Connell the source of this false biological approach is in the metaphor of the body as a machine which is build or programmed for certain activities, a metaphor which is false as much as it is prevalent. The reason for this distortion is that ideology precedes biological research. Accordingly, Connell describes how medicine, as in the cases of sex change operations, works to reconcile the body with gender ideology. 

Connell uses Bryan Turner's term of "body practices" to argue that society, through sports, fashion and finally even plastic surgery, works to produce the male or female body in accordance with its perceptions.

Social semiotic approaches position themselves in the opposite end of the sociobiological approach. Instead of the body as machine metaphor they offer the body as a field of battle in which social forces meat, a metaphor of the body as canvas drawn upon and imprinted with signs. But for Connell the semiotic approach has its own problems, with the stress on the signifier threatening to eliminate the signified, and to lose the sex in the discussion about sexuality.   

Does this mean that the path that combines biology and social construction theory is the way to go? Connell says no and holds that two errors do not make a right. To begin with, the two approaches are incommensurable. A social process can develop an initial biological difference, but also transform it completely to the point of erasing it. For Connell a compromise cannot be found between biological determination and social determination, but in any case Connell asserts that any theory of gender cannot escape the presence of the physical body and therefore any theory in masculinity studies cannot escape the presence of men's bodies.

part 1 - 2 

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

The new social sciences – history, ethnography and social construction theory in masculinity studies (in R.W. Connell's "Masculinities")

R.W. Connell proceeds to discuss new current development in the science of masculinity manifested in history, ethnography and sociology.

History

Connell describes how the 70's second wave feminist trend of writing the unspoken history of women led to a subsequent trend of writing the "history of men". Since there was already a none-gendered history which predominantly, of course, occupied with the doing of men, the idea now was to write the history of masculinity.

Some of this historical writing, Connell says, came from the starting point of gender role theory and attempted to show how historical frameworks have shaped masculinity, the expectations of men and their positions in society.  These studies, Connell argues, clearly show that the definitions of masculinity are tightly bound in the history of institutions and economic structures. They show how masculinity is not just a personal identity but something anchored in organized social relation – the economy and labor as well as the family.

Connell relates to J.O.C. Phillips's study of the colonial New-Zealand settlement. A chaos formed due to the excess of men in the front let authorities to encourage family based settlement in order to restrain the settlers, connecting domesticity with a more level-headed lifestyle. The second phase of the world wars required a more violent masculinity as this was achieved by encouraging a warrior myth which was constructed, among other things, by encouraging rugby. Philips's study demonstrates for Connell how masculinity is produced as a cultural form in the wake of social and political systems. Connell further holds that the production of a certain type of masculinity as the preferred model involved a political struggle which marginalized other historical alternatives.

The Ethnography of the Other

At its beginning ethnography attempted to identify the differences between cultures that were under the colonial rule and western cultures, with one of its interests being kinship relations, an interest which led, according to Connell, to the accumulation of information regarding gender which was utilized by feminism, psychoanalysis and gender role theory.

The use of ethnographic gender information has led to a comparative examination of masculinity and especially the (varying) cultural images of manhood. For example, Connell cites ethnographic data that shows a link between aggressive masculinity and homosexual practice which undermine the western association between homosexuality and femininity or wimpishness.  

Connell describes and criticizes the positivistic attempt to find a unifying principle of masculinity based on ethnographical study such as the work of David Gilmour who determined that masculinity is something which is always hard to obtain,  that its conquest involves initiation ceremonies and that it serves as a psychological defense against relapsing into pre-oedipal identification with the mother. Connell criticizes Gilmour for this positivistic approach, which she believes originates from gender role theory, for the ill attempt to formulate masculinity in terms of a cross-cultural generalization. Connell's critique again relates to the issue of gender role polarization, and she offers examples of ethnographic studies which prove otherwise.

R.W. Connell thinks that ethnography can contribute to the study of masculinity provided that it recognizes the social relations that condition the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the historicity which positivism wishes to repress by ignoring the effect of the colonial master's gaze on the subject of his ethnographic research.

Social construction and gender dynamics

Sociology, according to Connell, was the first to turn its back to her own gender role theory in favor of discussing the construction of everyday masculinity in relation to social and economic institutes and recognizing the dynamic and embroiled nature gender, thus acknowledging that gender identity does not precede society but is rather generated through it.

Norms of masculinity are now examined not as passive and pre-given but rather as an active practice, which leads according to Connell to an interest in the politics of norms. One of the fields of this sociological trend is the study of the manner in which masculinity is constructed in different social classes, that is, a discussion of class-dependant masculinity. Connell notes studies such as Paul Willis's "Learning to Labor".

These ideas have eventually led to the formation of the notion of hegemonic masculinity and the acknowledgment of not only a variety of different masculinities but also of the need for understanding the relations between these different types of masculinities, relations such as alliance, domination and subjection. These developments, Connell holds, show that the relations that constitute and construct masculinity are dialectic in nature, and do not abide by the one-way causal model of socialization theory. Masculinities, in other words, are not fixed categories.