DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY, LUCKNOW

SOCIOLOGY
Research Paper
MEN & MASCULINITY

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Prof. Dr. Sanjay Singh Agrima Verma
VC (acting), HOD 170101009
RMLNLU II Semester
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction

II. The Development of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

III. The Current State of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

A. Men and Masculinities as Historically and Socially Constructed

B. Conceptualizations of Masculinities

C. Intersectionalities

D. Methodologies and Epistemologies

E. Political and Policy Issues

IV. The Future of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

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I. Introduction
The impulse to develop the sociology of women, men, and gender has come primarily from
feminist sociology and feminist sociologists. Those making gender visible in contemporary
sociology have mainly been women, and the field has been very much inspired by addressing
research questions about women and gender relations. At the same time, revealing the
dynamics of gender also makes masculinity—and indeed masculinities— visible as central
concepts of gendered ideology, names men as gendered, and treats the social forms and
position of men as socially produced and constructed, in ways that have been rare in
mainstream sociology. Accordingly, this research paper examines the development, current
state, and future challenges in the sociology of men and masculinities.

II. The Development of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

In one sense, the sociology of men and masculinities is not new. Men have been studying
men for a long time, and calling it “sociology,” “history,” or whatever.

Indeed, there is a profound sense in which much classical or mainstream sociology has
through much of its history taken “men” and certain forms of “masculinity” as unspoken
norms, fields of study, or research foci. This is clear not only in the works of the most
eminent classical sociologists and social theorists, for example, Marx and Engels ([1848]
1964) and Weber ([1905] 1966), in different ways (see Kimmel 1994; Carver 2004), but also
in the work of more recent key theorists, such as Foucault (1981). At the heart of classical
and most current social theory, there is a characteristic silence about the gendered reflexivity
of the author and constitution of that theory. Changing this involves interrogating that very
silence on both the social category of men in social theory and men’s practices of theorizing
(Hearn 1998).

To understand the development of the sociology of men and masculinities involves locating
sociology within its own history. The combination of empirical description and secular
explanation that constitute sociology took shape at the high tide of nineteenth-century
European imperialism. The colonial frontier was a major source of data for European and
North American social scientists writing on gender. A situational, socially constructed, and
global dimension was thus present in Western social science from its earliest stage. However,
an evolutionary framework was largely discarded in the early twentieth century (Connell
2002).

The first steps toward the more focused, modern analysis of masculinity are found in the
pioneering psychologies of Freud ([1905] 1953b) and Adler (1956). These demonstrated that
adult character was not predetermined by the body but constructed through emotional
attachments to others in a turbulent growth process (Connell 1994). Anthropologists such as
Mead (1935) and Malinowski (1955) went on to emphasize cultural differences in such

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processes, social structures, and norms. By the mid-twentieth century, these ideas had
crystallized into the concept of sex role.

In the 1970s, masculinity was understood in sociology mainly as an internalized role,

identity, or variable attribute of individuals, reflecting particular (in practice often meaning
the United States or Western) cultural norms or values acquired by social learning from
socialization agents. Under the influence of women’s liberation, gay liberation, and even
men’s liberation, the male sex role was subject to sharp criticism—as ethnocentric, lacking in
a power perspective, and positivistic (Eichler 1980; Kimmel 1987; Brittan 1989).

At the same time in the 1970s as the concept of a male sex role was being critiqued, a critical
sociology of men was being inspired by feminist or feministic societal analyses of gender
power relations. Hanmer (1990) lists 56 feminist publications “providing the ideas, the
changed consciousness of women’s lives and their relationship to men—all available by
1975” (p. 39). In what may be broadly called theories of patriarchy, men were analyzed in
societal contexts, particularly in terms of differential structural and collective relations to
women and other men. Different theories of patriarchy have emphasized men’s social
relations to women, in terms of biology, reproduction, politics, culture, family, state,
sexuality, economy, and various combinations thereof. For example, O’Brien (1981)
analyzed the centrality of men’s relations to reproduction as more fundamental than those to
production.

By the late 1970s, however, a number of feminist and profeminist critics (Rowbotham 1979)
were suggesting that the concept of “patriarchy” was too monolithic, ahistorical, biologically
determined, and dismissive of women’s resistance and agency. In the light of this, greater
attention has been given, first, to the historicizing of “patriarchy” (e.g., from private to public
patriarchy); second, to the presence of multiple arenas, sites, and structures of patriarchy;
and, third, to other structural gender systems, such as androcracy, fratriarchy, and viriarchy.
Walby (1986, 1990) has specified the following patriarchal structures: capitalist work, the
family, the state, violence, sexuality, and culture (Hearn 1987). Both the historicized and
diversified approaches to patriarchy highlight the place of collective institutions, such as the
state, law, religion, or business organizations, within different historical societal forms and
social arenas of patriarchy. The significance of public patriarchy lies partly in the fact that
public domain organization(s) has(ve) become the prime historical unit of men’s domination.
Many organizations can indeed be seen as minipatriarchies in that they structure the
formation and reproduction of gendered social relations; the development of corporate
hierarchies, policies, processes, and practices; and the organizational construction of
“persons.” These have consequent implications for the social and historical formation of men
in each case (Hearn 1992).

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III. The Current State of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities
A. Men and Masculinities as Historically and Socially Constructed
Where men’s outlooks and culturally defined characteristics were formerly generally the
unexamined norm for religion, science, citizenship, law, and authority, the specificity of
different masculinities is now recognized, and increasingly, their genealogies, structures, and
dynamics are investigated. The twin debates and critiques around male sex role and
patriarchy, noted above, in many ways laid the foundations or the conceptual and political
terrain for a more differentiated, albeit power-laden approach to men and masculinities.
Building on both social psychological and social structural accounts, social constructionist
perspectives highlighting complexities of men’s social power have emerged (Carrigan,
Connell, and Lee 1985; Kaufman 1987). These emphasize both critiques of gender relations,
along with critiques of the dominance of heterosexuality, heterosexism, and homophobia
(Herek 1986; Frank 1987). Thus, two major sets of power relations have been addressed: the
power of men over women (heterosocial power relations), and the power of some men over
other men (homosocial power relations). These twin themes inform contemporary inquiries
on the construction of masculinities.

The social construction of men and masculinities has been explored with many different
scopes of analysis and sets of interrelations, including the social organization of masculinities
in their global and regional iterations; institutional reproduction and articulation of
masculinities; the organization and practices of masculinities within a context of gender
relations, that is, how interactions with women, children, and other men express, challenge,
and reproduce gender inequalities; and individual men’s performance, understanding, and
expression of their gendered identities. Masculinities do not exist in social and cultural
vacuums but are constructed within specific institutional settings, such as families,
workplaces, schools, factories, and the media (Kimmel, Hearn, and Connell 2005). There is
growing interest in the construction of masculinities within discourses and in relation to
media, representations, and culture (Petersen 1998). Gender is as much a structure of
relationships within and between institutions as a property of individual identity.

In particular, sociological research on men has been strongly informed by growing

acknowledgment of historical context and relativity, with studies of situational masculinities
and the institutions in which they are located. These have included dominant (Davidoff and
Hall 1990; Tosh and Roper 1991; Hall 1992; Hearn 1992; Kimmel 1997; Tosh 1999) and
resistant (Strauss 1982; Kimmel and Mosmiller 1992) masculinities at home, at work, and in
political and cultural activities. Key historical work has come from gay history (Weeks 1990;
Mort 2000), and histories of colonies of settlement, on the military (Phillips 1987) and on
schools (Morrell 2001b).

B. Conceptualizations of Masculinities

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Conceptual work has been an important part of sociological research on men. This has
emphasized questions of both social structure and agency, and production and reproduction,
as the contexts for the formation of particular masculinities (Hearn 1987; Holter 1997).
Above all, recent studies have highlighted questions of power—in interpersonal relations,
work, home, and social structures. In these, the concept of masculinities, as opposed to the
male sex role, has been and remains very important in sociological work, even though
commentators have used the term differently (Carrigan et al. 1985; Brod 1987; Brod and
Kaufman 1994).

Increasingly, different masculinities are interrogated in the plural, not the singular, as
hegemonic, complicit, subordinated, marginalized, and resistant. Within this framework,
masculinity can be understood as comprising signs, performances, and practices, both
personal and institutional, that often, even characteristically, obscure contradictions. Key
features of these theorizations include the centrality of power relations in masculinities;
men’s unequal relations to men as well as men’s relations to women; copresence of
institutional, interpersonal, and intrapsychic dynamics; and historical transformation and
change.

The first substantial discussion of the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” was in the paper
“Men’s Bodies,” written by R. W. Connell in 1979 and published in Which Way Is Up? in
1983. The background to this paper was debates on patriarchy, and the Gramscian hegemony
in question was hegemony in the patriarchal system of gender relations. The paper considers
the social construction of the body in both boys’ and adult men’s practices. In discussing “the
physical sense of maleness,” Connell emphasizes the practices and experiences of taking and
occupying space and holding the body tense, as well as size, skill, power, force, strength, and
physical development—within sport, work, sexuality, and fatherhood. He argues that “the
embedding of masculinity in the body is very much a social process, full of tensions and
contradiction; . . . even physical masculinity is historical, rather than a biological fact” (p.
30).

The concept of hegemonic masculinity was further developed in the early 1980s, in the light
of gay activism and research. This formulation articulated analyses of oppression produced
from both feminism and gay liberation. It is not men in general who are oppressed within
patriarchal sexual relations, but particular groups of men, such as homosexual men, whose
situations are related to the “logic” of women’s subordination to men (Carrigan et al.
1985:586).

In the book Masculinities by Connell (1995), the notion of hegemonic masculinity was
defined as “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted
answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee)
the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (p. 77). Hegemonic
masculinity embodies a “currently accepted answer” or strategy; it is likely to include
assumptions and practices of domination, patriarchal privilege, and higher valuation of men’s

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actions and knowledge. Although rather stable, hegemonic masculinity is contested and
subject to struggle and change. There are complex interplays of hegemonic, complicit,
subordinated, and marginalized masculinities, for example, when some gay men accept
aspects of hegemonic masculinity but are still marginalized or subordinated.

While in identifying forms of domination by men, of both women and other men, the
concepts of masculinities and hegemonic masculinity have been particularly successful; this
has not been without problems, and these will be addressed in the concluding section.

C. Intersectionalities
Although men and masculinities are now an explicit focus of sociological research and are
recognized as explicitly gendered, men and masculinities are not formed by gender alone.
Men are not simply or only men. Gendering in the construction of men and masculinities
intersects with other social divisions and differences. Men and masculinities are shaped by
differences of, for example, age, class, disability, ethnicity, and racialization. Men’s gender
status intersects with racial, ethnic, class, occupational, national, global, and other social
statuses, divisions, and differences. The intersection of social divisions has been a very
important area of theorizing in critical race studies, black studies, postcolonial studies, and
kindred fields (hooks 1984; Ouzgane and Coleman 1998; Morrell and Swart 2005).
Paradoxically, as studies of men and masculinities deconstruct the gendering of men and
masculinities, other social divisions may come more to the fore. Part of the long-term
trajectory of gendered studies of men could be the deconstruction of gender (Lorber 1994,
2000).

Very promising research is being carried out on differences and intersectionalities among
men by age, class, “race,” sexuality, and the like and the intersections of these axes of
identity and social organization. Discussion of the relations of gender and class can
demonstrate the ways in which different classes exhibit different forms of masculinities and
the ways in which these both challenge and reproduce gender relations among men and
between women and men. A key issue is how men relate to other men and how some men
dominate other men. Men and masculinities are placed in both cooperative and conflictual
relations with each other—in organizational, occupational, and class relations—and in terms
defined more explicitly in relation to gender, such as family, kinship, sexuality, and gender
politics.

Some intersectional research on masculinities has used ethnography to take analysis inside
gender construction and examine how meanings are made and articulated among men
themselves. For example, Matt Gutmann (1996) has investigated the construction of
masculinity among poor men in Mexico City, and Loic Wacquant (2004) has conducted
participant observation among poor black young men training to become Golden Gloves
boxers in Chicago.

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Intersectional perspectives also link with research on the impacts of globalization or
glocalization on local gender patterns of men’s employment, definitions of masculinity, and
men’s sexuality (Altman 2001). For example, dominant versions of masculinities are
rearticulated globally as part of the economic and cultural globalization project by which
dominant states subordinate or engulf weaker states (Connell 1998, 2005). While most
empirical research is still produced within the developed countries, global perspectives are
increasing significantly, showing the frequent ethnocentrism of Western assumptions about
men, both sociologically and societally (Cleaver 2002; Pease and Pringle 2002).

D. Methodologies and Epistemologies

Many research methods have been used in developing sociological studies of men and
masculinities, including social surveys; statistical analyses; ethnographies; interviews; and
qualitative, discursive, and deconstructive approaches, as well as various mixed methods. An
explicitly gendered focus on men and masculinities can mean rethinking particular research
methods. Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2002) have set out some key issues to be borne in mind
when interviewing men; Pease (2000) has applied memory work in researching men; and
Jackson (1990) has developed men’s critical life history work. Sociological methodologies
can be retheorized and repracticed, with a more explicit recognition of their gendering (Hearn
1998).

Detailed cultural studies, ethnographic and discursive research have provided close-grained
descriptions of multiple, internally complex, even contradictory masculinities in specific
locales (Messner 1992; Mac an Ghaill 1994; Segal 1997; Petersen 1998). Margaret Wetherell
and Nigel Edley (1999) have identified specific “imaginary positions and psychodiscursive
practices” in the negotiating of masculinities, including hegemonic masculinity and their
identification with the masculine. These are heroic positions, “ordinary” positions, and
rebellious positions. The first “could be read as an attempt to actually instantiate hegemonic
masculinity since, here, men align themselves strongly with conventional ideals” (p. 340).
The second attempts a distancing from certain conventional or ideal notions of the masculine;
instead the “ordinariness of the self; the self as normal, moderate or average” (p. 343) is
emphasized. The third position is characterized in terms of their unconventionality, with the
imaginary position involving the flouting of social expectations (p. 347). With all these self-
positionings, especially the last two, ambiguity and subtlety, even contradiction, in the self-
construction of masculinity, hegemonic or not, is present.

Moreover, studying men in a gender-explicit way raises several recurring epistemological

considerations. These include the form of and assumptions about epistemology; the impact of
who is researching, with what prior knowledge and positionality; the relevance of the specific
topic being studied; and the relation between those studying men and the men studied. These
are all general issues, well discussed in debates on feminist and critical epistemology. The
importance of epistemological pluralism in studying men is clear in feminist and mixed-

7
gender debates on men (Friedman and Sarah 1982; Jardine and Smith 1987; Hearn and
Morgan 1990; Schacht and Ewing 1998; Adams and Savran 2002; Gardiner 2002).

The gendering of epistemology, along with the gendered analysis of academic organizations,
has tremendous implications for rethinking the position and historical dominance of men in
academia and how that structures what counts as knowledge (Connell 1997; Hearn 2001). In
addition, there is the question—in what specific social contexts, especially academic
contexts, do the above activities take place? (Hearn 2003). There are various different
approaches to epistemology, both generally and in studying men—rationalist, empiricist,
critical, standpoint, postmodernist, and so on (Harding 1991). Standpoint traditions—the
view that knowledge is shaped by social position—inform much of the development of
feminist and profeminist critical studies on men. Thus, the positioning of the author in
relation to the topic of men, as a personal, epistemological, and indeed geopolitical relation,
shapes the object of research and the topic of men and masculinities in a variety of ways
(Hearn 1998). Differentiations in the positioning of the researcher in relation to the topic of
men are partly a matter of individual political choices and decisions, but increasingly the
importance of the more structural, geopolitical positioning is being recognized. Postcolonial
theory has shown that it matters whether analysis is being conducted from within the West,
the global South, the former Soviet territories, the Middle East, or elsewhere. History,
geography, and global politics matter in epistemologies in studying men.

What may appear obvious and open to straightforward empirical data gathering is not so
simple. One might argue that different knowledge is available to men than women, or to
feminists, profeminists, or antifeminists. Such differences arise from socially defined
experiences and standpoints. We find the collective variant of standpoint theory more
compelling than the individual viewpoint. A collective understanding of standpoint theory
can usefully inform research designs in highlighting gendered power relations in the subjects
and objects of research and in the research process itself. It can also assist the production of
more explicitly gendered and grounded knowledge about men, masculinities, and gender
relations. Emphasizing the researcher’s social position is not to suggest a deterministic
account of the impact of the researcher on the research process; rather, the researcher’s social
position is relevant but not all-encompassing. Positionality is especially important in
researching certain topics and sites, but the relevance and impact of the researcher’s social
position is likely to vary with different kinds of research sites, materials, and questions.
E. Political and Policy Issues

The growth of sociological and related research on men and masculinities reflects a growing
and diverse public and policy interest, ranging from boys’ difficulties in school to men’s
violence. Research is paralleled by the development of admittedly extremely uneven policy
debates at local, national, regional, and global levels. The motivations for such policy
initiatives can also come from varied political positions, ranging from men’s rights to
profeminism to the emphasis on differences between men, whether by social class, age,
sexuality, and racialization (Messner 1997).

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In the rich countries, including Japan, Germany, and the United States, and in some less
wealthy countries, including Mexico and Brazil, the late 1980s and 1990s saw rising media
interest and public debate about boys and men. For example, in Australia, the strongest focus
has been on problems of boys’ education (Lingard and Douglas 1999). In the United States,
more attention has been given to interpersonal relationships and ethnic differences (Kimmel
and Messner 2004). In Japan, there has been a challenge to the “salary-man” model of
middle-class masculinity (Taga 2005). In the Nordic region, there has been more focus on
gender equity policies and men’s responses to women’s changing position. In Latin America,
especially Mexico, debates have addressed the broad cultural definition of masculinity in a
long-standing discussion of “machismo,” its roots in colonialism, and effects on economic
development (Gutmann and Viveros Vigoya 2005).

In most of the developing world, these debates have not emerged, or have emerged only
intermittently. In the context of mass poverty, the problems of economic and social
development have had priority. However, questions about men and masculinities gained
increasing priority in development studies in the 1990s, as feminist concerns about women in
development led to discussions of gender and development and the specific economic and
political interests of men (White 2000).

These debates have different emphases in different regions. In Latin America, particular
concerns arose about the effects of economic restructuring. Men’s sexual behavior and role in
reproduction are addressed in the context of population control policies and sexual health
issues, including HIV/AIDS prevention (Viveros Vigoya 1997; Valdes and Olavarria 1998).
In Africa, regional history has given debates on men and masculinities a distinctive focus on
race relations and on violence, both domestic and communal, as well as growing research on
HIV/AIDS (Morrell 2001a; Ouzgane and Morrell 2005). In the Eastern Mediterranean and
Southwest Asia, cultural analysis of masculinity has particularly concerned modernization
and Islam, the legacy of colonialism, and the region’s relationship with contemporary
Western economic and military power (Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb 2000).

Locally and regionally, there are attempts to highlight problems both created by and
experienced by men and boys and initiate interventions, such as boys’ work, youth work,
antiviolence programs, and men’s health programs. There is growing interest in the
interventions against men’s violence at both global (Ferguson et al. 2004) and local (Edwards
and Hearn 2005) levels.

By the late 1990s, the question of men and masculinity was also emerging in international
forums, such as diplomacy and international relations (Zalewski and Parpart 1998), the
peacekeeping operations of the United Nations (Breines, Connell, and Heide 2000), and
international business (Hooper 2000). The United Nations and its agencies have also been at
the forefront in the field of men’s health and HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention. An
interesting convergence of women’s and men’s issues has taken place at the United Nations.
Following the world conferences on women that began in 1975, there has been increasing

9
global debate on the implications of gender issues for men. The Platform for Action adopted
at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women said,

The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a
matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation
as a women’s issue. . . . The Platform for Action emphasises that women share common
concerns that can be addressed only by working together and in partnership with men
towards the common goal of gender equality around the world. (United Nations 2001:17)

Since 1995, these issues are increasingly being taken up in the United Nations and its various
agencies and in other transgovernmental organizations’ policy discussions. For example, the
United Nation’s Division for the Advancement of Women in 2003 organized a worldwide
online discussion forum and expert group meeting in Brasilia on the role of men and boys in
achieving gender equality as part of its preparation for the 48th session of the Commission on
the Status of Women, with the following comments.

Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in the role of men in promoting gender
equality, in particular as the achievement of gender equality is now clearly seen as a societal
responsibility that concerns and should fully engage men as well as women (Division for the
Advancement of Women, United Nations 2003a:1). A number of very informative documents
on the challenges facing men in different parts of the world that were part of this preparation
are available online (Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations 2003b). These
should be read along with the subsequent Report to the Secretary General on the role of men
and boys in achieving gender equality (Division for the Advancement of Women, United
Nations 2003c).

Several national governments, most prominently in the Nordic region but also elsewhere,
have promoted men’s and boys’ greater involvement in gender equality agendas. Regional
initiatives include those in the European Union and the Council of Europe. The multinational
study by the collaborative European Union’s “The Social Problem of Men” research project
(Critical Research on Men in Europe) is an attempt to generate a comparative framework for
understanding masculinities in Europe. The goal is to remain sensitive to cultural differences
among the many countries of that continent and to the ways in which nations of the European
Union are, to some extent, developing convergent definitions of gender. Here, we see both
the similarities across different nations and variations among them as well, because different
countries articulate different masculinities (Hearn et al. 2004; Hearn and Pringle 2006;
Pringle et al. 2006).

In this European research, four main analytical and policy themes around men have been
explored: home and work, social exclusion, violences, and health. In the first of these,
recurrent issues across societies include men’s occupational, working, and wage advantages
over women; gender segregation at work; and many men’s close identity associations with
paid work. There remains a general lack of research on men as managers, policymakers,

10
owners, and other power holders. In many countries, there are twin problems of the
unemployment of some or many men in certain social categories, and yet work overload and
long working hours for other men. These can especially be a problem for young men and
young fathers; and they can affect both working- and middle-class men as, for example,
during economic recession. Work organizations are becoming more time-hungry and less
secure and predictable. While it is necessary not to overstate the uniformity of this trend,
which is relevant to certain groups only and not all countries, time utilization is as a
fundamental issue of creating difference in everyday negotiations between men and women.

At the same time that men generally benefit from dominant power relations at home and
work, some men are subject to various forms of social exclusion. The social exclusion of
certain men often connects with unemployment of certain categories of men (such as less
educated, rural, ethnic minority, young, and older), men’s isolation within and separation
from families, and associated social and health problems.

Men’s violences to women, children, and men remain at a high level and a major social
problem. Men are overrepresented among those using violence, especially heavy violence.
This violence is also age related. Violence against women by known men is becoming
recognized as a major social problem in most of the countries. The range of abusive
behaviors perpetrated includes direct physical violence, isolation and control of movements,
and control of money. There has been considerable research on prison and clinical
populations of violent men. There is now also research on accounts and understandings of
violence to women from men living in the community, men’s engagement with criminal
justice and welfare agencies, and the evaluation of men’s programs intervening with such
men.

In terms of the health theme, there are repeated patterns of men’s relatively lower life
expectancy, poorer health, higher number of accidents and suicide, and higher morbidity
compared with women. Some studies see dominant forms of masculinity as hazardous to
health. Men tend to suffer and die more and at a younger age than women from
cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, accidents, and violence. Socioeconomic
factors, qualifications, social status, life style, diet, smoking and drinking, and hereditary
factors can be important for morbidity and mortality. Gender differences in health arise from
how certain work done by men is in hazardous occupations. These themes raise urgent
questions for sociology and policy.

IV. The Future of the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

While it is not possible to predict the future of the sociology of men and masculinities with
any precision, it may possible to identify some emerging problems and approaches that are
likely to be fruitful. There is, first, the task of developing the field on a global and
transnational scale. The sociological record here is very uneven; research on men and
masculinities is still mainly a First World enterprise. There is far more research in the United

11
States than in any other country. There are major regions of the world where research even
partly relevant to these questions is scarce—including China, the Indian subcontinent, and
Central and West Africa. To respond to this lack is not a matter of sending out First World
researchers working with existing paradigms. That has happened all too often in the past,
reproducing, in the realm of knowledge, the very relations of dominance and subordination
that are part of the problem. Forms of cooperative research that use international resources to
generate new knowledge of local relevance need to be developed.

At the same time, the possibilities in postcolonial theory are still relatively little explored
(Ouzgane and Coleman 1998; Morrell and Swart 2005). They are very relevant in
transforming a research field historically centered in the First World. Analyses of political
and economic transformations, neoimperialism, militarism, and state and nonstate terrorism
are seriously underdeveloped (Higate 2003; Novikova and Kambourov 2003), as is political
and economic analysis more generally. Most discussions of men and gender acknowledge the
centrality of labor and power, but do not carry them forward into analysis of gendered
economy and politics.

Next, there are several issues that seem to be growing in significance. The most obviously
important is the relation of masculinities to those emerging dominant powers in the global
political economy. Research in the sociology of organizations has already developed methods
for studying men and masculinities in corporations and other organizations (Kanter 1977;
Cockburn 1983, 1991; Collinson and Hearn 1996, 2005; Ogasawara 1998). This approach
could be applied more fully to transnational operations, including the transnational capitalist
corporations and military organizations, although it will call for creative international
cooperation.

There are other problems of which the significance has been known for some time but that
have remained underresearched. A notable example is the individual and interpersonal
development of masculinities in the course of growing up. How children are socialized into
gender was a major theme of sex role discussions, and when that literature went into a
decline, this problem seems to have stagnated. Recent debates on boys’ education have also
produced little new developmental theorizing. However, a variety of approaches to
development and social learning exist (ethnographic, psychoanalytic, cognitive), along with
excellent fieldwork models (Thorne 1993).

This brings us to a number of conceptual and theoretical questions. There has been a
widespread application of the concepts of masculinities, and especially hegemonic
masculinity. These have been used in various different and sometimes confusing ways; this
can be a conceptual and empirical weakness (Clatterbaugh 1998). While Connell (1995) has
described hegemonic masculinity as a “configuration of gender practice” (p. 77) rather than a
type of masculinity, the use of the term has sometimes been as if it is a type. There is growing
critical debate around the very concepts of masculinities and hegemonic masculinity from a
variety of methodological positions, including the historical (MacInnes 1998), materialist

12
(Donaldson 1993; McMahon 1993; Hearn 1996, 2004), and poststructuralist (Whitehead
1999, 2002).

Several unresolved problems remain. First, are we talking about cultural representations,
everyday practices or institutional structures? Second, how exactly do the various dominant
and dominating ways that men are—tough/ aggressive/violent; respectable/corporate;
controlling of resources; controlling of images; and so on—connect with each other? Third,
the concept of hegemonic masculinity may carry contradictions and, arguably, has failed to
demonstrate the autonomy of the gender system, from class and other social systems
(Donaldson 1993). Fourth, why is it necessary to hang onto the concept of masculinity, when
concepts of, say, men’s practices (Hearn 1996), manhood (Kimmel 1997), or manliness (or
unmanliness) (Mangan and Walvin 1987; Liliequist 1999; Ekenstam, Johansson, and
Kuosmanen 2001) may be more applicable in some contexts, and the first concept has been
subject to such critique.

Indeed, the range of critiques points to more fundamental sociological problematics. There is
a strong case for a turn to the critique and deconstruction of the social, societal, and
sociological taken-for-grantedness of the category of “men,” and its own hegemony. Such a
critique of the hegemony of men may bring together feminist materialist theory and cultural
queer theory, along with modernist theories of hegemony and poststructuralist discourse
theory (Hearn 2004). There are relatively underdeveloped theoretical perspectives that may
give greater insight even into well-researched issues. These could include the combining the
insights of poststructuralism with materially grounded analyses of men and masculinities,
whether as controllers of power and resources or as excluded and marginalized.

Finally, much remains to be done in developing interdisciplinary scholarship on men. An

interdisciplinary research agenda on all these empirical, theoretical, and policy issues would
move the study of men forward. Understanding is worthwhile if it can assist the creation of a
more gender-just world. Uses of knowledge and relations between research and practice
remain key in developing this field.

13
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