Search results

Purpose – To explore the contested nature of masculinity through an examination of contemporary promotional culture associated with a predominantly masculine commodity – beer. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the representations of masculinity in two New Zealand beer advertisements spanning a 25-year period.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a brief overview of the contemporary crisis of masculinity; (2) the role of the media and promotional culture in representing and reproducing crises of masculinity; (3) The Holy Trinity: Sport, Beer and Masculinity and (4) analysis of two promotional campaigns for New Zealand beer brand Speight's. Here, the original series ad from 1992 is compared and contrasted with the 2019 instalment using Strate's (1992) framework which conceptualizes beer advertisements as ‘manuals of masculinity’, in order to track potential changes over time.

Findings – The results highlight the enduring value of Strate's (1992) framework of beer advertisements as manuals of masculinity. In addition, the results reveal that while the representation of masculinity in Speight's beer advertising has changed over time, key themes related to exclusive male spaces, physical labour and the core value of ‘mateship’ remain.

Research limitations/implications – Within the context of globalization, promotional culture operating at both the global and local level can cultivate images of masculinity that represent and reproduce the existing gender order, but it can also confront and disrupt it.

Purpose – This chapter examines the role of the media, guns, and violence in the social construction of masculinity in today's mediatized American culture.

Methodology – The chapter draws on critical theory and cultural studies to address crises of masculinity and school shootings. It applies and further develops Guy Debord's (1970) theory on spectacle in the contexts of contemporary violent media spectacles.

Findings – In the chapter it is argued that school shooters, and other indiscriminate gun killers, share male rage and attempts to resolve crises of masculinity through violent behavior; exhibit a fetishism of guns or weapons; and resolve their crises through violence orchestrated as a media spectacle. This demands growing awareness of mediatization of American gun culture, and calls for a need for more developed understanding of media pedagogy as a means to create cultural skills of media literacy, as well as arguing for more rational gun control and mental health care.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter contributes to the contemporary debate on mediatization of violence by discussing it within critical theory and cultural studies. The theoretical framework is applied to analysis of a range of different empirical cases ranging from school shootings to the Colorado movie theater massacre at the first night of the latest Batman movie in the summer of 2012.

Brooker’s mini-series Dead Set displays numerous representations of British masculinity in crisis. Released just as the zombie narrative was regaining momentum, the series uses the threat of an apocalypse to expose British men as weak, cowardly and ultimately monstrous. Initially set within the confines of the Big Brother house, the characters have willingly come under scrutiny for the delectation of a scandal-hungry public. The men are seen to self-consciously perform their own brands of masculinity. However, when people quickly descend from figuratively devouring each other into actually devouring each other, these masculine ideals are left in tatters, and without them, the surviving men are in constant peril.

For the purposes of this chapter, I will look specifically at three characters within the series and how their representations adhere to the ideas put forward by Anthony Clare, among others – that contemporary masculinity is in a period of crisis. I also wish to uncover how representations of masculinity within the series reflect contemporary social and political concerns within British society – a distrust of state apparatus and the rise of a particularly malicious, right wing ideology are both prevalent here. The zombie has long been acknowledged as an allegory for society’s ills – but this chapter asks: what can those fighting (or failing) against the zombie threat tell us?

Purpose – Building on the work of Wenner (2011) and Messner and Montez de Oca (2005), this study provides an updated critical stocktaking of the narrative tendencies in sport-related alcohol advertising on television. Set in contemporary understandings of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ and in the political economy of the alcohol industry, this study anchors a critical reading of masculinity, the sporting context and alcohol advertising in Wenner's (2007, 2013) ‘dirt theory of narrative ethics’.

Design/methodology/approach – Our theoretical and methodological approach is grounded in a dirt theory of narrative ethics. Set at the intersection of reader-oriented literary theory (Iser, 1978) and ethical criticism (Gregory, 1998), we ‘follow the dirt’ to understand how contagion from imported communicative meanings (McCracken, 1990) exerts power (Leach, 1976) by influencing reading and interpretation. We draw upon a diverse sample of 20 television ads representing a balanced cross-section of sport-dirtied beer commercials produced between 2010 and 2019. To balance this sample, we divided the ads by their opposing tendencies to characterize men as either ‘real men’, drawn in mythical masculinity terms, or ‘himbos’, drawn as ‘losers’ or slackers. To address the dominance of Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) in the American market, we further divided our ‘real men’ and ‘himbo’ samples, contrasting five ads produced for ABI brands with five ads produced for beer brands not held by ABI.

Findings – We contend that contemporary sports-dirtied beer ads combine to form a schizophrenic picture of American manhood. Male sports fans are alternatively hailed through mocking and misandry, through playfully saluting the norms of ‘bro culture’, and through encouraging men to understand themselves as proud keepers of tradition. We critically consider the ethical implications of building brand affinities through staking disparate positions in contemporary cultural and political debates about the place of men and masculinity in contemporary society.

Research limitations/implications – We discuss the difficulties involved in holding advertisers accountable for balancing ethical and market demands. Nevertheless, we call on the industry to engage in a more reflexive and responsible approach to crafting sports-dirtied alcohol advertising.

Purpose – This research is an analysis of expressions of masculinity among members of two social movements. The focus of the study is how racialized constructions of masculinity shape similar discourses of victimization in the mythopoetic men's movement and the Militia of Montana.

Method – Content analysis of the movement members’ written work available to the general public is analyzed. A theoretical overview of masculinity and victimization is also utilized to illustrate essentialist narratives in masculinity.

Findings – This research raises questions about the lived experience of the racialization of masculinity in movements, the complexity of identity formation of movement members, and challenges assumptions about the limitations of essentialism in these types of social movements. Both movements employ language that explicitly and implicitly illustrate a perception of white male victimization. Attention to essentialism in each movement shows the contradictions of each movement, with attention to how movement members choose to construct their own identities.

Research limitations – This research is limited to the written words of some movement members from material generated by each movement, and therefore, this research does not contain interview narratives of the movement members.

Originality/value of chapter – Previous research has faulted each movement for essentialist notions of self and group. This work argues that group cohesion and success of these types of movements depends on the ability of members to create essentialist categories of masculinity to support their claims and interests.

Gender remains a politically charged and powerful ideological social identity dimension that categorically essentializes and reproduces opportunities and limitations in organizations. Addressed in Chapter 6 are assumptions about gender and ways that gender classifications and gender roles form and spill forth into both work and home life for an overlap of public and private spheres that disadvantage women and privilege men. Furthermore, femininity and masculinity constructs strengthen the power system that undergirds them, reinforces their meanings, and perpetuates behaviors, changing over time, across and within cultures, and over the life course.

In organizations, the glass ceiling metaphor has become a popular representation of inequality in the workplace for women, people of color and sexual minorities; a phenomenon expanded in recent years to include glass walls and glass cliffs to describe advancement barriers. Gender-neutral mindsets and blame-the-victim strategies found in organizations are examined, as well as the breadwinner role and intersectionalities of gender with social identity dimensions of age, ethnicity, and social class. Chapter 6 is divided into these subthemes: gender, roles, femininity, and masculinity; power and gender inequality at work, and effects on women; gender, parenting, and the second shift; the breadwinner role, hegemonic masculinity, and masculinity in crisis; gendered occupations and feminization of career fields; intersectionalities of gender with age, ethnicity, and social class; and shattering schemas with androgyny and transgenderism.

Research in gender and development (GAD) remains largely preoccupied with women's issues and ignores the gendered nature of masculine experience. While exposing this inconsistency in gender research, the present paper highlights the gendered nature of men, and sets an agenda for their inclusion in gender research and planning.

To engage with the issue, the paper resists an unproblematic understanding of men as a singular formation, and instead builds on cultural and historical approaches which locate masculinity within modes of production.

Instead of casting men in the problem mode and theorizing masculinity as an ahistorical universal, an attempt is made to delink men from patriarchy. For development to be truly transformative, men's issues should be addressed not just as instruments for women empowerment, but also as subjects in themselves.

The paper, at a very broad level, pleads for a need to re‐vision and “men” stream development that does not ignore women, but accommodates men as gendered subjects.

In this context, power may be seen as embedded in specific modes of production, and not inherent in patriarchy. The paper argues that development agenda should go beyond categorical thinking, include men in gender planning, and create conditions for social justice.

This introductory article of the Special Issue on ‘Men, Masculinities and Leadership’ provides some necessary background information for the other articles in the issue. It outlines major social changes that have contributed to the disassociation of leadership and maleness, and the more general reappraisal of men's leadership. The major focus of the article is a review of literature on leadership seen in terms of it being the theories and practices of men. The article continues with discussions of the nature of feminism, and feminist challenges to men and leadership, and the crisis of men and masculinities; and concludes with men's responses to these changes, in men's groups, and mixed group and organisational contexts.

This paper aims to explore how marketplace-enabled performances help reconstitute masculinity in the context of transnational mobility.

Grounded in consumer acculturation theory, this paper draws on theories of gender performance to inform a hermeneutic analysis of depth interviews with skilled migrant men.

To navigate experiences of emasculation, participants performed three remasculation strategies: status-based hypermasculinity, localised masculinity and flexible masculinity.

This study offers insights for the design of migrant settlement policy. Further research should investigate the remasculation strategies of low resource migrant men.

This paper makes two contributions to theories of gendered acculturation. First, while studies of acculturation as a gendered performance have shown how marketplace resources support the gendered identity projects of female migrants and the children of migrants, this paper provides the missing perspective of skilled migrant men. Beyond acting as “resistant” cultural gatekeepers of their family members’ gendered acculturation practices, first-generation migrant men emerge as creative, agentic and skilled negotiators of countervailing gender regimes. Second, transnationally dispersed families, migrant communities and country of origin networks emerge not only as acculturating agents which transmit gender regimes but also as audiences which enable the staging of remasculating performances.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature and extent of violent practice in the motorcycle underworld. It does this by considering the murder of Gerry Tobin, and then uses the biography of the founding member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club (HAMC) for a critical analysis. The authors are interested in understanding the role of masculine honour and collective identity, and its influences in relation to violence – namely, fatal violence in the motorcycle underworld. The authors argue that motorcycle gangs are extreme examples of what Hall (2012) considers “criminal undertakers” – individuals who take “special liberties” often as a last resort.

The methodological approach seeks to analyse the paradigm of “masculine honour”, and how the Outlaws MC (OMC) applied this notion when executing the seemingly senseless murder of Gerry Tobin. So too, the author triangulate these findings by critically analysing the biography of the founding member of the Californian chapter of the HAMC – Sonny Barger. Further to this, a case study inevitably offers “constraints and opportunities” (Easton, 2010, p. 119). Through the process of triangulation, which is a method that utilises “multiple sources of data”, the researcher can be confident that the truth is being “conveyed as truthfully as possible” (Merriam, 1995, p. 54).

What is clear within the OB worldview is that it can only be a male dominant ideology, with no allowance for female interference (Wolf, 2008). Thus, Messerschmidt’s (1993) notion of “hegemonic masculinity” fits the male dominated subcultures of the HAMC and OMC, which therefore provides the clubs with “exclusive” masculine identities (Wolf, 2008). For organisations like the HAMC, retaliation is perceived as an alternative form of criminal justice that is compulsory to undertake in order to defend their status of honour and masculinity.

Based on our understanding, this is the first critical think piece that explores a UK case of homicide within the context of the motorcycle underworld. It also provides a comprehensive understanding of violent practice with the motorcycle underworld from criminological and sociological perspectives. This paper will inform readers about an overlooked and under researched underworld culture.