NCJ Number
147297
Journal
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology Volume: 27 Issue: 2 Dated: (August 1991) Pages: 141-171
Date Published
1991
Length
31 pages
Annotation
The life histories of five unemployed young men in New South Wales, Australia, are compared with three men from similar backgrounds but different positions in class and gender politics to determine the construction of masculinity among the five unemployed men.
Abstract
Interviews, conducted in urban and rural New South Wales in 1985 and 1986, were designed on the basis of theoretical analyses of gender as a structure of social practice. In asking for an autobiographical narrative, the researchers solicited descriptions of practices (for example, what a boy and his father did with one another rather than how the respondent felt about his father). Researchers used institutional transitions (for example, entry to school, entry to the work force) as "pegs" for memory. The interviews also solicited accounts of interactions in institutions, particularly families, schools, and workplaces. Information was obtained on each of the three major structures within gender relations: relations of power, production/reproduction relations, and cathexis (the social structuring of emotional attachment). The study found that the labor market, rather than the labor process, and the state had a major part in the development of a "protest" masculinity, a stressed version of hegemonic masculinity, sustained as a collective practice in milieus such as bike clubs. Dramatic rejections of masculinity and a low-keyed "complicit" masculinity emerged from the same social context by different class/gender praxes. Contrasting political prospects are raised by these differing trajectories. 50 references