European Perspectives on Men and Masculinities

Abstract

(from the chapter) Gender research and women's studies has made the dynamics of gender explicit and has also made masculinity visible as gendered ideology, named men as gendered, and problematized the position of men. Recent years have seen a considerable expansion of explicitly gendered research and scholarship on men and masculinities. Where men's outlooks and culturally defined characteristics were formerly the unexamined norm for religion, science, citizenship, law, and authority, the new scholarship recognizes the specificity of different masculinities and increasingly investigates their genealogies, structures, and dynamics. The chapter begins by discussing the framing and naming of studies on men and masculinities in relation to feminism and critical gender scholarship. Thereafter, men and masculinities are analysed as socially constructed, with the interweaving of men's gender status and other social statuses. Epistemological and methodological issues are explored, along with implications of studies for political and policy issues. The chapter concludes with a commentary on the future of the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)