Men and Masculinities Around the World: Transforming Men’s Practices

273 Pages·2011·0.97 MB·English

by  Elisabetta Ruspini

Men and Masculinities
Around the World
Global Masculinities
Edited by Michael Kimmel and Judith Kegan Gardiner
Michael Kimmel is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including: Men’s
Lives, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, The Gendered Society, The
Politics of Manhood, and Manhood in America: A Cultural History. He edits Men and
Masculinities, an interdisciplinary scholarly journal, and has edited the Encyclopedia
of Men and Masculinities and the Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. He
consults with corporations, NGOs, and public sector organizations all over the world
on gender equity issues, including work-family balance, reducing workplace discrimi-
nation, and promoting diversity.
Judith Kegan Gardiner is Professor of English and of Gender and Women’s Studies
at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her books are Craftsmanship in Context: The
Development of Ben Jonson’s Poetry and Rhys, Stead, Lessing, and the Politics of Empathy.
She is the editor of the volumes Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and
Practice, Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, and a coeditor of The International
Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities. She is also a member of the editorial board for
the interdisciplinary journal Feminist Studies.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Masculine Style: The American West and Literary Modernism
By Daniel Worden
Men and Masculinities Around the World: Transforming Men’s Practices
Edited by Elisabetta Ruspini, Jeff Hearn, Bob Pease, and Keith Pringle
Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present
(forthcoming)
Edited by Stefan Horlacher
Men and Masculinities
Around the World
Transforming Men’s Practices
Edited by
Elisabetta Ruspini, Jeff Hearn, Bob Pease, and
Keith Pringle
Palgrave
macmillan
MEN AND MASCULINITIES AROUND THE WORLD
Copyright © Elisabetta Ruspini, Jeff Hearn, Bob Pease, and
Keith Pringle, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29067-3 ISBN 978-0-230-33800-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-33800-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Men and masculinities around the world : transforming men’s
practices / edited by Elisabetta Ruspini ... [et al.].
p. cm.—(Global masculinities)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Men. 2. Masculinity—Cross-cultural studies. 3. Sex role.
I. Ruspini, Elisabetta.
HQ1090.M42816 2011
305.3109—dc22 2011011898
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2012
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Note from the Series Editors ix
1 Introduction: Transforming Men’s Practices Around the World 1
Keith Pringle, Jeff Hearn, Bob Pease, and Elisabetta Ruspini
Part I Men and Masculinities in Europe
2 Slow, Passive, and Hesitant: Transforming
Men’s Practices in Austria 17
Edgar Forster
3 Interventions on, and of, Men in the Finnish State,
Civil Society, and Media 31
Jeff Hearn and Hertta Niemi
4 Care- Free Masculinities in Ireland 45
Niall Hanlon and Kathleen Lynch
5 And Yet Something Is on the Move: Education for
New Forms of Masculinity and Paternity in Italy 59
Elisabetta Ruspini
6 (Re)constructing Masculinity à la Polonaise 71
Katarzyna Wojnicka
7 Unraveling the Maze: Gender Equality and
Men’s Practices in Norway 85
Øystein Gullvåg Holter
8 Working with Men in a Gender Equality Paradise?
The Case of Sweden 97
Maria Eriksson and Keith Pringle
9 What’s Happening in Men’s Work in the UK? Reflections on
Policies and Processes 109
Carole Wright and Malcolm Cowburn
vi CONTENTS
Part II Men and Masculinities in the Americas
10 M asculinities and Social Intervention in Colombia 125
Mara Viveros Vigoya
11 Young Mexican Men Divided: A Possibility for Transforming
Masculinity 143
Juan Carlos Ramírez Rodríguez
12 E ngaging Men in the United States: Soft Essentialism and
the Obstacles to Coherent Initiatives in Education and
Family Policy 159
Tristan S. Bridges and Michael. Kimmel
Part III Men and Masculinities in the Asia Pacific
13 Governing Men’s Violence against Women in Australia 177
Bob Pease
14 Masculinities in Crisis? An Emerging Debate on
Men and Boys in Contemporary China 191
Xingkui Zhang
15 T ransforming Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan 205
James E. Roberson
16 F rom Benevolent Patriarchy to Gender Transformation:
A Case Study of Pakistan’s “We Can End
Violence against Women” Program 219
Joyce Wu
Part IV Men and Masculinities in Africa
17 Poverty, Masculine Violence, and the Transformation of Men:
Ethnographic Notes from Kenyan Slums 235
Chimaraoke Izugbara
18 N avigating Past “the White Man’s Agenda” in South Africa:
Organizing Men for Gendered Transformation of Society 247
Kopano Ratele, Tamara Shefer, and Mbuyiselo Botha
Notes on Contributors 261
Index 269
Tables and Figures
Tables
10.1 D istribution of Projects on Violence by Year,
Location, and Management 127
10.2 Distribution of Projects on HIV- AIDS and STI Prevention by
Years, Location, and Management 132
10.3 Distribution of Projects on Fatherhood, Culture, and
Work by Years, Location, and Management 135
10.4 Distribution of Projects on Various Topics by Years,
Location, and Management 137
11.1 Distribution of Level of Agreement on Beliefs (Percentages) among
Men Aged 12–29 in the Metropolitan Area of
Guadalajara (MAG) and Nationwide (NAL), 2005 148
Figures
7.1 Household Gender Equality on Three Levels (2007) 89
7.2 A Gender Equality Profile (Norway, 2007) 90
15.1 Suicides in Japan by Sex and Age (2009) 209
15.2 Suicides in Japan by Sex and Cause (2009) 210
15.3 Kyoto “Nonviolence Group Work”
Schedule of Classes (2010) 212
Note from the
Series Editors
In Sweden, a “real man” is one who does childcare for his own children, and
liberals and conservatives argue not about whether there should be govern-
ment-mandated paternity leave but about the allocation of time between
new mothers and fathers. In China, years of enforcing a one-child rule have
led to a population with a vast demographic imbalance in the number of
males over females, with consequences yet to be determined. In Iran, vasec-
tomy becomes increasingly popular as men seek to take more responsibility
for family planning in an atmosphere of restrictive gender roles. In the
Philippines, government-supported exports of women as nurses, maids, and
nannies to first-world countries alters the lives of boys and girls growing up
both at home and in the developed countries, and Mexican-American men
adapt to their wives’ working by doing increased housework and childcare,
while their ideology of men’s roles changes more slowly. And throughout
the world, warfare continues to be a predominantly male occupation, dev-
astating vast populations, depriving some boys of a childhood, and promot-
ing other men to positions of authority.
Global Masculinities is a series devoted to exploring the most recent,
most innovative, and widest ranging scholarship about men and mascu-
linities from a broad variety of perspectives and methodological approaches.
The dramatic success of Gender Studies has rested on three developments:
(1) making women’s lives visible, which has also come to mean making all
genders more visible; (2) insisting on intersectionality and so complicating
the category of gender; (3) analyzing the tensions among global and local
iterations of gender. Through textual analyses and humanities-based stud-
ies of cultural representations, as well as cultural studies of attitudes and
behaviors, we have come to see the centrality of gender in the structure of
modern life and life in the past, varying across cultures and within them.
Through interviews, surveys, and demographic analysis, among other
forms of social scientific inquiry, we are now able to quantify some of the
effects of these changing gender structures. Clearly written for both the
expert and more general audience, this series embraces the advances in
scholarship and applies them to men’s lives: gendering men’s lives, explor-
x NOTE FROM THE SERIES EDITORS
ing the rich diversity of men’s lives—globally and locally, textually and
practically—as well as the differences among men by social class, “race”/
ethnicity and nationality, sexuality, ability, status, sexual preference and
practices, and age.
MICHAEL KIMMEL AND
JUDITH KEGAN GARDINER