Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies

250 Pages·1994·2.08 MB·English

by  Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.)

Dislocating masculinity
Much recent writing on and by men suggests that male prerogatives are being
sustained and lent authority by the new discipline of ‘men’s studies’. Dislocating
Masculinity is an original and ambitious anthropological collection which raises
important new questions about the study of men and masculinities. In a sustained
cross-cultural enquiry, local experiences of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ are
deconstructed to reveal the complexities of gendering and gendered difference.
The familiar oppositions are analysed—male/female, man/woman and
masculinity/ femininity—as are the other apparent certainties—that ‘a man is a
man’ everywhere and that everywhere this means the same thing.
The chapters, written by both men and women, present a multiplicity of
representations of manliness in settings which range from Imperial India to rural
Zimbabwe to the gay community in London. Notions of masculinity define many
different male and female identities; through idioms of masculinized power, they
are often potent ways of expressing inequality. The complex relations between
desire, sexual orientation, potency, fertility and sexual experience are considered
in different social settings, as is the relation between gender and race, class and
age. In both the theoretical and ethnographic chapters, essentialist ideologies of
masculinity are challenged via a focus on embodiment and agency and subordinate
masculinities. By dislocating a singular notion of masculinity, particular versions
of masculinity which disempower both men and women are exposed.
Andrea Cornwall is a researcher based in the Anthropology Department,
SOAS, London, and is currently an Associate Fellow, Institute of African
Studies, Ibadan, Nigeria; Nancy Lindisfarne is Lecturer in the Anthropology of
the Arab World, SOAS, London.
Male orders
Edited by Victor J.Seidler
Goldsmiths’ College, University of London
MALE ORDERS attempts to understand male forms of identity, practice and
association in the modern world. The series explores how dominant forms of
masculinity have helped shape prevailing forms of knowledge, culture and
experience. Acknowledging the challenges of feminism and gay liberation, the
series attempts a broad and critical exploration of men’s lives as well as engaging
constructively with malestream definitions of modernity and post-modernity.
Also in this series
Recreating Sexual Politics
Men, Feminism and Politics
Victor J.Seidler
The Achilles Heel Reader
Men, Sexual Politics and Socialism
Edited by Victor J.Seidler
Men, Sex and Relationships
Writings from Achilles Heel
Edited by Victor J.Seidler
Men’s Silences
Predicaments in Masculinity
Jonathan Rutherford
Fathers and Daughters
Sue Sharpe
Unreasonable Men
Masculinity and Social Theory
Victor J.Seidler
Dislocating masculinity
Comparative ethnographies
Edited by Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Transferred to Digital Printing 2003
Routledge is an imprint of the Toylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1994 selection and editorial matter, Andrea Cornwall and
Nancy Lindisfarne; individual chapters to the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dislocating masculinity: comparative ethnographies/[edited
by] Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne.
p. cm.—(Male orders)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Men—Psychology—Cross-cultural studies.
2. Anthropology. 3. Masculinity (psychology)—
Cross-cultural studies.
4. Androcentrism. 5. Feminist criticism.
I. Cornwall, Andrea, 1963–.
II. Lindisfarne, Nancy, 1944–. III. Series.
HQ1090.D57 1993
305.31–dc20 93–13078
CIP
ISBN 0-203-39343-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-39592-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-07941-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-07942-X (pbk)
v
Contents
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Dislocating masculinity: gender, power and anthropology 11
Andrea Cornwall andNancy Lindisfarne
2 Missing masculinity? Prostitutes’ clients in Alicante, Spain 48
Angie Hart
3 A broken mirror: masculine sexuality in Greek ethnography 66
Peter Loizos
4 Variant masculinities, variant virginities: rethinking ‘honour 82
and shame’
Nancy Lindisfarne
5 ‘We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping’: 97
changing gay male identities in contemporary Britain
David Forrest
6 Gendered identities and gender ambiguity among travestis in 111
Salvador, Brazil
Andrea Cornwall
7 Pandora unbound: a feminist critique of Foucault’s History of 133
Sexuality
Lin Foxhall
8 Men don’t go to the moon: language, space and masculinities 146
in Zimbabwe
Chenjerai Shire
9 An economy of affect: objectivity, masculinity and the 158
gendering of police work
Bonnie McElhinny
vii
10 The ‘White Negro’ revisited: race and masculinities in south 171
London
Les Back
11 ‘Real true boys’: moulding the cadets of imperialism 183
Helen Kanitkar
12 The paradoxes of masculinity: some thoughts on segregated 196
societies
Deniz Kandiyoti
References 213
Name index 231
Subject index 234
Contributors
Les Back is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. He has
done anthropological fieldwork in south London and Birmingham and has
written widely on the politics of racism.
Andrea Cornwall is based in the Anthropology Department, School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is currently an
Associate Fellow of the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan. Nigeria. She is
conducting research in Southwestern Nigeria on processes of gendering over
the life course. Her previous work has been on participatory research
methodologies and reproductive health. She has published on both gender and
development topics.
David Forrest graduated in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London. He lives in north London and is
flattered to be called an ‘unreconstructed Marxist’.
Lin Foxhall specializes in the anthropology and history of Greece and has
taught both anthropology and ancient history in the US and UK. She is
currently a lecturer in the School of Archaeological Studies, University of
Leicester. She has published widely and is presently editing a volume on
ancient Greek legal systems, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Angie Hart is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Keele University. She has
done field research on prostitution and gender in Spain and Italy and has
published on a number of related topics in economic and medical
anthropology. She is presently completing two books: an ethnographic
monograph on prostitution in Spain, and a co-edited policy-related study on
HIV and AIDS in Europe.
Deniz Kandiyoti is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is the author of
numerous articles on women in the Middle East, feminist theory and gender
and development issues; her recent publications include Women. Islam and the
State (1991).
Helen Kanitkar is Lector in the Department of Anthropology, School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her main research
interests are Hindu communities in Britain and the Indo-Anglian novel. She is
ix
the editor of the Anthropological Bibliography of South Asia and the Bulletin
of the Vrindaban Research Institute; her publications include Hindus in
Britain (1982), co-edited with R.Jackson.
Nancy Lindisfarne is Lecturer in the Anthropology of the Arab World at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has done
fieldwork in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Syria. She has published numerous
articles on gender, marriage and Islam in the Middle East and, as Nancy
Tapper, is the author of Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an
Afghan Tribal Society (1991).
Peter Loizos is a Reader in Social Anthropology at the London School of
Economics, University of London. His first career was as a documentary film-
maker and he has recently completed From Innocence to Self-consciousness:
Innovation in Ethnographic Films, 1955–1985 (forthcoming). His
anthropological fieldwork has been done in Cyprus and in northern Sudan and
he is the author of The Greek Gift: Politics in a Cypriot Village (1975) and
The Heart Grown Bitter: A Chronicle of Cypriot War Refugees (1981), and co-
editor, with E.Papataxiarchis, of Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in
Modern Greece (1991).
Bonnie McElhinny is a linguist working at Stanford University, California.
She has done extended fieldwork on the relation between the gendering of
occupation and language among the Pittsburg police. She is interested in
interactional and variationist sociolinguistics and the ethnography of speaking;
her publications include works on African-American vernacular English, oral
narratives and secondary and tertiary education.
Chenjerai Shire is a freelance researcher and has taught ChiShona for a
number of years. He is currently studying film criticism and has also
researched and translated documentaries for television.