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Drawing upon and defining a sex-gender-sexuality framework, Chapter 1 explores why an analysis of men and masculinities have been historically omitted from science-based HIV prevention interventions. This chapter traces the conceptual progression of gender relations research within family planning and HIV prevention research in order to lay the groundwork for a critical analysis of gendered vulnerability and risk. Chapter 1 situates HIV prevention programming with heterosexually active men as a specifically feminist research enterprise.

Chapter 4 draws on qualitative interview data derived from a research collaboration between UCSF, the University of Cape Town, and Sonke Gender Justice, a non-governmental organization in South Africa that seeks to reduce the spread and impact of HIV. This chapter analyses how men in several provinces of South Africa who participated in a gender-transformative HIV and anti-violence program shifted their views of masculinities, gender relations, and women’s rights. Chapter 3 also analyzes how men modified their alcohol use, violence, and HIV risks as a result of this innovative gender transformative program. The chapter situates gender transformative health interventions as combining dynamic social science thinking on masculinities, collective action and gendered power relations with public health behaviour change strategis. The data analysis also highlights how gender-transformative programming can reify discourses of healthism, individual blame, and individualized notions of masculinities that can limit the effectiveness of such programs.

This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)

This epilogue explores the continued resonances of emotionalised bodies and material culture for contemporary masculinities. It considers men’s ‘spectacular bodies’ in entertainment and advertising, along with their more sinister political associations and uses. Then it explores the imaginative conjunction of emotions, bodies, and material culture in formulations of military masculinity in recruitment drives, in the romanticised and politicised tropes of servicemen’s damaged bodies and minds, and in the creative projects seeking to materialise military men’s experiences. It shows how changed forms of male work, as well as unemployment, retirement, illness, and, more recently, paternal caring roles, are now configured through men’s uneasy presence in the home: an arena in which manhood is still presumed to be undermined or compromised. Finally, it shows how the emotionalised working-class male body has changed as radically as notions of class itself in the post-industrial economy of British society. There are no noble images of working-class men at their labours. Most images of working-class men are derogatory, whether they are perceived as a dangerous political threat or a redundant, residual form of masculinity. It concludes that the culture wars of late capitalism are fought over men’s bodies and emotions. (194 words)

This chapter investigates the cultural politics involved in the emergence and prevalence of the online epithet of “North American despicable man” (or “beimei weisuo nan” in Chinese and “NAWSN” in short). Combining virtual ethnography and off-line fieldwork research and informed by critical theories of masculinity studies and new media studies, this chapter explores the ways in which race, class, and nationality intersect in constructing and negotiating the cultural meanings of “NAWSN” within overseas Chinese online community. It argues that the emergence and popularity of the notion of “NAWSN” should be understood as a social process of “double emasculation” that feminizes and emasculates well-educated recent Chinese immigrant men with non-elite backgrounds in the United States. A full understanding of the cultural construction of newly emerging forms of Chinese masculinity requires us to attend to not just the gender ideological field in both China and the United States, but also to the transnational dimensions of its construction. Through confronting the “NAWSN” image online, the Chinese immigrant men attempt to compensate for the lack or loss of power in real life, but ironically reinforce the social prejudice against Chinese men and help perpetuate male dominance in the United States.

This chapter considers the effect that an autonomous technical artefact – the printing press – had on the workers in charge of them, the press-machinists. It establishes how the printing press possesses material and social agency in the continuity and transformation of craft masculinity. This issue is examined in the context of the technological shift from letterpress printing to high-speed offset-lithography, which took place chiefly in the 1970s. While the compositors’ experience of technological change has received some attention in labour history and sociology, the trade of press-machining has been almost entirely ignored. Charting the printing industry’s transition from letterpress to offset-lithography opens a new window of understanding into the relevance and influence of large-scale technical machinery on the shop floor. This is related back to the reinforcement of craft masculinities in declining industrial contexts. This allows us to see how particular practices and identities are sometimes maintained and reinvigorated when a conservative institution is threatened with change.

This chapter confirms theories of “bipolar black masculinity.” That is to say, the media tends to represent black men as either the completely threatening and race-affirming Bad Black Man or the completely comforting and assimilationist Good Black Man. For Obama, this meant he had to avoid the stereotype of the angry black man. Meanwhile, though, the association of the Presidency with the hegemonic form of masculinity presented difficulties for Obama. He was regularly called upon to be more aggressive in responding to attacks and more masculine in general. As a result, Obama could not be too masculine because that would have triggered the Bad Black Man stereotype but he could not be too feminine because that would have looked unpresidential.

The United States relies heavily on law enforcement to protect people subjected to intimate partner violence. The decision to prioritize law enforcement intervention may seem natural, but it is, in fact a political decision, with consequences along three dimensions. First, prioritizing the law enforcement response has precluded the development of other policies to address intimate partner violence. Second, channeling money into law enforcement helped to facilitate the growth of a hypermasculine, militarized environment where violence against women flourishes. Third, the decision to rely on law enforcement ignores research establishing that police officers are more likely than other groups to commit intimate partner violence. These political decisions have profound consequences for all people subjected to abuse, particularly the partners of police officers.

This Chapter argues that the domestic violence movement is narrowly politicized around the internalities of domestic violence in ways that unintentionally restrain law reform efforts to end family violence. While this internalities frame achieved critical successes in bringing domestic violence into the public frame and shaping critical interventions to it, it also collaterally immunized the state from accountability by paradoxically positioning the crisis of domestic violence and accountability for effective interventions squarely on victims and victim support networks. Expanding the politicization of domestic violence to also include the externalities of domestic violence is a critical – albeit uncomfortable – shift to move from intervening in domestic violence on behalf of victims to ending domestic violence.

This chapter investigates the connection between gender and history, drawing on the example of contemporary Chinese rural migrant men who are referred to as bangbang (porters or carriers) in Chongqing, P.R. China. In Chongqing, bangbang experience both masculine domination and marginalization through migration, laying claim to competing models of masculinity in their newly developing urban subjectivities and expressing masculine pride when they return to their home villages. The gender dynamics that they experience during migration is intimately related to the changing notion of masculinity over time in China. Zhang suggests that new theoretical insights can be gained by exploring the fluid and complex relations between masculinity and labor from historical perspective. Zhang argues for the importance of historical constructions of gender in understanding the decisions and experiences of rural migrant men in postsocialist China.

This chapter brings together bodies, emotions, and objects through the most desirable idealised man of all: the martial man. Fictional and real military men were imagined through emotionalised bodies, with material culture often acting as the point of entry for the cultural work they performed in producing and disseminating manliness. Drawing on the concept of emotional objects, three types of material culture are examined, which inspired feelings that reinforced ideas about idealised manliness. The first group are the artefacts of war and the military, including uniforms, weaponry, battle-field-objects, medals, ships, and regimental colours. The second are the objects encountered at the domestic level including toys, ceramics, and textiles, which depicted martial manliness or had intimate connections with soldiers and sailors. They appealed to all age groups, genders, and social classes, and had a domestic function or ornamental appeal. The third type considered consists of the material culture that celebrity military heroes generated, from consumable products that deployed their names and images, to the monuments that memorialised them, to the very stuff of their bodies. This irresistible nexus of emotionalised bodies and objects prompted affective responses, which disseminated, reinforced, and maintained civilian masculinities. (192 words)

This epilogue explores the continued resonances of emotionalised bodies and material culture for contemporary masculinities. It considers men’s ‘spectacular bodies’ in entertainment and advertising, along with their more sinister political associations and uses. Then it explores the imaginative conjunction of emotions, bodies, and material culture in formulations of military masculinity in recruitment drives, in the romanticised and politicised tropes of servicemen’s damaged bodies and minds, and in the creative projects seeking to materialise military men’s experiences. It shows how changed forms of male work, as well as unemployment, retirement, illness, and, more recently, paternal caring roles, are now configured through men’s uneasy presence in the home: an arena in which manhood is still presumed to be undermined or compromised. Finally, it shows how the emotionalised working-class male body has changed as radically as notions of class itself in the post-industrial economy of British society. There are no noble images of working-class men at their labours. Most images of working-class men are derogatory, whether they are perceived as a dangerous political threat or a redundant, residual form of masculinity. It concludes that the culture wars of late capitalism are fought over men’s bodies and emotions. (194 words)

This chapter discusses the process of developing collaborative working relationships with a particularly hard-to-reach population; rural-dwelling older men with dementia. It draws on theoretical knowledge around masculinities as well as reflexive practice undertaken in rural areas within the UK to detail potential challenges facilitators may be faced with when engaging this population. It concludes by providing a list of recommendations for facilitators to consider when delivering community initiatives to rural-dwelling older men with dementia.

Through ethnographic exploration of the Peruvian devotion of the Señor de Los Milagros (Lord of the Miracles) in Rome, this chapter discusses the intersection between Catholicism, masculinity and transnational labor. Through close exploration of Catholic orientations and the attachments they create between bodies, flesh and objects, it is argued that Brotherhoods such as the Señor de Los Milagros, should not be understood, in received sociological terms, as a religious migrant movements but rather as movements of the religious through migrants. Such a focus also opens a perspective on the study of animation of materiality in Catholicism through a liturgy-laboring continuum, a distribution of what Pitt Rivers [in this volume] would have called an economy of grace.

This chapter discusses the nature and operation of comedy in Chaucer’s celebrated and scandalous Miller’s Tale. Focusing on the intriguing character of the effeminate parish clerk, Absolon, it suggests how the tale engages its readers in an often raucous, but nonetheless serious conversation about masculine and feminine identity, cultural values and literary genres. Comparison is also made between the treatment of masculinity in the Tale and in late medieval romances such as Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.

The chapter examines the consensus among historians that civilian men were compared unfavourably to the disciplined soldier, were emasculated by women’s new wartime roles and were rendered invisible in wartime representations. Having established the high status enjoyed by the ‘soldier hero’ in wartime discourse and by contrast, the fragile position of the male civilian, with reference to Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, the chapter asserts that the construction of masculinity in fact remained open to contestation. Sources where the reserved man are depicted in a positive way are analysed. The chapter examines the rich array of source material that historians can, but have so far failed to, draw upon, including archival documents, visual sources and our newly conducted oral history interviews.

This chapter recounts the immediate and pervasive association of the 9/11 attacks with American film, genre spectacle, and gender. American national identity, notions of manhood, and expressions of hegemonic masculinity are often linked, especially in periods of crisis or turmoil. Hollywood cinema, key genres, and iconic “male action” masculinities were prominently mobilized in understanding the attacks and proposing the national response. The chapter discusses how America fell back on reassuring Hollywood narratives to displace the overwhelming impact of 9/11 and cope with its attendant traumas. The attacks were insistently figured in gendered terms to diagnose perceived national deficiencies, and valorize “heroic” and professional masculinities. The chapter finally identifies how political, military, and cultural responses were equally gendered. Additionally, the terror threat was rhetorically domesticated and terrorists were discursively constructed as monstrous Others to promote the return of “traditional” masculinity and “strong father” figures in advancing the succeeding “war on terror.”