Risky footwear practices: masculinity, identity and crisis

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have engaged with questions as to how men ‘do’ gender and masculinity, both in everyday and more extraordinary ‘risky’ situations, such as extreme sport. Yet within this emergent theoretical framework, empirical evidence with which to examine these processes and transitions remains scant, especially when men's varied life course experiences are taken into consideration. Using data from a three-year ESRC-funded study of footwear, identity and transition in the UK, this article examines how younger men actively construct their identities through the symbolic practices of wearing and collecting different types of footwear. However, as men negotiate their own sartorial masculinity and identity, this is not without risk. This is evident in how masculinity is displayed in relation to men's vulnerability, should they ‘get masculinity wrong’ through their footwear choices and also take embodied risks in the context of their sexuality and family relationships, for example. When these everyday risky practices are placed in a wider context they also shed new light on the concept of masculinity ‘in crisis’. Risk and transition are therefore linked together so that risk itself is conceived of as a process, the intensity of risky behaviours and practices varying across the life course and in connection to economic and social constraints, as well as political ideologies about masculinity.

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