STATE, MASCULINITIES AND LAW: Some Comments on Gender and English State-Formation

Abstract

This paper examines connections between masculinity, social order, and the state in history, through a focus on English state-formation. Drawing on recent work in anthropology, social history, and the sociology of masculinity, it is suggested that state-formation involves both a fundamental shift in the social structure of gender, and a more specific politicization of masculinity. In the English case this politicization was both dynamic and multi-faceted, but one of its key outcomes was the gradual erosion of aristocratic masculinities which enjoyed dominance prior to the late medieval period, and the development of bourgeois masculinities which became hegemonic during the nineteenth century. Like state-building' itself (both in England and across Europe) this broad contest between aristocratic and bourgeois masculinities took a variety of forms, and also waxed and waned in intensity during the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, although it was sharpened considerably both by the onset of industrialization, and by the expansion and consolidation of the British Empire. It is suggested that such contests throughout the period were also played out within the law itself, and within the state and its legal and administrative apparatus. The case of duelling in England is used to illustrate some of the political, legal, and ideological manifestations of these interactions between competing constructs of masculinity.

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