Dislocating masculinity: Gender, power and anthropology

Abstract

In this chapter we locate our studies of masculinity. Our perspective draws extensively on anthropological accounts of gender and feminist theory, and our ambition is to establish a framework for comparative analyses in general and for our ethnographic chapters in particular. Indeed, one of our introductory obligations is to present important aspects of this work in a manner that is both accessible and intellectually challenging. We begin with a paradox that is at the heart of all anthropological analyses. Though we seek to question taken-for-granted social categories, we can only do so in terms of our own experience. Imprisoned as we are in the strictures of our language, it is difficult to escape using the terms ‘men’, ‘male’ or ‘masculinity’, and ‘women’, ‘female’ or ‘femininity’, without implying a binary notion of gender (cf. Threadgold 1990). To use complex circumlocutions instead merely side-steps the problem, providing no adequate solution. Accordingly, we use these terms reservedly. A preliminary step to ethnographic comparison, then, is to examine the cate- gories of our language more closely and to sharpen our critical awareness of ideas about ‘men’, ‘maleness’ and ‘masculinity’. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1973) offers definitions of the adjective ‘masculine’ as ‘having the appropriate excellence of the male sex; virile, vigorous and powerful’. ‘Masculine’ may describe attributes, actions and productions as well as certain inanimate objects that are connected with the male sex because of some essential quality, such as relative superiority or strength (1973: 1284). The primary definition of ‘male’ is simpler: ‘of or belonging to the sex which begets offspring, or performs the fecundating function’ (1973: 1265). Yet the apparent certainties of such definitions are themselves contradicted: ‘masculine’, when used of a woman, suggests that ‘she has the qualities proper to a man’ (1973: 1284). Conventional usage depends on a series of explicit and implicit premises. First, masculinity and maleness are defined oppositionally as what is not feminine or female. Second, gendered identities implicitly depend on the social acquisition of appropriate attributes. Third, anatomy, learned behaviour and desire are conflated so that ‘normal’ sexual orientation and identity are heterosexual. And, last, through biological, sexual and social connotations, the idea of masculinity is reified and universalized. Masculinity appears as an essence or commodity that can be measured, possessed or lost. However, masculinity is neither tangible nor an abstraction whose meaning is everywhere the same. In practice, people operate according to many different notions of masculinity; closer inspection reveals a cluster of wide-ranging notions with certain ‘family resemblances’ (Wittgenstein 1963). Masculinity draws and impinges on a number of different elements, domains, identities, behaviours and even objects, such as cars and clothing. The notion of masculinity and what are described as masculine attributes can be used to celebrate and enhance normative maleness. However, such ideas can also unseat any straightforward relation between masculinity and men. Accordingly, we ask questions that aim to disrupt conventional understandings. How and when do ‘boys’ become ‘men’? What makes someone a ‘man’ in some settings and a ‘client’, ‘pimp’ or ‘person’ in others? Is a man only, or always, a ‘man’? Are only men ‘masculine’? When a man is exhorted to ‘be a man’, what does this entail? Is a man always the same kind of ‘man’? If so, what do men have in common? How and where are these commonalities constructed and used? And, if a man fails to do ‘what a man’s gotta do’, does he cease to be a man? The many different images and behaviours contained in the notion of masculi- nity are not always coherent: they may be competing, contradictory and mutually undermining. Moreover, completely variant notions of masculinity can refer simultaneously or sequentially to the same individual. Meaning depends on who is speaking and who is being described in what setting. Masculinity has multiple and ambiguous meanings that alter according to context and over time. Meanings of masculinity also vary across cultures and admit to cultural borrowing; masculinities imported from elsewhere are conflated with local ideas to produce new configurations. The popular notion of ‘the macho man’ provides us with a vivid example of the complexity of notions of masculinity and their intimate connection with particular social settings.

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