Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

Schooling in Capitalist America.

Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America.

GUTMAN, Matthew C., THE MEANINGS OF MACHO: Being a Man in Mexico City. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1996, 330 pp., $17.00 / fI 13.95 softcover, $45.00 If 35.00 hardcover. Reviewed by : PABLO VILA * A welcome addition to the increasing (but still insufficient) literature about masculinities, this thoughtful and penetrating ethnographic work analyzes the contradictory meaning of being a male in Mexico City's colonias populares [shanty towns]. Gutmann's primary goal is to challenge the stereotypical way Mexican males are usually depicted by both academicians and lay people alike. In the process he points out the complex relationship that exists between gender and national identity in Mexico. Thus, according to Gutmann, machismo in Mexico, as an archetype of masculinity has always been closely linked to Mexican cultural nationalism and this linkage was fueled by the work of prestigious intellectuals like Octavio Paz and Samuel Ramos: "For better or for worse, Ramos and Paz gave tequila-swilling machismo pride of place in the panoply of national character traits. Through their efforts and those of journalists and social scientists on both sides of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande, the macho became `the Mexiacn.' This is ironic, for it represents the product of a cultural nationalist invention: you note something (machismo) as existing, and in the process help foster its very existence" (p.240). But this linkage between the Mexican nation and a particular gender identity, machismo, has obscured the existence of multiple versions of male gender identities in Mexico. In this sense, "the argument for a uniform and timeless Mexican male identity is all the more without merit. What is needed instead is a revisionist analysis that clearly calls attention to anthropological complicity in the creation of stereotypes such as that of the Mexican Macho" (p.248). Attempting to pursue such revisionist analysis, Gutmann found in his fieldwork in Mexico City a much more complicated picture of Mexican male identities, where at least four main groups were easily identified by his interviewees: "the macho, the mandilon, [a male who wants to be commanded] the neither-macho-nor-mandilon, and the broad category of men who have sex with other men" (p.238). In order to show how these categories work in the everyday experiences of his interviewees, and how processes of degendering (men have affairs but so do women, alcohol consumption is no longer solely a male activity, men are active participants in rearing their kids and doing household chores, etc. …

The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City

Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity

by Aliyah Abu-Hazeem Using data collected from surveys, 32 in-depth interviews, and over 40 hours of classroom observations within an all-boys-all-Black high school, The Brotherhood Academy, this project explores two critical questions: 1) how do schools shape narratives of hypermasculinity and 2) how do these narratives inform Black boys’ performance and understanding of what it means to be man? Bridging the extant literatures on masculinities and race, gender, and sexuality, this paper offers a novel theorization of narratives of hypermasculinity that provides a framework for examining the implications of Black boys’ internalization of racialized, gendered, and sexualized scripts on performing manhood, which are often rooted in heteronormative, hypersexual, and deviant conceptualizations of masculinity. I find that even within a generally noncontested site for socialization, such as the Brotherhood Academy, which provides opportunities for resistance by bolstering a novel mission and value set rooted in destigmatizing what it means to be a Black man in society, these narratives of hypermasculinity still exist and negatively impact school actors’ ability to hold these

Bound by Narrative: An In-Depth Exploration of the Effects of Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Scripts on Black Boys' Socialization in and out of School Contexts

Aliyah Abu-Hazeem

Papers

Bound by Narrative: An In-Depth Exploration of the Effects of Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Scripts on Black Boys' Socialization in and out of School Contexts