Men and Women of the Corporation

By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

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

The civilizing process

Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables List of boxes 1. The study and its rationale Part I. Modes of Provision: 2. The development of the habit of eating out in the UK 3. The meanings of eating out Part II. Access: 4. Patterns of eating out 5. Domestic organisation, family meals and eating out Part III. Delivery: 6. Personal service in public and private places 7. Last suppers Part IV. Enjoyment: The Attractions of Eating Out: 8. Eating out and its gratifications 9. The enjoyment of meal events Part V. Conclusion: 10. Eating out and the theories of consumption Methodological appendix: data collection and analysis References.

Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure

The article explores the premarital all-male stag tour made by groups of British men to an Eastern European city as a homosocial bonding ritual. Homosocial groups help sustain hegemonic masculinity and play a significant role in establishing accepted forms of masculinity. Male friendships have been characterized as lacking in intimacy and typically channeled through alternative social relations such as competition. The article draws on qualitative data from participant observation with stag tour groups. Although bonding through shared activities and overt expressions of heterosexuality are common to stag tourist behavior, groups were seen as largely noncompetitive. Expressions of intimacy and emotion were frequent and a high value was placed on group cohesion and fostering a sense of togetherness. The performance of a loss of homosocial friendship was apparent and this links to wider social changes in men’s lives. This suggests both the significance of men’s friendships and possible patterns of change.

What Happens on Tour: The Premarital Stag Tour, Homosocial Bonding, and Male Friendship

Entrenched conceptions of masculinity have constructed the male body as bounded and controlled. This article discusses the centrality of a particular construction of the male body to the phenomenon of British premarital stag party tourism to Eastern European cities. Drawing on data from participant-observation in Krakow, Poland, it is shown that the tour participants enact an embodied masculinity which is unruly and unrestrained. The stag tour experience is embodied through the use of clothing and incidences of nudity, public urination and vomiting, and the detrimental physical effects of heavy alcohol consumption. This embodiment is self-destructive and frequently self-parodic. The failures of participants to sustain a controlled and contained body are celebrated as part of the enactment of a boisterous masculinity. This represents a release from normative pressures concerning the male body but, with transgression being only temporary, also acts to support the ritualistic reinscription of a wider hegemon...

Off the Leash and Out of Control: Masculinities and Embodiment in Eastern European Stag Tourism:

/pdf/craft-tangibility-and-affect-at-work-in-the-microbrewery-5errysxim5.pdf

Craft, tangibility and affect at work in the microbrewery

Tourism place and space: British Stag Tourism in Poland

This article considers the experiences of young travellers visiting the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. Semi-structured interviews were used to generate qualitative data on the way individuals approach, engage with and interpret their experience of visiting Auschwitz. In analysing findings from interviews, this paper focuses first on the various motivational factors that initiate individuals‟ visit and, further, the manner in which individuals seek to actively engage with the site. The latter is seen to draw on imaginative devices, employed by young travellers to feel a greater connection to the site. The influence of historical, pedagogical and cinematic accounts of the Holocaust and how these are seen to interact with individuals‟ experiences of visiting the camp in reality are considered. Finally, an account of the meanings which individuals ascribe to their experiences is offered. Such is suggested to occupy two positions. First, achieving a greater understanding of the historical facts of the Holocaust and, second, the affirmation of humanist values as understood, at times ambivalently, with reference to contemporary society.

Thomas Thurnell-Read

Papers

What Happens on Tour: The Premarital Stag Tour, Homosocial Bonding, and Male Friendship

Off the Leash and Out of Control: Masculinities and Embodiment in Eastern European Stag Tourism:

Craft, tangibility and affect at work in the microbrewery

Tourism place and space: British Stag Tourism in Poland

Engaging Auschwitz: an analysis of young travellers’ experiences of Holocaust Tourism