Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 1993"

What is hegemonic masculinity

Abstract: A developing debate within the growing theoretical literature on men and masculinity concerns the relationship of gender systems to the social formation. Crucially at issue is the question of the autonomy of the gender order. Some, in particular Waters, are of the opinion that change in masculine gender systems historically has been caused exogenously and that, without those external factors, the systems would stably reproduce. 1 For Hochschild, the "motor" of this social change is the economy, particularly and currently, the decline in the purchasing power of the male wage, the decline in the number and proportion of "male" skilled and unskilled jobs, and the rise in "female" jobs in the growing services sector. 2 1 have argued that gender relations themselves are bisected by class relations and vice-versa, and that the salient moment for analysis is the relation between the two. 3

The big picture: masculinities in recent world history

Abstract: This chapter addresses the question of how we should study men in gender relations, and what view of modern world history an understanding of masculinity might give us. I start with the reasons why ‘masculinity’ has recently become a cultural and intellectual problem, and suggest a framework in which the intellectual work can be better done. The historicity of ‘masculinity’ is best shown by cross-cultural evidence on the differing gender practices of men in different social orders. The core of the chapter is a sketch of the historical evolution of the forms of masculinity now globally dominant. This shows their imbrication with the military, social, and economic history of North Atlantic capitalist states, and especially with imperialism. This history provides the necessary basis for an understanding of the major institutionalized forms of masculinity in contemporary ‘first world’ countries, and the struggles for hegemony among them. I conclude with a brief look at the dynamics of marginalized and subordinated masculinities.

The discourse of American civil society: A new proposal for cultural studies

Abstract: In this essay we make a new proposal for the sociological approach to culture. We begin with a brief critical history of the social scientific treatment of culture and a criticism of some recent alternatives. In the section following this we develop our own model, and, in the third part of the essay, apply this in a construction of what we call the discourse of American civil society. In the fourth and longest section of our paper, we demonstrate the plausibility of this substantive model by using it to investigate a disparate range of events in American social and political history.

“Changing men” and feminist politics in the United States

Abstract: In recent years, U.S. men have responded to and at times initiated changes in the personal and social relations of gender. There is an increasing cultural preoccupation with men's roles as fathers.1 Gay liberationists and anti-sexist men are confronting heterosexism and male domination in society,2 while some academic men contribute to the feminist challenge to phallocentric curricula.3 Meanwhile, born-again Christians are subtly re-defining women's and men's "god-given roles,"4 while conservative ministers hold popular seminars on "the meaning of manhood,"5 and angry men (mostly divorced fathers) organize for "men's rights."6 And as I write, Robert Bly's book, Iron John: A Book About Men7 enjoyed over half a year on the national top ten bestsellers list.

The politics of interest in post-communist East Europe

Abstract: The demise of communism in East Europe means that politics must be constructed anew. Those who toppled the old regimes and have come to head the new ones like to assure people that political life will be organized completely differently from the way it's been organized in the past. Where civil society was subordinated to the state, now the state will be subordinated to society. Where politics ruled over markets, now markets will allocate resources. Where politics was largely the purview of the ruling party, now it will be open to all parties and interest groups. Where communism repressed particular interests, post-communism will embrace them. In short, where the communist system was state-centered, the new system will be society-centered.1

Changing men: Masculinities in context

Abstract: Have men changed? Can men change? Will men change? Repetitively, boringly, gloomily, these questions have been raised again and again in popular and scholarly debate over the last year or so, commemorating two decades of feminism two decades during which some women sought change in men. And it is feminists, focussing on the "problem of men" as they search for evidence of increasing equality between the sexes, who are today often the most pessimistic.' Many can find little evidence for any overall change in men's dominance as a sex, wherever they look in the home, the workplace, or the streets. Women's marginality, it seems as well, remains as encoded as ever within the discources and practices of our common cultural and political institutions. Indeed, some former self-professed feminists, like Sylvia Ann Hewlett, apparently despairingly, now throw in their lot with the anti-feminist moral right. She blames feminism for its attempts to seek equality with men, a move which in her view thereby failed to protect mothers, those who she believes inevitably and ineluctably perform the caring work in society.2 Men don't change.

Male readings of feminist theory: The psychologization of sexual politics in the masculinity literature

Abstract: The concept of masculinity dominates recent academic work on men and gender. It is now also widely employed in popular accounts of men, where phrases such as "changing masculinity" and "the crisis of masculinity" have become clich6s. To study men, it would seem, is to study masculinity. Thus, Men's Studies is defined by one of its key advocates, Harry Brod, as "the study of masculinities and male experience."1 Cynthia Cockburn argues that even men whose analysis includes a critique of patriarchy often fail to see "masculinity and their own part in expressions of masculinity as a problem."2 The implication is that a focus on masculinity can reveal the ways in which the personal practices of men are sexual-political practices, and that the problem with gender relations is not just "the structure of patriarchy." I suggest that the masculinity literature does not, in the main, have this effect.

The social construction of the Great Depression: Industrial policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain, and France

Abstract: The Great Depression called Western nations' most fundamental ideas about economic growth into question by disrupting the march of progress. Governments responded by rejecting orthodox growth strategies in favor of new policies they hoped would turn their economies around.1 In the realm of macro-economic policy, governments had followed a common orthodoxy before the 1930s that prescribed adhering to the gold standard and cutting spending in hard times; yet during the depression they adopted a new orthodoxy that prescribed exactly the opposite: currency devaluation and increased public spending.

Revolutionary outcomes in Iran and Nicaragua: Coalition fragmentation, war, and the limits of social transformation

Abstract: The concept of social revolution conjures up images of dramatic, fundamental, and enduring political, economic, and cultural change. Yet the comparative study of the actual outcomes of social revolutions work that would lend detail and pattern to such images remains in its infancy. Certainly, most Marxist writing about revolutions, as Michael Walzer has noted, "has focused on the great question: how to get started? What are the causes of revolution? There has been less inter-

The space of Lefebvre

Abstract: The translation of The Production of Space into English is a major event for those, like myself, otherwise lacking access to so much of Lefebvre's work. Of the sixty-six volumes he published before his death last year, only six have previously appeared in this language. The availability of The Production of Space will now help advance for Lefebvre, in the English-speaking countries, the kind of influence he has long had in Europe. Some of the book's contents have filtered into English-only circles through the writings of others (Castells, Harvey, and, most explicitly, Gottdiener);2 some insights have come our way through more or less simultaneous invention. But almost two decades after being first published, the content is rich enough to reward sustained attention. This work makes an important contribution not only to urban theory but, if appropriately understood, to theory more generally.

Karl Marx on the transition from feudalism to capitalism

Abstract: Studies of Marx's theory of history are complicated by the fact that Marx himself never provided a systematic treatment of its central principles. As a result, the task of elaborating historical materialism has fallen to Marx's interpreters, who are required to distill its tenets from Marx's historical writings and from general statements in which he summarized his historical method. Within the last decade, this task has attracted considerable scholarly attention occasioned by Cohen's successful restoration of an orthodox version of Marx's theory that had fallen into desuetude. On this reading, historical materialism is guided by the thesis "that history is, fundamentally, the growth of human productive power, and that forms of society (which are organized around economic structures) rise and fall according as they enable and promote, or prevent and discourage, that growth"1 The most promising alternative to Cohen's interpretation is one that awards causal primacy to class and class struggle. The best treatment of this thesis is Brenner's historiography, where it guides his analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in early modern Europe. 2 Brenner replaces the logic of production with the logic of exploitation at the center of his historical analysis. The relations of production and the class struggles arising from them, and not the productive forces, determine the internal composition and evolution of social formations in history. Material progress is only a by-product of the course of development of class struggle. Cohen's defense of historical materialism did not neglect Marx's emphasis on class. He sought to accommodate it, arguing that class conflict serves to facilitate major historical change, while the deeper cause of revolution lies in the autonomous tendency for the productive forces to develop throughout history. "If we want to know why class

I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours: Gay men, masculinity research, men's studies, and sex

Abstract: Gay men occupy a strange position in masculinity research and men's studies; neither truly inside nor entirely outside its domains. Right from the early days in books on men there were lists of references on homosexuality at the back. These books were often strangely coy, not mentioning homosexuality as another aspect of masculinity. Rather, they situated homosexuality as a nagging doubt in the minds of men as they grappled with their quite heterosexual masculinity, or as aberrant moments in a confused search by some heterosexual men to find their true selves.'

Liberalism, Marxism, and democracy

Abstract: A review essay on Francis Fukuyama, "The end of history?" The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer, 1989); Fukuyama, 'A reply to my critics," The National Interest, No. 18 (Winter, 1989/90); Alex Callinicos, The Revenge of History: Marxism and the East European Revolutions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); and Giddens, "Socialism, modernity and utopianism," New Statesman and Society 3/125 (1990).

Comparative historical research and rational choice theory: The case of transitions to democracy

Abstract: The "third wave" of democratization in this century, which rolled first through Southern Europe in the 1970s, then Latin America, and finally Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has brought about a revision of three fundamental theoretical premises on which social scientists have based conventional explanations of political regime change.' First, conventional thinking has been preoccupied with identifying structural "preconditions" of democratization, such as economic development, property rights, class configurations, cultural patterns, and state institutions. More recent approaches focus instead on the process of political interaction and bargaining between stalwarts of an existing non-democratic regime, reform elites, and outside democratic challengers. One guiding hypothesis of revisionist thinking is that the process of transition is a better predictor of eventual regime outcomes than structural preconditions that precede the advent of liberalization.2 Second, whereas conventional thinking insists on the importance of democratic norms and orientations as preconditions of democratization, novel approaches argue that popular democratic commitments are the result, not the prerequisite of democratization.3 Democracy is the contingent outcome of conflicts that depends on actors' initial resources, not their values.4 The key factor allowing democracies to emerge and stabilize is not legitimacy, but the absence of alternatives to democracy that significant political actors view as feasible and preferable.5

Modernity, history, democracy

Abstract: The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe: the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama says or, rather, the end of modernity? For Fukuyama, the end of history means in effect the completion of modernity. Competitive capitalism allied to liberal democracy is the culmination of historical development, a social order that reconciles economic efficiency with a mass democratic representation. According to Zygmunt Bauman,' on the other hand, the full flowering of modernity is not Western capitalism but, precisely Communism. The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe was a defeat for the project of modernity, which sought to bring the social and material worlds under human control. Nature was to be remade in such a way as to subordinate it to human purposes, while the irrationalities of social life were to be overcome by rational management. Spontaneity was seen as meaningless and chaotic, the antithesis of an order constructed by means of legislative control. In Bauman's words: "Throughout its history, Communism was modernity's most devout, vigorous and gallant champion pious to the point of simplicity. It also claimed to be its only true champion ... it was under Communist, not capitalist, auspices that the audacious dream of modernity, freed from obstacles by the merciless and seemingly omnipotent state, was pushed to its radical limits: grand designs, unlimited social engineering, large and bulky technology, total transformation of nature."2

Ecology and carnival: Traces of a “green” social theory in the writings of M. M. Bakhtin

Abstract: Visions of a life in harmony with a bountiful natural world have long pervaded human history, from Hesiod's Golden Age to the medieval Land of Cokaygne and contemporary environmentalism.2 Yet with some important exceptions most notably the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the "post-industrial utopianism" of Rudolf Bahro, Andr6 Gorz, and Herbert Marcuse, and in certain strands of feminist and ecological thought it is only relatively recently that radical social theory has aimed at a systematic analysis of our problematic relation with the non-human world and reflected upon the possibility of a "reconciliation" of humanity and nature in the context of an imagined "good society."3 It is my contention here that such current attempts to rethink human-nature relations find substantial, if perhaps unexpected, support in the idiosyncratic and heterodox writings of the Soviet cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. As it stands, this assertion may seem rather odd, for whereas Bakhtin's intellectual career encompassed a prodigious range of topics, from the phenomenology of perception to the history of the European novel, the issue of human-nature relations received little direct or sustained attention in his writings. Nonetheless, my argument is that his theories do contain a number of elements that are at least compatible with several recent critiques of "human-centered" instrumental reason, which have been entirely overlooked in the existing literature of Bakhtin.

Frameworks of culture and class in historical research

Abstract: A discussion of Patrick Joyce, Visions of the people: Industrial England and the question of class, 1840-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); William M. Reddy, Money and Liberty in modern Europe: A critique of historical understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Gerald M. Sider, Culture and Class in anthropology and history: A Newfoundland illustration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Toward kinder, gentler uses for testosterone

Abstract: In his not-so-little sketch of the big picture of changing Western masculinities, Bob Connell underscores the double-edged character of the title, "Unraveling masculinities," of the conference that led to this special issue. "Unraveling masculinities" is at once an apt and utopian moniker for the endeavor we convened to scrutinize. It concisely signals our feminist premise that masculinities have histories, and thus they are always unraveling. It is utopian in hinting at our feminist desire to unravel permanently what Connell has termed "hegemonic masculinities" For we wish to expose, and thereby to undermine, the power sources, discourses and practices that render these gender regimes oppressive (and deadly). This is a utopian aspiration, because new hegemonic masculinities are always being refigured and reconstituted, perhaps more quickly than the older ones unravel. Taking up the welcome invitation to engage in reflexivity about our collective intellectual enterprise, I find myself worrying about the sort of gender regime our well-intentioned efforts will advance. Connell correctly points out that something like the "Unraveling Masculinities" conference was unthinkable twenty-five years ago. Indeed most academic conferences then served (as they do still) as occasions for the enactment and performance of one brand of hegemonic masculinity, rather than as opportunities to excavate or contest it. They enact what Connell calls domination via "expertise,' Although we hope to subvert this, there is always the danger that form will overwhelm substance, (or, as my poststructuralist friends might put it, that our discursive conventions will mock intentionality.) Certainly, during the past quarter century, feminists cannot have failed to observe how the tribal customs, dialects, and social rituals of the academic conference allow even women and anti-sexist men to perform and buttress a form of hegemonic masculinity.

Afterthoughts... A dossier on masculinities

Abstract: Our comments do not respond to all the essays printed here. They merely record ideas we had upon hearing earlier versions of some of these articles at a conference on "Unraveling Masculinities," held at the University of California, Davis, in the spring of 1991. We subsequently reformulated such "afterthoughts" to begin to engage more generally with the present issue's project of articulating and analyzing masculinities. Our observations mean to problematize certain recent developments in the field of gender studies in which we are all working. They suggest the extent to which some disciplines, especially gay studies and art theory, have distrusted the very category of "masculinity" on which many of the essays here build. Yet we do not wish to outline a counter-agenda, or even to homogenize our related though individual approaches to the topic. Instead we offer merely some other ideas coming at the topic from a variety of directions, in imitation of the stylistic diversity and structural discontinuity of the ground-breaking "dossier" on race assembled by Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien.1

Toward a political economy of inheritance: Community and household among the Mennonites

Abstract: Exasperated, the Marion County, Kansas, Registrar of Deeds said, "You'll never figure those people out. Their land records are a nightmare, a crazy quilt, a maze." She was standing beside a large plat map of the County and the land records of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites. Together, we examined section twenty-two in West Branch township, which consisted of seven twenty-acre plots, a forty-acre, a sixty-acre, and five eighty-acre plots. Indeed, the several townships inhabited by Mennonites looked like a patchwork. I was at first tempted to infer, as others in anthropology and sociology have, that they were merely applying a "traditional ... partible inheritance model as a means of transferring property between generations."' After all, the aggregate data showed that the number of land divisions was increasing over time and the size of the holdings was decreasing. But one problem remained. A more careful scrutiny of the land maps and census and interview data showed that some farms were not being divided.

Why American engineers aren't unionized: A comparative perspective

Abstract: The decline of organized labor in the United States has stimulated a new interest in comparative research. Explanations of the prolonged stagnation and contraction of the American labor movement that focus on the United States alone run the risk of assuming that the American case is "normal," and that the decline of organized labor is a structural inevitability of advanced capitalism. By broadening their scope to include other industrialized countries with similar political economies and very different labor histories, students of the labor movement will be better able to identify what is truly distinctive in the American case, and whether it is its distinctiveness or its typicality that accounts for the apparent demise of the American labor movement.

Marx's analysis of the French class structure

Abstract: Marx's writings on France present a challenge. Taken together they form his most developed analysis of specific events, and yet the episodes Marx analyzed, the revolution of February 1848 and the Second Republic, the coup of 1851 and the Second Empire, and the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 to the forces of the Third Republic, did not obviously conform to the abstract propositions on capitalist society found in works such as the Manifesto or Capital. The works on France, therefore, are of interest not only for the specific historical analyses they contain, but also because it is possible to extrapolate more general dimensions of Marx's thought from them that are not apparent in his more abstract works.

The “Heidegger affair”: Philosophy, politics, and the “political”

Abstract: A discussion of Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit, Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Jean-Francois Lyotard, Heidegger and "the jews" (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).

Contemporary sociology and the interpretation of Weber

Abstract: Weber's stature as a sociologist is not generally a matter of dispute, nor is the quality or power of his great works Of course, there are arguments about the reasonableness or validity of many of his claims, conflicts over interpretations of his works and the frameworks in which best to situate them, over his political role and views, his social and intellectual roots, his methodology, and so forth, but that is to be expected for a figure of such enormous intellectual significance, one whose influence on intellectual history generally and on the history of sociology specifically has been so great There are, however, some other in some ways more urgent and timely matters of debate in scholarly circles that have direct and immediate bearing on the conduct of sociological research and inquiry, and it is these issues that I wish to address here' First, there is the argument over the value, for empirical and theoretical research in sociology, of interpretive works on Weber or other social theorists And second, there is the question of how, if at all, Weber's work and its concepts and results can be used fruitfully in contemporary sociological research