Customer Reviews

Masculinities

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This book is a must-have for all students of men's studies--in fact, for all gender related--courses. The book is truly interdisciplinary. Dr. Raewyn Connell is a leading sociologist from Australia. She combines her past academic efforts in education, political science, and feminism and over two decades of ethnographic studies on men and masculinities to develop her theory for understanding masculinities. Her "hegemonic masculinity" concept is widely cited, critiqued, and reformulated across academic disciplines. However those with little background in sociology and feminism might find it a little bit difficult to read. Among many fundamental texts on the studies of men and masculinities, this one belongs to the "sociology" camp, rather than the "psychology" camp. Though I come from psychology background, I found the points in this book very refreshing, stimulating, and challenging. Though the original edition was published in 1995 and Connell made little changes in the revised edition (she only added a new overview chapter and an epilogue), many ideas in the book still hold true today. This is not a happy thing to celebrate, because that means a certain group of men with socio-political power are still dominant and "hegemonic" in the society (with the "help" of "complicit" men) over the "marginalized" and "subordinated" groups of men, and women too. The book is a pioneer in advocating the plural forms of masculinities/sexualities/gender identities, which is a common acceptance in gender studies field now. I have attended a 3-day workshop on masculinities by Dr. Connell in 2006 in Taiwan. I was very impressed by her wide knowledge and enthusiasm on this topic. I don't agree with another reviewer that Connell only talked about limited aspects of masculinity in one country in this book. In fact, Connell offers several qualitative studies with wide range of men across different occupations, race, and social economic status, for example, unemployed youths, environmental activists, former athletes...etc. Her more recent studies even examine the interplay between globalization and masculinities (especially in the top multi-nation companies) and can be found in academic journals. Overall, this book is a classic and worth reading again and again. It's very useful for me in thinking about gender relations, social issues and conducting qualitative studies with men. I highly recommend it!!

The academic enterprise seems, at times,to be a relentless assault on common sense. Perhaps nothing seems more obvious and commonsensical than the fact of two genders. Connell attacks the obviousness being male in this volume. He writes clearly about the social construction of various ways of being a man. The center piece of the book is comprised of case studies of four Australian men who exemplify quite different masculinities. The second edition helpfully updates the bibliography.

This could have been an excellent study into the characteristics of manhood set by culture, society, environment, and nature. Instead it is a terribly limited view of a handful of men in one country. Sadly, it is void of enthusiasm for its topic, boring as dirt, and less interesting than reading a phone book.The author seems more intent on proving she has read a great deal on the topic by endlessly paraphrasing the work of other studies (always giving due credit), but displays little skill in using her knowledge to make her viewpoints or research remotely appealing. There is far more approachable, interesting, creative reference out there if any of these qualities are important to the reader.

This book destroys the silly notions of those that ppl believe in a purely genetic basis for gender and those taht believe in strict gender roles... duh humans are usually more complex then simple dualities....