masculinity

Nancy and Jonathan in Conversation with Miranda Melcher about Why Men?

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Miranda Melcher of the New Books Network interviewed us (Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale) about our book Why Men? A Human History of Violence and Inequality. Miranda introduced us by saying, “This book is fabulous and fascinating, and asks some really big questions, like why do we have patriarchy and warfare all over the place? And was this inevitable?”

And then the three of us are off. The podcast of the interview is one hour and thirteen minutes long, which gives you a potted version of the whole book. You can listen to it here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/why-men

The Roots of Sexual Violence

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale  write: Lurking behind any discussion of men and masculinities is a deep presumption that men are aggressive sexual predators disposed to raging violence, while women are passive victims good only for reproduction. If this binary construction is ‘natural’, if it is our DNA as a species, then what is the point of asking ‘Why are men and women unequal?’ ‘Why are lesbians and gays oppressed?’ ‘Why are many men violent?’ ‘Why is sexual violence so common?’

Yet these are old, very important questions. For thousands of years the most forceful answers have come from the people who dominate society. Continue reading →

Are Syrian Men Vulnerable Too? Gendering the Syria Refugee Response

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Syrian refugees in Jordan, 2016

Lewis Turner writes about Syrian refugees in Jordan, He argues that ‘a person is not vulnerable because they are a man or a woman, but because of what being a man or a woman means in particular situations. A refugee response that automatically assumes that women and children are the most vulnerable will do a disservice to the community it seeks to serve.‘ Continue reading →

Sing-Along Gender Theory: Sometimes it Takes Balls to be a Woman

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Elizabeth Cook

Elizabeth Cook

Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: There are three keys to thinking critically and clearly about class and gender. The first is to avoid thinking that there are essential ‘men’ and ‘women’. The second is to understand gender as relational – between men and women, but also between dominant and subordinate men, and between dominant and subordinate women. The third key is to remember that we are not actually unique, bounded individuals. Rather, we are social animals who are fashioned and exist only through exchange and social interaction.

These ideas are familiar to us in our everyday lives. However, it is easy to forget these ideas when ideologies of gender overwhelm us. The point of this Sing-Along is to make it easier to hang onto these ideas when gendering gets rough.

Song lyrics are wonderfully illustrative of gender theory. Indeed most popular songs are nothing but gender theory set to music. We have chosen examples from a while back, because they make very clear that the three key ideas needed to think critically about gender relations have been around a long time. We have included a lot of examples, because they are so much fun. Enjoy, and don’t worry if you don’t have time to listen to them all. But do start with Elizabeth Cook explaining why essentialism is a problem because Sometimes it takes Balls to be a Woman. 

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Good Books on Gender

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An Alternative Radical Bibliography by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale.

home-book

This list is strong on ethnography, leans left, is shamefully Anglophone, and a work in progress. For each topic, we think these are the best books to start with. Sometimes the sub-title tells you all you need to know, and sometimes we have added comments. The topics are arranged alphabetically. The first two books on each topic are our favourites – the rest are in no particular order.

An invitation: This list will become a permanent page on the blog. Please tell us about any books on gender that have been transformative for you. We will add them to the list, along with your name. Continue reading →

Punishing bad boys: intersections of race, class and gender

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale look at Ann Arnett Ferguson’s Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbour, University of Michigan Press, 2001).

This is a very good book about the depth of American racism behind the school to prison pipeline, the Ferguson and Black Lives Matter protests, and the new civil rights movement which is emerging in the United States. Bad Boys should also be read as a model for sociological research and theory. It is a brilliant example of how to do intersectional analysis.

Continue reading →