Responding to the ‘crisis of masculinity’: the perspectives of young Muslim men from Glasgow and Edinburgh,Scotland

Debates about the so-called crisis of masculinity have tended to focus on the experiences of white working class young men and black young men to the exclusion of other groups of men. This article seeks to redress this omission by exploring young Muslim men's knowledge and understanding of the crisis of masculinity and the ways in which they respond to such discourses. Using qualitative data collected during interviews and focus groups with young Muslim men – mainly of Pakistani heritage – living in Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, I demonstrate that young Muslim men's responses to the crisis of masculinity debate are informed by a complex range of issues including their own class position, familial and related gendered expectations alongside the young men's interests in sport and leisure activities.     

‘It was entirely his fault’: constructing white masculinities and the Haga Man assaults in Umeå, Sweden 1998–2006

Several cases of single repeat offenders in urban space have raised public concern in Sweden during recent decades. Few studies have been conducted on the consequences of the ‘hostage situations’ that emerge when one individual offender causes fear and affects a large group of people in a specific place. The concern of this article is to examine consequences of the Haga Man phenomenon: the case of a serial rapist operating between 1998 and 2006 in Umeå, a medium-sized Swedish city. The article focuses on the construction of white masculinities among male respondents in Umeå during the time of the attacks. I examine how men positioned themselves in relation to the public image of the offender as a ‘normal Swede’ and how they related to women's increasing fear of violence in urban space. Three prominent constructions of masculinity emerged from the research data: the dangerous stranger, the suspect and the protector. These three constructions of masculinity were not clear-cut and did not ‘belong’ to specific men – several of the interviewees articulated various forms of masculinities but stressed them in different ways depending on, for instance, age and/or ethnicity/race. I conclude that men largely positioned themselves as protectors as a strategy to distance themselves from the perpetrator (the image of the ‘normal Swedish man’ performing the rapes) and to ensure that they would not be perceived as suspects. However, men largely perceived that women's increased fear of crime was ‘one man's fault’ and broader issues about gendered power relations in space were not raised.     

Embodied intergenerationality: family position,place and masculinity

The aim of this article is to further understandings of performances of family position, place and masculinity in what I call ‘embodied intergenerationality'. I build on research with 38 men across three generations within 19 families of Irish descent to discuss masculinity, intergenerationality and place. These men are living, or have recently lived, in the region known as Tyneside, in the North East of England. Secondary to this contribution is an acknowledgement of the significance of changing positionalities as research insider and participant observer by addressing both intersectional and intergenerational identities involved in geographic research. The article therefore responds to recent work in the discipline which has called for more critical attention towards experiences in the field, with its central contribution – embodied intergenerationality – advancing knowledge of masculinities and place for those who analyse masculinities within the research encounter. This work explores the performances and relationalities of masculinities amongst men of Irish descent on Tyneside as well as between the participants and the researcher. In working with men of different ages both within and between families, I draw conclusions on masculinity, intergenerationality and place: the roles of researcher and participant can become embodied as ‘son' and ‘father' in the research encounter and where the research takes place matters.     

Gender in Polar Air: Roald Amundsen and his Aeronautics

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the polar aeronautics of the 1920s as men, that is: to take seriously the obvious – but so far more or less ignored fact – that polar history is a gendered history: a man's history. It is time to ask what kind of men the polar aviators were: that is the purpose of scrutinizing polar history as a part of the history of masculinity. A more general purpose of gender studies is to study the variety of masculinity as an illustration of the historicity of human behaviour. The conclusion of the article is that the polar aviators were representatives of an archaic kind of masculinity that deviated from the hegemonic engineer-hailing masculinity of the 1920s. They were escapists, of course. They loved flying, of course – and certainly they worshipped technology. At the same time, however, they acted extremely emotionally and even irrationally towards themselves. They were dictated by their strong feelings in a degree that collided with both common sense and the ideals of correct manliness. Thus, the article is intended to be a contribution not only to the study of masculinity, but even to the discussion in social research on the meaning of emotions in human interrelationships.     

‘Access to Women’: Securing Mormon Whiteness in the US Army's Regulation of Commercial Sex in Chihuahua, 1916

This article argues that Mormon colonists – once refugees who had sought freedom from persecution for their sexual practices – asserted a white middle-class respectability as they cooperated with the US Army and corresponded with officers on the management of the soldiers’ sexual conduct. Their success depended heavily on shared understandings of the race and gender of the people involved. That is, they leveraged prevailing assumptions about Black soldiers’ bodies as aggressive and in need of sex, about white Mormon women's bodies as vulnerable and about Mexican women's bodies as racially in-between and thus suitable for the sexual service-work of enlisted men, pliable and ready to be made ‘accessible’ to soldiers. John Pershing, when asked to explain his decision to build the brothel, justified his choice by saying he had all Black troops at the camp and that nearby Mormon colonists had complained of these Black men meeting women outside for sex. This article explains how, why, for whom and to what end Pershing's explanation worked.     

Spain violated: foreign men in Spain's heartland

The process of colonial expansion in the sixteenth century fundamentally changed Spanish culture. Along with race, religion, ethnicity, status and honour, definitions of proper gendered and sexual behaviour changed as well. This article argues that Spanish communities and institutions came to define foreign men as examples of a subordinate and dangerous masculinity. The threat that foreign male sexuality posed to Spanish women and thus Spanish patriarchy – not only in the colonies, but within Spain itself – led institutions to prosecute foreign men. This essay draws on the language used in Inquisition and ecclesiastical court cases against foreign men as well as in Spanish literature of the period.     

Homelessness,nature, and health: toward a feminist political ecology of masculinities

Engaging with feminist political ecology and leveraging experiences from a 16-month critical ethnography, this research explores ways in which masculinities served as both a rationale and an outcome of men facing homelessness living in the margins of an urban municipal public park – a space known as ‘the Hillside.’ Ethnographic narratives point to Hillside residents making their home in nature, connecting experiences in nature with various masculinities, and the gendered eschewing of social services. These portrayals further highlight the perceived feminization of social services within a context of rapidly neoliberalizing urban environments, and illustrate the ways participants positioned and engaged with social services. Entanglements of health and nonhuman nature prompt a feminist political ecological engagement with masculinity. Experiences from the Hillside add textured richness to discourses concerning the ways in which contemporary landscapes are constructed, perceived, experienced, and co-constituted through and with gender.     

British Masculinities on Trial in the Queen Caroline Affair of 1820

This article uses the deluge of pamphlets, public addresses, newspaper articles and sermons addressing the Queen Caroline Affair to construct a case study of the opposing constructions of British masculinity vying for dominance in 1820. The literature surrounding the attempted royal divorce reveals a contest between the libertine example of manhood characterised by George IV and the more sober, chivalrous and respectable image of masculinity increasingly espoused as the British ideal. This episode, therefore, offers an unusually rich insight into contemporary constructions of masculinity and the way in which they were utilised within the public sphere. Moreover, this article argues that such gendered concerns were not only as crucial to motivating opposition to the king's actions as political issues, but that gender concerns and political issues were indivisible, as appropriate manly behaviour in both public and private increasingly came to be seen as a core component of a man's overall reputation and fitness to exercise authority.     

Talking about bodies online: Viagra,YouTube, and the politics of public(ized) sexualities

The development of Viagra in the late 1990s ushered in a new age of conversation about sex and sexuality, as men's bodily abilities were put on display for all to discuss. In 2005, the video-sharing technology YouTube was launched. Taken together, these technological innovations – both biomedical and representational – have produced debate around sex, sexualized and gendered bodies, and sexual health. This article interrogates Viagra-related representations posted on YouTube and analyzes sexuopharmaceuticals as a set of intertextualities that create space for both normative discourses and social critiques. Three analytic themes illustrate how Viagra-related YouTube videos (1) reinforce a regime of self-care within a wider context of individualized responsibility for one's sexual health, (2) highlight the values attached to the pharmasexed gendered body for men and women in the age of Viagra, and (3) provide disruptions, in the form of criticism, to the assumption that healthy bodies and relationships need pharmasexual enhancement. The article concludes by suggesting that social networking sites such as YouTube are managed public spaces through which one can interrogate the intertextualities that link discourses related to bodies and sexual health to the virtual and material spaces of everyday life.     

Pickets,Protests and Purses in the American Civil Rights Movement

At first glance, perhaps nothing seems more mundane and apolitical than a purse. But purses have always been much more than a fashion accessory. This article analyses how southern Black women – both the legendary and the lesser known – in the ‘classical’ phase of the Civil Rights Movement used purses to appear as respectable ladies' when their dress and comportment were under close surveillance. Yet they simultaneously used their purses as private, female-controlled spaces that aided them in achieving a wide variety of social, economic and political objectives. In fact, many southern Black women used their purses to hide critical items needed to prepare themselves and protect their bodies as they voted, sat-in, rode on public transportation and integrated schools. Using oral histories, memoirs, newspaper and magazine stories and photographs, this article argues that Black southern female activists used purses primarily as ‘toolkits’. In the process, it reveals that Black southern women's participation in the armed self-defence movement is far more significant than scholars have appreciated.     

Migration,marginalization and metropolitaneity: negotiation of masculinities of Nepali drug users in Hong Kong

Many studies on men and masculinity have discussed how Asian male migrants who experience a ‘masculinity crisis’ negotiate their masculinity vis-à-vis dominant black and white masculinities in Western societies. Yet, few have discussed how they negotiate their masculinity in the Asian contexts. In this study, Nepalis have a tradition of transnational migration. Their transnational networks have facilitated the development of overseas Nepali communities. This research therefore aims to study the negotiation of masculinities of Nepali male heroin users, a marginalized group in Hong Kong. By using a qualitative mixed-methods approach, it is argued that their negotiation of masculinities is nuanced and relational; intersecting with race/ethnicity, social space, and generation. In the process, discursive resources in the cultural repertoire are utilized to construct alternative forms of masculinities in school, the workplace, and rehabilitation treatment. These masculinities are pluralistic and contingent, in relation to the transnational space and post-colonial situation of Hong Kong.     

Devout Muslim masculinities: the moral geographies and everyday practices of being men in Turkey

While the academic focus on Muslim women’s dress and comportment has enriched our understanding of the multifaceted formation of pious femininities, there has been much less consideration of the embodied practices of Muslim men. What work does exist on Middle Eastern men’s piety, sexuality, and everyday conduct too often falls back on established categories, such as traditional, Western, or Islamic identities. Yet it is crucial not only to critically examine how we conceptualize masculinity in the Middle East, but also to recognize the political and cultural importance of how masculinities are enacted through everyday practices. In this article, we argue that questions of dress and bodily practice are relevant to an understanding of how young devout Muslim men navigate the complex spatiality of piety, morality, and masculinity in contemporary urban Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork with young devout men in Konya and Istanbul, we illustrate how multiple, competing devout Muslim masculinities participate in the production of uneven moral geographies in these two very different Turkish cities. Further, we find that the possibility of different ways to enact devout masculinity opens questions about the universality of Islamic knowledge and practice. We suggest that the embodied construction and regulation of the looking-desiring nexus tethers male sexual desire to the public performance of Islamic morality. Our intervention is thus to demonstrate how different versions of masculinity and Islamic piety striate the moral geographies of these two Turkish cities, and thereby to further recognition of the contingency and plurality of both masculinity and Islam.     

“The noble pirate”: The Voice of Peace offshore radio station

This article analyzes the case of Abie Nathan's “Voice of Peace” – an offshore pirate radio station that began broadcasting in 1973 off the coast of Tel Aviv. Although the station reflected the diffusion of this type of media transmission into the Middle East from Europe, particularly in its identification with pop music, the Voice of Peace was distinct in its political and ideological aims and in its positive reception. I argue that public enthusiasm for the Voice of Peace reflected not merely the yearning for pop music but the search for a “normal” life within the turmoil of Israel. By “tuning in” to the Voice of Peace, listeners found an escapist heterotopia – an alternative to Israel's hegemonic national characteristics.     

Earth politics: Territory and the subterranean – Introduction to the special issue

The special issue Earth Politics: Territory and the Subterranean explores how and to what political and economic effects people have territorialized the underground. Through studies of a range of activities – from scientific exploration to 3-D geological modeling to laboratory analysis to recreational caving – authors in the issue challenge the idea that the subterranean is a world apart, detached from the sociopolitical worlds of the surface, and instead focus on the complicated relations and processes that remake and weave meaning into often unseen depths. In this introductory article, we situate the issue within expanding literatures on geological materiality, territorial politics, and vertical/volumetric space, and we discuss two overlapping themes running through the issue's articles: the politics of subterranean knowledge production and the politics of subterranean materialities. We conclude by reflecting on the meaning of ‘earth politics’, emphasizing the injustices that derive from – and are sedimented into – dominant modes of knowing and interacting with the matters of the subsurface.     

The right to be heard: Citizenship and language

In this paper we address the importance and contestation of language in terms of citizenship and the development of political communities by focusing on the example of a minority language – British Sign Language. Language is crucial to debates about citizenship and belonging because the State has to rely on language for its very functioning, indeed political practice itself is a form of communicative action. For individuals language is deeply implicated in their ability to claim and maintain their rights and in their affective connections with others and sense of identification. The paper therefore begins by identifying that Deaf people's legal entitlements (e.g. to vote) are an abstract form of citizenship because as sign language users they have difficulties understanding both political and wider civil institutions and practices, and so lack the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship in a substantive sense. We then go onto consider citizenship in the broader sense of how groups are included or situated in the public sphere, and in doing so to consider the extent to which Deaf people might be understood to have a liveable place in an oral society. The final section examines how the sense of injustice which flows from Deaf people's experiences of marginalisation in the public realm means that they are developing alternative forms of political commitment predicated on non-state spaces of belonging – where they can live their language – at both local and transnational scales. The paper concludes by reflecting on the notion of differentiated citizenship and the implications of Deaf people's claims to language rights.     

Drinking like a man: the paradox of excessive drinking for seventeenth-century dutch youths

In the early modern period, drinking alcohol was an integral part of Dutch social and cultural life. Toast were made to the health of unborn babies, for job nominations, and at funerals. Young people started to consume alcohol at an early age. However, within this culture they had to learn how to drink in moderation. Excessive drinking was not only a cardinal sin, it was also a paradox in the realm of gender. For males, the act of getting drunk and losing control was a flaw on their masculinity. They in fact became like women who were believed to be incapable of controlling their mind and body. On the other hand, the ability to drink great quantities of alcohol symbolized an age-old form of masculinity. Imbibing in "wine, women, and song" were liminal rites in becoming men and how young men demarcated themselves from being boys.     

‘Each fantasy chosen begin’: the music of The Divine Comedy

This article considers the cultural and social context for the music of the Northern Irish band The Divine Comedy. It focuses on three mid-1990s albums – Liberation (1993), Promenade (1994) and Casanova (1996) – and debates the significance of this performance of alternative Ulster masculinity during the peace process. It will detail the lyrical obsession with a very particular type of imagined Anglo-Irishness during the first two of these albums, and then consider the complicated uses of the ‘Britpop’ genre in Casanova. This music is baroque, literary and written by an Anglican bishop's son, Neil Hannon, who grew up in Enniskillen during the Troubles. It will consider how Hannon cobbles together an acceptable identity through the use of literary pretentiousness and a carefully crafted pop persona.     

Cities are Alive with the Sound of Music: Saengerfest and the Transformation of Urban Public Music in Nineteenth-century America

This article examines the development of outdoor public music in American cities during the nineteenth century and develops three primary arguments. Organized and recreational forms of public music – such as musical festivals and outdoor band concerts – became commonplace and integral to city life during the second half of the nineteenth century. Second, German-American singing festivals (Saengerfests) were major public events during the mid-nineteenth century and helped create this recreational public music culture by demonstrating how organized and recreational public music could enhance city life and suggesting to commentators and public officials that it could serve as a tool of reform. Third, public music – such as occurred during Saengerfests – helped bridge social divisions and made American cities more socially fluid, even at a time when some aspects of civic life were becoming more divided and contentious.     

The Jim Crow Craze in London's Press and Streets, 1836–39

This article examines clothing in public lunatic asylums in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. It considers the intentions of the authorities but also explores patient experience and agency, which have been notoriously difficult to access. Publicly funded (pauper) patients had to give up their own clothes and wear the asylum's standard apparel. Asylum authorities did not envision this as a uniform, either honorific or punitive, and claimed that imposed dress was intended to improve patients' behaviour and assist recovery. There was growing awareness that variety in dress could be beneficial and there were calls for some pauper patients to be allowed to wear their own clothes, but this was ultimately impractical within the economy of mass provision in the public asylum. Although clothing might have offered comfort to the impoverished, some patients were angered and humiliated by its imposition. Ill-fitting items and rough fabrics could be a daily, bodily, reminder to the wearers of the shame of their status as insane paupers. It did, however, offer some room for self-fashioning. Patients were able to make small but, in the circumstances, telling adjustments to the way they wore their clothes and their hair. If it was considered safe, they were allowed some minor possessions. Certain of these items, like spectacles and false teeth, were vital to basic agency and independence. Others, such as jewellery – and especially wedding rings – could help maintain a vital link with relationships in the outside world.     

Designing a New Civic Economy? On the Emergence and Contradictions of Participatory Experimental Urbanism

Can we remake local economies from scratch – not through political struggle but by design – to solve wicked problems and transform urban governance? Such questions are raised by an emergent trend within urban experimentation that emphasises participation and commoning in designing peer-to-peer provisioning systems through a platform logic. This article deconstructs the discourses animating what we term “participatory experimental urbanism” and reflects on what this might mean for local state restructuring in times of neoliberal austerity. By following its policies and prototypes as they move and mutate across the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Barking & Dagenham, we examine two exemplary initiatives, Open Works and Participatory City, tracing their beginnings in Lambeth's “cooperative council” model and their ongoing assembling into novel public-common-philanthropic partnerships. Foregrounding the contradictions within this latest turn towards urban governance-beyond-the-state, we draw out the implications for the future of social innovation, design-thinking, and the experimental city.