Watery masculinities: fly-fishing and the angling male in the South West of England

This article examines the masculinities evident through fly fishing for salmon and trout in the South West of England. It identifies the way that many accounts of rural masculinities focus on particularly macho traits such as strength, resilience and domination and particular relationships with nature and the environment. Such macho traits are evident in the masculinities of angling – the angler regularly discusses issues of competition and duelling with nature. The trophies of such encounters become significant as they are used to summon life to stories and become crucial in narrating masculinity. However alongside these macho traits are numerous additional masculinities which are in tension with the more macho elements. These ‘additional masculinities’ become evident in the watery landscapes of angling; as such these waterscapes can be considered as liminal spaces as they enable masculinities to slip and reform. Therefore what emerges is a cadence to masculinity with different subject positions becoming significant in different spaces.     

Men in upheaval: integrating Hong Kong politics and critical studies of men and masculinities

Abstract

In this short review, we explain the need for a multidimensional analytical framework for exploring how the construction of men and masculinities has shaped Hong Kong’s social and political development, and how politics both enable and constrain men in their lived experiences and practices in various life spheres at the city’s current political juncture. We observe that the majority of the extant research on men and masculinities in Hong Kong is depoliticized, whereas studies on current Hong Kong politics are largely gender-blind. However, the ever-tightening grip of the Chinese Communist Party and the instances of political resistance in response, namely, the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and Fishball Revolution of 2016, suggest that the influence of the wider political situation has penetrated every dimension of life, which has considerable implications for masculine identities and practices. Rather than continuing to conduct the depoliticized masculinity studies and genderless political studies we have seen to date, it is time for a thorough investigation of the dynamic intersection of men’s practices and the political context of Hong Kong.     

Ageing masculinities and the nation: disrupting boundaries of sexualities,mobilities and identities

This article draws from a large-scale comparative project to focus on ‘ageing masculinities’ of second-generation Greek-American returnee migrants. In deconstructing multiple hegemonies (ethnicity, nation, patriarchy), the article explores how narratives of longing, belonging, family and kinship, as both experiential and storied accounts of self-imaging, become entangled through migration with social and personal his/stories, childhood upbringings and life-course stages. The analysis aims to explore the tensions and dynamics between structural, individual and cultural factors with respect to masculinities, and to elaborate on the contextualisation of masculinities in specific relational settings in later life. It is suggested that theoretical insights gained from a hermeneutical phenomenological analysis that is attentive to both the emotional/affective and gendered meanings of being and self-identity are important in empirically grounded studies of gender and migration. Such an analytical lens allows issues of masculinity and hegemony to be addressed and contributes to understanding transnational accounts of gendered power relations.     

Precarious masculinities and gender as pedagogy: aesthetic advice-encounters for the Dutch urban economy

In the context of precarious post-Fordist urban labour markets, Dress for Success in the Netherlands, a non-profit working in the context of the welfare state, provides dress advice to a majority of men. Dress advice consists of moments in which demands for immaterial labour find material translations into items of clothing. Building on ethnographic observations, I argue that dress advice-encounters should be seen as exercises in adaptability to new and ever changing economic circumstances. In these pedagogies, gender is a key instrument. Rather than a straightforward feminization of the economy, what is at stake is a performance of openness towards becoming adaptable to future labour market demands. Asking men to depart their attachments to Fordist working class masculinities and its material translations is an exercise toward becoming pliable enough for post-Fordist precarious labour markets.     

Grandfathering as spatio-temporal practice: conceptualizing performances of ageing masculinities in contemporary familial carescapes

This study examines the spatio-temporalities of the intergenerational caring practices that contemporary grandfathers engage in with their grandchildren, in order to critique old men's constructions and performances of ageing masculinities and the gendering and ageing of contemporary carescapes. Findings are based on thirty-one qualitative interviews and two participant observations, conducted in the north-west of England with men who are grandfathers. The concept of carescapes (Bowlby, Gregory and McKie 1997) is employed to explain that grandfathering is both spatially and temporally organized. Findings suggest that men construct distinctly masculine spaces of care later in life, contingent on both their resistance to spatially embedded ageism and their comparisons of grandfathering to previous lifecourse subjectivities, such as fathering. Complexity and diversity in how men negotiate these factors are also apparent and are explored. There is evidence for example that some men's performances of ageing masculinities contribute to the maintenance of a gendered division of labour in family care work, while others perform alternative masculinities that offer potential to transform gendered carespaces. This is further mediated by intergenerational interactions with children and grandchildren. Focus on old men who are grandfathers necessarily complicates geographical perspectives on the spatio-temporalities of multiple masculinities, ageing and informal familial care.     

Traumatic masculinities: the gendered geographies of Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia

Over 200,000 people became internally displaced after several violent conflicts in the early 1990s in Georgia. For many internally displaced persons (IDPs), gender relations have been transformed significantly. This translates to many women taking on the role of breadwinner for their family, which often is accompanied by the process of demasculinization for men. In this article, we examine the construction of masculinities and analyze the gendered processes of displacement and living in post-displacement for Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia. We identify the formation of ‘traumatic masculinities’ as a result of the threats to, though not usurpation of, hegemonic masculinities. Drawing on interviews, we highlight how IDPs conceptualize gender norms and masculinities in Georgia. Despite the disruptions that displacement has brought about, with the subsequent challenges to IDPs' ideal masculine roles, the discourses of hegemonic masculinities still predominate amongst IDPs. We further illustrate this point by identifying two separate gendered discourses of legitimization that attempt to reconcile hegemonic masculinities with the current contexts and circumstances that IDPs face. These new traumatic masculinities do coexist with hegemonic masculinities, although the latter are reformed and redefined as a result of the new contexts and new places within which they are performed.     

Crafting masculinities: gender,culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

This article examines the masculinities of male workers in the context of an emotionally rich form of labour: surfboard-making. Contributing to emerging research around the emotional and embodied dimensions of men's working lives, the article maps the cultural, emotional and embodied dimensions of work onto masculine identity construction. Combining cultural economy theory, emotional geographies and in-depth ethnographic methods, I reveal how surfboard-making has become a gendered form of work; how jobs rely on (and impact) the body and what surfboard-making means to workers outside of financial returns. Following a manual labour process, and informed by Western surfing subculture, commercial surfboard-making has layered onto male bodies. Men perform ‘blokey’ masculinities in relation with one another. However, doing manual craftwork evokes close, personal interaction; among co-workers but also through engagements with place and local customers. Felt, embodied craft skills help workers personalise boards for individual customers and local breaks. Beneath masculine work cultures and pretensions, surfboard-making is a deeply emotional and embodied work. Labour is dependent on haptic knowledge: sense of touch, bodily movement and eye for detail. Contrasting their blokey masculinity, surfboard-makers rely on intimate links between their bodies, tools, materials, customers and surfing places. These ‘strong bodied’ men articulate a ‘passion’ and ‘love’ for ‘soulful’ jobs, demonstrating how waged work comprises alternative masculinities, shaped by working culture, relations and labour processes. A cultural economy framework and emotionally engaged research approach are valuable for challenging hegemonic masculinity, important for achieving more inclusive, tolerant and equitable workplaces.     

Like father,like son: negotiation of masculinity in the ethnographic context in Hong Kong

Feminist geographers have indicated that ethnographic research is an inter-subjective process constructed in relation to the intersection between the gender and other social dimensions of both the researcher and the informants relevant to the field. In particular, the matching and adaptation of masculinities in the research context is a complex methodological issue that receives relatively little attention. Using my fieldwork experience, this article builds on the contribution of feminist geographers to discuss how my masculine self-presentation was negotiated with the research topic, the caring masculinity endorsed among my middle-aged male informants, the sociocultural milieu and my positionalities and bodily representations in producing collaborative ethnographic data. My young age and doctoral student status, combined with my ‘soft and meek’ self-presentation, produced wen masculinity within the Chinese cultural context, which facilitated the paradoxical reception of me as both a son and a consultant in the men's groups. This masculine embodiment not only facilitated our rapport but also signified my cultural competence to participate in decision-making and activist activities in the discussion groups, which brought me to some unexpected research lands. The effect of my masculine embodiment on the ethnographic research process indicates that fieldwork is not only situated in a place but is also itself a space constructed through cultural understanding of social interactions and embodied gender representations.     

赣南农村市场中的非正式制度与近代社会变迁

客家文化背景下的赣南农村市场的发展历史,既是经济发展的过程,又是社会发展的过程。从其建立到运作都深深地打上了宗族、宗教信仰、风俗习惯等非正式制度的烙印,体现了典型的客家传统社会结构的双层架构特点。赣南农村墟市中的非正式制度在近代社会变迁中,有的遭淘汰或受限制,有的则演变或延伸。但闭塞与顽固的非正式制度也是制约赣南农村市场近代化的一个重要因素,近代赣南农村市场的发展走入了后续中的困境,表现出滞后的特点,因而难以实现社会转型。     

Materials,skills and gender identities: men,women and home improvement practices in New Zealand

The article explores the interactions of materials, skills and gender identity through examining DIY practices in New Zealand. It traces the relationship between materials used for home repairs, the competences needed to use them and the (re)production of specific gendered identities. It argues that housing and building materials were an important part of the European settler history of the country and this history forms the context within which New Zealanders work on their houses today. Drawing on interviews with 30 Pākehā homeowners, it explores how both men and women respond to the materials of their homes, how skills are acquired in relation to the demands of the materials used and how these skills become part of the (re)production of specific white, heterosexual gender identities. The figure of the ‘Kiwi bloke’ is discussed as an important imaginary in the negotiation of gender identities for both men and women. Interviewees saw their DIY activities in the light of the creation and re-creation of this specific national and gendered identity. The article reveals the intertwining of history and materiality in the continual negotiation and contestation of gendered identities.     

‘You aren’t from around here’: race,masculinity, and rural transgender men

Both scholarly and everyday understandings of transgender people tend to assume that they can only live well in urban places, yet there is little research on the transgender people actually living in rural communities. This article uses an intersectional analysis of 45 interviews conducted between 2010 and 2013 with transgender men living in the Southeast and Midwest United States to understand how some rural transgender people may not necessarily and automatically fare worse than those in cities. Indeed, these data demonstrate that a more productive question might be, which transgender people integrate into rural communities? The reported experiences of trans men suggest that the claims to sameness that are crucial to inclusion in rural communities are articulated centrally through whiteness and enacting appropriate rural working-class heterosexual masculinities. The claim to sameness allows for a measure of acceptance in rural communities under economic and demographic strain in the twenty-first century.     

Feminist geographies in Norway from the turn of the millennium

Abstract

Based on an overview of feminist and gender research over two decades, this article reflects on feminist geographies in Norway within a wider political and social context. We identify eight broad, partly overlapping themes of feminist geography: rurality; development policies and practices; entrepreneurship and economic change; migration and mobility; children and youth; sexuality and health; landscape and place; and emotions and autobiography. We find that much of the research has been collaborative, interdisciplinary, multicultural, and transnational. Feminist geographies in Norway are characterized by increasing emphasis on multiple realities and situatedness, and focus on rights and power relations among men and women in all spheres of society, including academia. Yet the gender dimension has tended to focus on geographies of women, with few studies of masculinity. Inspired in part through feminist critiques of research practices in social sciences, a recent development has been autobiographical approaches examining the significance of personal lives and emotions for the research process. We conclude that feminist geographies in Norway are diverse, empirically and contextually informed, and have become embedded within several fields of human geography.     

全国第一个家庭林场与农村经济体制改革

党的十一届三中全会以后,福建省仙游县的农民李金耀创办了全国第一个上规模的家庭林场,尝试开发性农业经营。此举引起社会各界的关注,引发了一场全国性的大争论。通过争论,使人们解放了思想,对社会主义理论的基本内涵有了新的认识,突破了长期以来在社会主义经济建设中的教条主义,促进了人们思想观念的转变。中共中央、国务院根据李金耀和广大农民的伟大创举,调整了农村经济政策,变革了农业经营方式,加速了农村改革进程,使农村改革从种植业开始逐步向林业、水产业、畜牧业等多方面发展,促进了家庭承包经营向农业产业化发展,加速了中国农业的市场化进程。     

Evolutionary Perspectives on Rural Australia

An enduring concern within Australian rural geography has been to understand the nature and implications of change. Much of the intellectual effort has been focused on interpreting how rural economies, populations, social institutions, cultures, and land uses have been transformed through processes operating across a range of spatial and temporal scales. This paper offers a critical appraisal of recent rural research in Australia and how this body of work has attempted to make sense of change. It argues that despite an ongoing focus on the nature of change, it is often reduced to a relatively simple historical narrative. We suggest that some of the emerging ideas in ‘evolutionary economic geography’ might offer an alternative means of conceptualising the trajectories of rural economies, institutions, and communities. The paper outlines the contours of evolutionary economic geography and the ways in which some of its key conceptual foundations might offer a means of understanding not only rural change, but also continuity.     

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.     

UNDERSTANDING TRADITIONALIST OPPOSITION TO MODERNIZATION: NARRATIVE PRODUCTION IN A NORWEGIAN MOUNTAIN CONFLICT

In Gausdal, a mountainous community in southern Norway, a conflict involving dogsledding has dominated local politics during the past two decades. In order to understand local protests against this activity, in this article we apply discourse analysis within the evolving approach of political ecology. In this way, we also aim at contributing to the emerging trend of bringing political ecology “home”. To many people, dogsledding appears as an environmentally friendly outdoor recreation activity as well as a type of adventure tourism that may provide new income opportunities to marginal agricultural communities. Hence, at a first glance, the protests against this activity may be puzzling. Looking for explanations for these protests, this empirical study demonstrates how the opposition to dogsledding may be understood as grounded in four elements of a narrative: (1) environmental values are threatened; (2) traditional economic activities are threatened; (3) outsiders take over the mountain; and (4) local people are powerless. Furthermore, we argue that the narrative is part of what we see as a broader Norwegian “rural traditionalist discourse”. This discourse is related to a continued marginalization of rural communities caused by increasing pressure on agriculture to improve its efficiency as well as an “environmentalization” of rural affairs. Thus, the empirical study shows how opposition to dogsledding in a local community is articulated as a narrative that fits into a more general pattern of opposition to rural modernization in Norway as well as internationally.     

Winters without women: social change,split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia

In this article, I use absence as a lens to explore social change and masculinity in rural Mongolia, with a focus on household splitting during winter months. Since the breakdown in state-sponsored dormitory systems, many mobile pastoralists split their households to accommodate children during the school year. This results in women moving to settled centres while men remain in pastures to care for livestock. In critical reflections on rural work, both male and female herders have underscored concerns around the absence of women in rural homes. In Mongolia, absence has different implications for men and women, gendered division of labour and social roles, which are tied to household economies and pastoralist work practices. Drawing from ethnographic field research, the cases contribute to understandings of the co-constitutive nature of space and society, and attempts to dislodge ideas about the fixed nature of households in rural Mongolia.