Page, Patricia
(1999)
Masculinity in Crisis?
A study on the Threat to Masculine Identities through
Unemployment.
Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The formation of identities within contemporary society is a recent and
key focus of postmodernist theorising and empirical research. Beck
suggests that a fragmentation in traditional institutions of reproduction
like the family and work has obscured social roles. The study of men and
masculinities has been one of the most vigorous in contemporary
postmodernist scholarship as writers have begun to explore the diversity
of men's experiences, conceptions of masculinities and their power
relations. Where traditional enactments o f masculine identities have
been perceived as unproblematic, authors began to suggest that the social
roles within which men were typecast were in desperate need of
overhaul. Masculinity became a problematic construct and needed to be
deconstructed and re-evaluated. With the change in gender roles,
especially women's increased participation in the workforce, traditional
social roles were altered. My interest lies in examining how these
alterations affected men's perception of themselves in society.
Men have long been typecast in instrumental economically derived
positions wherein masculinity, male identity and male performance all
centre on work. In light o f this alleged centrality of employment and
occupational status in the lives of men, unemployment might be seen as a
providing a situation where masculinity is under challenge. Also, from
the arena of the public worksphere comes the concept of a sense of place.
No longer finding a location in a place of work through the context of
employment and often feeling out of place at home in the private sphere,
the unemployed male may have a sense o f placelessness. This thesis
investigates an alternative sense of place available to unemployed men
and examines its effects on re-affirming alternative masculine identities.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(Masters)
|
| Keywords: |
Masculinity;
Masculine Identities;
Unemployment; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology |
| Item ID: |
5095 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
03 Jul 2014 15:03 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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