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Societal Hegemony and the Evolution of Masculinity in Francis Selormey’s The Narrow Path and Asare Konadu’s A Woman in Her Prime
Abstract
Francis Selormey’s The Narrow Path and Asare Konadu’s A Woman in Her Prime are two novels that add to the rich Ghanaian literary tradition through their exploration of human relationships and the roles men play in these relationships. Despite gaining a cult readership, these texts have largely been ignored by scholars. This paper examines the men in these texts to reveal the images of masculinities presented and show whether or not they follow society’s hegemonic model or create their own paths. This paper argues that the societies presented by these novels do not allow for a rejection of hegemony, and the male characters in these novels unknowingly follow society’s ideal masculine values. By using the theory of masculinities as a character study tool, the differences in the gender performance of the male characters in the pre-colonial and colonial eras are made clear and control is established as an ideology of the colonial era.
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People represent social groups by their trajectories through time, producing dynamic stereotypes. To the extent that these stereotypes derive from observations of group members’ behaviors in their typical roles, change in the roles of women and men over time should fuel beliefs that the sexes adopt traits associated with their new roles. Thus, earlier studies have found that stereotypes about the past, present, and future traits of women and men are consistent with beliefs about changes in their social roles. To examine such dynamic stereotypes in an African context, 150 participants from Ghana rated the likelihood of gender-stereotypic personality, cognitive, and physical characteristics of women or men of the past, present, or future in their society. Among the major findings were perceptions of increases over time in women’s masculine characteristics and men’s feminine characteristics. Also, both sexes increased in masculine and feminine cognitive characteristics. Comparison of these Ghanaian findings with those obtained earlier from five other countries revealed both similarities and differences.
The relation between hegemony and masculinity needs reassessment in the light of postcolonial critique. A fully historical understanding of hegemony is required. The violence of colonization set up a double movement, disrupting gender orders and launching new hegemonic projects. This dynamic can be traced in changing forms through the eras of decolonization, postcolonial development, and neoliberal globalization. Specific configurations of masculinity in the contemporary metropole-apparatus can be traced, together with their relations with local power. A gender order is emerging in transnational space and minimal conditions for hegemony within it can be defined. Counter-hegemonic projects among men have multiplied but have limited reach. Hegemony under construction, rather than achieved hegemony, is the key concept.
In this book, Joseph Pleck examines and analyzes the full body of research literature on the male role that has appeared since the 1930s and subjects it to a devastating critique. He identifies the components of the "male sex role paradigm" which has been the basis of research for the past forty years, and notes numerous instances of blatant misrepresentation of data, twisted reinterpretations of disconfirming results, misogyny, homophobia, and class bias. He proposes a new theory, the "sex role strain paradigm," offers a reinterpretation of sex role stereotyping, and a critique of research by sociobiologists that allegedly demonstrates a biological basis for male aggression.
Self-compassion, a relatively new but increasingly popular alternative to self-esteem, has been found to vary by gender, with men reporting greater levels than women. The current study furthers this emerging area of inquiry by addressing the relationships among conformity to masculine norms, trait shame, self-esteem, and self-compassion for 145 heterosexual men. Results demonstrated that higher levels of self-compassion were related to lower masculine norm adherence, lower trait shame, and higher self-esteem. In addition, 2 significant interactions emerged, with shame moderating the relation between masculine norm adherence and both self-esteem and self-compassion. These findings highlight the complex interdependence between emotional disposition and gender orientation in men’s self-concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica tem influenciado os estudos de gênero em vários campos acadêmicos, mas ao mesmo tempo tem atraído um sério criticismo. Os autores traçam a origem do conceito a uma convergência de ideias no início dos anos 1980 e mapeiam as formas através das quais o conceito foi aplicado quando os estudos sobre homens e masculinidades se expandiram. Avaliando as principais críticas, os autores defendem o conceito de masculinidade como fundamental, uma vez que, na maioria das pesquisas que o opera, seu uso não é reificador nem essencialista. Entretanto, as críticas aos modelos assentados em características de gênero e às tipologias rígidas são sólidas. O tratamento do sujeito em pesquisas sobre masculinidades hegemônicas pode ser melhorado com a ajuda dos recentes modelos psicológicos, mesmo que os limites à flexibilidade discursiva devam ser reconhecidos. O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica não equivale a um modelo de reprodução social; precisam ser reconhecidas as lutas sociais nas quais masculinidades subordinadas influenciam formas dominantes. Por fim, os autores revisam o que foi confirmado por formulações iniciais (a ideia de masculinidades múltiplas, o conceito de hegemonia e a ênfase na transformação) e o que precisa ser descartado (tratamento unidimensional da hierarquia e concepções de características de gênero). Os autores sugerem a reformulação do conceito em quatro áreas: um modelo mais complexo da hierarquia de gênero, enfatizando a agência das mulheres; o reconhecimento explícito da geografia das masculinidades, enfatizando a interseccionalidade entre os níveis local, regional e global; um tratamento mais específico da encorporação1 em contextos de privilégio e poder; e uma maior ênfase na dinâmica da masculinidade hegemônica, reconhecendo as contradições internas e as possibilidades de movimento em direção à democracia de gênero.
Hybrid masculinity refers to men's selective incorporation of performances and identity elements associated with marginalized and subordinated masculinities and femininities. We use recent theorization of hybrid masculinities to critically review theory and research that seeks to make sense of contemporary transformations in masculinity. We suggest that research broadly supports three distinct consequences associated with recent changes in performances and politics of masculinity that work to obscure the tenacity of gendered inequality. Hybrid masculinities (i) symbolically distance men from hegemonic masculinity; (ii) situate the masculinities available to young, White, heterosexual men as somehow less meaningful than the masculinities associated with various marginalized and subordinated Others; and (iii) fortify existing social and symbolic boundaries in ways that often work to conceal systems of power and inequality in historically new ways.
A substantial body of empirical work suggests that young, economically marginalized males are the most likely perpetrators and victims of serious physical violence. Interpreting these findings in a historicized way that has been neglected by the criminological discourses of the moment suggests that physical violence has become an increasingly unsuccessful strategy in the quest for social power in liberal-capitalist societies. Although it has been displaced by symbolic violence as the principal domineering force in capitalism’s historical project, physical violence has not been genuinely discouraged but harnessed as a specialist practice in a pseudo-pacification process. From this perspective, violence has a complex relationship with liberal-capitalism. Can the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ help criminology to deal with this complexity and inform violence reduction strategies? This article argues that, in the context of pseudo-pacification, the notion that violent males ‘rework the themes’ of an institutionally powerful ‘hegemonic masculinity’ inverts and distorts the concept of hegemony, which for Gramsci was the self-affirming cultural production of the dominant political-economic class. Thus the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ tends to downplay political economy and class power, which suggests that it is too far removed from historical processes and material contexts to either justify the use of the term hegemony itself or explain the striking social patterns of male violence. This intellectual retreat is representative of a general political evacuation of capitalism’s global socioeconomic processes, a move that is allowing sparsely regulated market forces to continue the economic insecurity, specialist roles and corresponding cultural forms that reproduce the traditional male propensity to physical violence.
Male participants (N=204) were assessed using measures of masculine ideology, masculine gender-role stress, proneness to shame, and fear of emotions. These variables served as predictors of men’s anger expression and overt hostility. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that masculinity, proneness to shame, and men’s fear of emotions predicted 19% of the variance of overt hostility, with men’s fear of emotions emerging as a significant predictor after accounting for masculinity factors. Men’s fear of emotions predicted a small but significant portion of the variance of men’s anger, whereas factors of masculinity and shame proneness did not. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of future research directions and clinical interventions for men’s anger and hostility.
This study investigates the premise that a shame memory can become a central component of personal identity, a turning point in the life story and a reference point for everyday inferences. We assessed shame, centrality of shame memory, depression, anxiety, stress and traumatic stress reactions in 811 participants from general population (481 undergraduate students and 330 subjects from normal population) to explore the interactions between these variables. Results show that early shame experiences do indeed reveal centrality of memory characteristics. Furthermore, the centrality of shame memories is associated with current feelings of internal and external shame in adulthood. Key to our findings is that the centrality of shame memories shows a unique and independent contribution to depression, anxiety and stress prediction, even when controlling for shame measures. In addition, our results show that the centrality of shame memories is highly and positively associated with traumatic stress reactions.
Research about masculinities gathers different topics from diverse disciplinary perspectives. One of the topics has been the analysis of the perpetuation’s effect of the traditional heterosexual model of masculinity in the violence against women. Recent scientific evidences about the reproduction of this social problem have evidenced the existence of three different types of masculinities (in the sense of the weberian ideal types): dominant traditional masculinity (DTM), oppressed traditional masculinity (OTM), and new alternative masculinities (NAM). The first two types contribute to perpetuate gender violence, while the latter allows preventing it and, consequently, it leads to its overcoming. This article approach the existence of these three types of masculinities and analyzes both, theirs characteristics and their consequences for violence against women. It presents evidences that what makes NAM providing a preventive effect is its linkage between the language of ethics and the language of desire.
This article examines and critically analyses gender images in initiation songs among the Igembe community, an African ethnic group of the Eastern Bantu in Kenya. The concept of gender is traced from Plato's time to the twenty-first century and placed within the Igembe people's world-view, using initiation songs as a point of reference. It is revealed that both man and woman play crucial and complementary roles in the socio-economic life of the Igembe community. However, despite the crucial role that women play, they are devalued owing to societal attitudes and beliefs, as is evident in the initiation songs analysed. © African Cultures and Literatures: A Miscellany. Gordon Collier.
The intangible aspects of Akan art give it content that has to be 'read' in order for it to fulfil its purpose and be enjoyed. Hence there is an inextricable link between the intangible and tangible parts of an artwork, with the tangible explaining the subject matter. It is the interpretation, and the meanings given to Akan art that makes it function effectively as an integral part of Akan culture. In some situations, art functions as a form of coded language representing the Akan world view, values, proverbs and aesthetics, in other words, the intangible aspects of their culture. Their art is thus made up of two components, the invisible and visible parts. Akan artworks are not only works of aesthetic value, they provide cultural and historical evidence of the time and period in which they were made. They reveal the technology, materials, beliefs, cultural practices and the circumstances under which they were made as well as their relations with other cultures and peoples. They are a valid source of evidence for people studying the Akan. Their art has the status of legible documents, the tangible aspects of their intangible culture. This article seeks to establish the link between the unseen components of Akan art and its visible, physical components, and to show how these dual but complementary aspects can be understood and appreciated.
Self-injury is commonly reported to be primarily a female experience and rare among males. However, contemporary research suggests that this may not be the case and that male self-injury may be equally common but less recognized. I suggest that the invisibility of male self-injury results from the structures of normative gender that define "mental illness," vulnerability, and distress behaviors through traditional masculinity and femininity. These structures impede the recognition of male self-injury and mitigate against the provision of appropriate support and male help-seeking. In this article, I focus in depth on the experiences of three men who participated in a small-scale qualitative research project exploring self-injury from a participant-centered ethos. This provides a step toward redressing the silence regarding male self-injury and exploring the issues that emerge from attending to male experiences. It also highlights the need for further gender sensitive research, theory, and practice.
The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations (the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony, and the emphasis on change) and what needs to be discarded (onedimensional treatment of hierarchy and trait conceptions of gender). The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy.
The connections between democracy and sexuality—that is, between civil liberties and the protection of nonconforming sexualities—are rarely discussed in Africa. On the contrary, nonconforming sexualities have been instrumentalized to entrench dictatorships and to weaken democracy. As was the case in early twentieth-century Europe and North America, homophobia has become a political tool used by conservative politicians to promote self-serving agendas. Heterosexuality is also idealized by an acute ahistoricization of African politics by the Western media and civil society. The problem is also compounded by the distortion of African history promulgated by the dictatorial leadership on the continent.
This article starts with a paradox, namely, the widespread talk of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ alongside the strong endorsement of Bob Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, a term which implies (following Gramsci’s use of hegemony) the opposite of crisis. This produces the article’s first objective, namely, a critical look at the origins of the term hegemonic masculinity and its subsequent usage. This finds it problematic on several grounds: its tendency to be used attributionally (despite Connell’s insistence on the relational nature of masculinity) and, within criminology, focused specifically on negative attributes; its use in the singular, implying it is not a contingent, context-specific notion; and its oversociological view of masculinity. This last problem produces the article’s second objective, namely, to begin to develop a more adequate, psychosocial view of masculinity. It does this in several stages. It starts with two attempts to produce more psychologically complex accounts of masculinity: one by Wetherell and Edley, which argues for the (Lacanian-inspired) idea of a psycho-discursive subject, but fails to produce an authentic inner world; another by MacInnes which distinguishes between sexual genesis (being born of a woman and a man) and sexual difference (being born as a woman or a man). This recognizes an inner world ‘beyond social construction’ (sexual genesis), but fails to address how this is related to particular investments in positions within gender relations (the social ideology of biological sexual difference). The final section attempts to put together the rudiments of a more adequate psychosocial understanding of masculinity, starting with the importance of sexual genesis and the early vulnerabilities and anxieties to which this gives rise, and the unconscious defences necessarily precipitated. Contrasting accounts of the unconscious follow: Freud’s Oedipal, repression-based account in which gender is inherently implicated versus Klein’s pre-Oedipal splitting/projection-based account in which gender is not implicated. The problems with Freud’s gendered account provide the basis for taking the Kleinian route. Thereafter, how to conceptualize the link between (psychic) anxiety and (social) gender is explored through the writings of Chodorow, Layton and (especially) Benjamin. It is on this terrain, I contend, where both fantasy and the social are co-present but irreducible, that a more adequate, psychosocial understanding of masculinity needs to be produced.
This article presents a theoretical model of masculinities based on a combination of Connell’s theories on hegemonic masculinity and Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital, and fields. The work of Connell has been both profound and pervasive in its influence on the study of men and masculinities. However, there are limitations, particularly in relation to the disparity between the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity as the culturally dominant ideal and men’s lived experiences of a variety of dominant masculinities. The model presented herein introduces the possibility of multiple dominant masculinities that operate within subfields bound by a field of masculinity. The model also outlines the ways in which masculinities are both produced and reproduced as a consequence of struggles between dominant and subordinate groups of men. These struggles also provide a rationale for resistance and complicity determined by what is deemed to be valued capital within the field of masculinity.
Contemporary demographic discourse and population policies in southern Africa tend to focus upon the positive value of low, and ever lowering, total fertility rates. In Botswana, statistics suggest a high rate of extramarital fertility and a rapidly increasing HIV infection rate. While these represent visible problems for demographers and policy makers, infertility – a significant problem for many Batswana – remains 'invisible' in much of demographic discourse. This paper suggests that while infertility may be an invisible demographic variable, it is particularly significant in the lives of the people of northern Botswana and it can be a useful lens through which to view cultural constructions of gender and health. For many women in Botswana, infertility, the apparent inability to bear children, is a serious social and physiological concern and one that is intricately tied to local perceptions of contraceptives and witchcraft, for example. In addition, with large scale migration by men to other areas of southern Africa, women find themselves confronted with various economic concerns and the necessity to negotiate childbearing in that context. It is argued that a more social and ethnographic understanding of the importance of fertility can lead to a better understanding of why some population policies are not particularly efficacious. This paper is based upon ethnographic fieldwork in northern Botswana and represents an attempt to synthesise anthropological and demographic approaches to the concept of fertility by examining the often overlooked variable of infertility.
Throughout the twentieth century hunting was one of the fastest growing leisure activities of white working class men in the state that brought the automobile to the US and the world. The state of Michigan, the region that saw the birth of the second industrial revolution with mass production, mass consumption, 'Fordism' and 'Americanism' also provided for its worker/citizens to have historically unprecedented access to public land and game. Using auto workers records generally, and the materials from the Reo Motor Car Company of Lansing, specifically, this article describes how hunting was a growing source of white, male, autoworker's identity particularly after World War II. Hunting was not simply a rite of passage to adult malehood, but also was increasingly seen as a right; and, as such, unions and groups of workers bargained with their employers for the time to hunt while groups of sportsmen lobbied their representatives for space and game to hunt.
In this article, I renounce my previous defense of shaming penalties. Sort of. In What Do Alternative Sanctions Mean, 63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 591 (1996), I argued that shaming penalties would likely be a politically viable substitute for imprisonment for a range of nonviolent (or relatively nonviolent) offenses because unlike fines, community service, and other alternative sanctions that have encountered decisive resistance, shaming unambiguously expresses moral denunciation of criminal wrongdoers. Drawing on work that I've done since then, I now acknowledge that the premise of this analysis was flawed. Ordinary citizens expect punishments not merely to condemn but to do so in ways that affirm rather than denigrate their core values. By ritualistically stigmatizing wrongdoers as transgressors of shared moral norms, shaming penalties grate against the sensibilities of persons who subscribe to egalitarian and individualistic worldviews. To maximize its chances of widespread adoption, an alternative sanction must be expressively overdetermined - that is, sufficiently rich in meanings to appeal simultaneously to citizens of diverse cultural and moral persuasions. I suggest that restorative justice can satisfy that criterion, but only if its proponents resist the impulse to purge it of expressive elements that make it appealing to the very citizens who were willing to endorse shame.
This article introduces the specialty area of the psychology of men and masculinity to the broader community of American psychologists, focusing on research conducted using the gender role strain paradigm. The review covers the rationale for and aims of the psychology of men and masculinity and the gender role strain paradigm. It provides an extensive discussion of masculinity ideologies--the core construct in the strain paradigm--including the definition of masculinity ideology and considerations of masculinity ideology versus masculinity ideologies, traditional masculinity ideology, the measurement of masculinity ideologies, the Male Role Norms Inventory-Revised, women's and adolescent's masculinity ideologies, and conformity to masculine norms. It then takes up the 3 types of masculine gender role strain (discrepancy, dysfunction, and trauma) and the normative male alexithymia hypothesis. Finally, it considers future research directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).
Hegemonic masculinity is a powerful idea that has been usefully employed for about twenty five years (by 2007) in a wide variety of contexts and has now been subject to much critical review. Its successful application to a wide range of different cultures suggests that there may well be no known human societies in which some form of masculinity has not emerged as dominant, more socially central, more associated with power, in which a pattern of practices embodying the "currently most honoured way" of being male legitimates the superordination of men over women. Hegemonic masculinity is normative in a social formation. Not all men attempt to live it, and some oppose it by developing alternative (and subordinate) masculinities, but all men position themselves, in relation to it in situations where their choices may be quite restricted.
PIP
Violence against women by men is considered one of the most serious threats to the health and welfare of women in the US. Little is known about why male violence occurs against the female gender. Previous theory and conceptualizations explaining male violence have narrowly focused on individual factors and topologies. In order to shed light on this gender issue, this paper presents a multivariate model explaining the violence of men towards women using 4 content areas and 13 hypotheses. The content areas include 1) macrosocietal explanation; 2) biological, neuroanatomical, hormonal explanation; 3) gender role socialization or gender role conflict explanation; and 4) intergender, relational explanation. Implications of the model for educational interventions, research, and training are discussed.
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Men and Power: Masculinity in the Folktales and Proverbs of the Baganda
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The Myth of Masculinity
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