Abstract
Amid the media battleground around how masculinity is being socially subordinated to feminist agendas or requires stultification due to pernicious expressions of maleness – have you ever pondered how being male, young and working class came to be debased? If so, you may wish to read this sociological exploration of this very issue. Young Working-Class Men in Transition is a timely tome saliently assessing the socio-cultural climate that toxifies being young, working class and male, while convincingly adding to the critical mass of concerns on actual (and embodied) damaging expressions of masculinities in a more general sense. In drawing on a longitudinal study of young working-class men and positioning them within the socio-political and social environ, the book inculcates an important theoretically informed and empirically driven dimension to understanding the formation of masculine identities and how class positionality intercepts with this (for better or worse).
Employing a theoretical arsenal of work in the sociological study of masculinities (e.g., that of Raewyn Connell and Eric Anderson) and classed identification (vis-à-vis Pierre Bourdieu), the book addresses the following: what are the principle discourses focusing attention towards masculinities and how are young working-class men (mis)represented to this end; how have these dominant discourses concerning young working-class expressions of maleness evolved and how did they become representative of a so-called ‘crisis’ in masculinity; how has socio-political change and its destabilizing impact on youth transitions led to reconstructions of what it is to be working class and male; how do young men negotiate their transitions bounded by their class identity and perform their masculinity; and in what ways do young working-class men express positive masculinities that can subvert the current labels indicative of malevolence and social harm?
The book provides a seamless storyline of how young working-class men came to epitomize a crisis in masculinity and how this embodiment may be subverted through understanding their class positionality and transition narratives. Chapter 2 spans the academic terrain from the 1980s onwards to provide a rigorous riposte – and an empirically informed disclaimer for those undecided where they position themselves in the debates – to the suggestion of an insurmountable crisis in masculinity. The chapter goes far to align understandings from across the sociologically informed empirical work pertaining to working-class young peoples’ transitional experiences to the groundswell of contemporaneous negative discourses around maleness and masculinities, so as to defy the idea that a crisis point has been reached. Chapter 3 then further foregrounds the author’s study, which is the focus of the book, to integrate relevant theoretical literature to attune the reader to the conceptual lineage of ‘masculinity’. This is where the book hits its more critically grounded stride and where the author begins to authenticate his contribution to the sociological study of masculinity. Chapter 4 provides an adequate introduction to the research study under the spotlight; however, it would have been beneficial to incorporate more detail on how the importance of capturing the ‘missing middle’ of youth experiences led to particular methodological considerations.
Chapters 5 to 8 present findings from the author’s study and are structured around participant narratives of masculinity, analysis that is in parts both unsurprising and enlightening. These chapters compellingly demonstrate how masculinities are constructed, embodied and expressed and help provide an effective counter-narrative to the masculinity in crisis tropes. Chapter 5 draws on the educational background and aspirations of the study’s working-class young men. It highlights how academic engagement to varying degrees can be a by-product of stereotypical ‘physical’ maleness – for instance, taking part in sport or exerting strength through group antics or bullying. The chapter, however, also highlights how stereotypical masculinity within the school culture is also restrictive for males whose physical strength is not imposing or who have teachers that have an intimidatingly strong male presence. The author is correct to caveat this analysis of academic engagement by highlighting that at play is a ‘wider canvas of experience’. Here, we, therefore, return to the argument of how the socio-structural backdrop binds the transitions of young people through which they are constructing their masculine identity.
Chapter 6 focuses on how the young men navigated their early transitions into the ‘world of work’ and the interplay between restrictive or unsatisfying employment opportunities, types of work and masculine identity constructions. What this chapter starkly offers to the debates on a ‘crisis’ in masculinity is how young people, due to social change and structural imperatives, have reconstructed the ‘traditional’ working-class masculine identities as tied to work-related behaviours and play out their ‘maleness’ within the retail sector.
Chapter 7 turns attention toward the enduring sociological focus on inequities within the domestic sphere and the evolution of the traditional ‘man of the house’ positionality. Here the author highlights the domestic sphere as the site through which young working-class males have potential to reconstruct their gendered identity. In drawing on the sample’s ‘imagined’ domestic future and following a sub-sample of those co-habiting with partners, the chapter essentially highlights how the young working-class males do not tend to exhibit rigid gender conformity and, as such, underlines a need for nuanced and less damning assertions on men’s domestic engagement. The penultimate chapter analyses intimate expression by the young males through their emotional displays on social media and thus highlights how they may reclaim or reconstruct their masculine identities.
This book will interest – albeit not exclusively – scholars in youth sociology and gender studies (academics and students). Its key messages should be of value to youth practitioners supporting young males negotiating their early transitions in a difficult socio-political time. The book also provides a valuable counter-narrative to the dominant discourses that positions lived realities of young working-class males as epitomic of crises in the male identity as expressed in the catch-all term ‘toxic masculinity’. Fundamentally, it (re)assesses how far expressions of being male, young and working class is conforming to the cultural toxic masculinity zeitgeist, hence underlining the book’s timeliness.