Abstract
How are masculinities remade in the context of structural change? In Performing Masculinity: Body Self and Identity in Modern Fiji Geir Henning Presterudstuen tracks practices of manhood as they are influenced by Fiji’s shift toward modern urban life. By looking to the global south, Presterudstuen extends the masculinities literature substantively and theoretically. His specific focus on masculinities contributes to a growing body of sociology linking gender theory to histories of empire, colonial power, and the global neoliberal economy (Go 2013; Ray 2018). He then enriches our understanding of situated masculinity by foregrounding his interlocutors’ self-conscious accounts of a modern Fiji and their place within it.
To theorize the context for changing masculinities, Presterudstuen shows how his interlocutors deployed and constructed meanings of tradition and modernity. Here he is drawing on Homi Bhabha’s notion of transcultural hybridity arising in colonial contact zones. Modernity is not a thing that happens to Fiji. Fijians are producers of discourses about modernity, interpreters of and agents within the world around them. Processes of change also involve blending more than rupture. Fijian masculinities involve the creation of modern practices “tempered not only by a critical engagement with what this entails, but also by a commitment to localized forms of sociality and interaction” (116).
The book is broken into two parts. In part one, Presterudstuen explains the dominant ideology of Fijian masculinity and the ways it manifests. In chapter two, he shows how men merge indigenous Fijian ideas about male dominance, like the chiefly system, with Christian justifications of male authority. In chapter three, he explains how the history of indentured labor, a Hindu ideology of egalitarianism, and political marginalization within Fiji structure Indo-Fijian masculinity. In chapter four, he examines men’s bodily performances within the waged tourist economy. Although these chapters do not easily flow together, as a whole, they provide an expansive picture of contemporary religious, social, and economic life in Fiji and the ways men experience this context through their bodies.
In part two, Presterudstuen turns toward the transgression of social and gender norms associated with traditional Fijian masculinity. In chapter five, Presterudstuen explores men’s binge drinking and fist fights as ways to transgress cultural ideals of control and respect while reaffirming social ideals like brotherhood. In chapter six, he argues that gambling on international horse racing provides a way for men to frame themselves as simultaneously exogenous and distinctly Fijian economic actors. In chapter seven, he examines the experiences of, in his words, “male-bodied, non-heteronormative” qauri (149), and the ways their engagement in casual sex for money in urban nightclubs facilitate new livelihoods and agency, as well as a distancing from village sexual control.
The book makes three primary contributions. First, Presterudstuen critiques universalizing models of gender by demonstrating the profound specificity of masculinities. Performances of Fijian manhood are shaped by structural societal changes, and Fiji’s place within global power relations. Second, his concept of masculinities moves beyond a typology of traditional/modern and shows how masculinity involves self-conscious efforts to balance “conflicting demands upon self-identities and social practices” (163). Tradition, as Presterudstuen understands it, is “prescriptive, rather than descriptive” (129). Lastly, we see that structural changes provide new ways to negotiate what it means to be a man. Men used aspects of modern life to create masculinities that wouldn’t otherwise have been available.
This book would fit well in upper-level gender theory classes, courses about research methods, or courses about globalization. While cited theory is well-explained, its sheer breadth is overwhelming at points. This makes the book a better fit for students familiar with the referenced literature. It is also a shame that Presterudstuen reflects so briefly on his positionality as a queer male researcher and the ways his own embodied performance of masculinity affected his research. His short discussion of a failed attempt to bond over shared male queerness (140-42) not only offers rich insight into the particular configuration of gender and sexuality in Fiji but also gestures toward some of the limits of reflexivity to offset power inequalities. More extended discussion of his own masculinity would have enriched this text and could offer lessons for other ethnographers. These small notes aside, the book is rich, thoughtful, and an important contribution to our study of masculinities.