Engendering Gendered Knowledge

Hegemonic Masculinity Reformulated

Raewyn Connell (1987, 1995) initially conceptualized hegemonic masculinity as the form of masculinity in a given historical and society-wide setting that structures and legitimates hierarchical gender relations between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men. The relational character was central to her argument, embodying a particular form of masculinity in hierarchical relation to a certain form of femininity and to nonhegemonic masculinities. Connell emphasized that hegemonic masculinity has no meaning outside its relationship to “emphasized femininity”—and to nonhegemonic masculinities—or to those femininities practiced in a complementary, compliant, and accommodating subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity. And in the legitimation of this relationship of superordination and subordination, the meaning and essence of both hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity are revealed. This emphasis on hegemony in gender relations underscored the achievement of hegemonic masculinity largely through cultural ascendancy—discursive persuasion—encouraging all to consent to, coalesce around, and embody such unequal gender relations.

Notwithstanding considerable favorable reception of the concept, it nevertheless attracted such criticisms as (1) concerns over the underlying concept of masculinity itself, (2) lack of specificity about who actually represents hegemonic masculinity, (3) whether hegemonic masculinity simply reduces in practice to a reification of power or toxicity, and (4) the concept’s unsatisfactory theory of the masculine subject. Having successfully responded to each of these criticisms, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) reformulated the concept in appropriately significant ways. ³

First, they discussed what must be retained from the original formulation, clearly noting that the relational idea among hegemonic masculinity, femininity, and nonhegemonic masculinities, as well as the conception that this relationship is a pattern of hegemony—not a pattern of simple domination—have well withstood the test of time. Also well supported historically are the seminal ideas that hegemonic masculinity need not be the commonest and/or the most powerful pattern of masculinity in a particular setting and that any formulation of the concept as simply constituting an assemblage of “masculine” character traits should be thoroughly transcended.

Second, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) nevertheless suggested that a reformulated understanding of hegemonic masculinity must incorporate a more holistic grasp of gender hierarchy that recognizes the agency of subordinated groups as much as the power of hegemonic groups and that appreciates the mutual conditioning (intersectionality) of gender with such other social dynamics as class, race, age, sexuality, and nation. Moreover, Connell and Messerschmidt asserted that a more sophisticated treatment of embodiment in hegemonic masculinity was necessary, as well as conceptualizations of how hegemonic masculinity may be challenged, contested, and thus changed.

Finally, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argued that instead of recognizing simply hegemonic masculinity at only the society-wide level, scholars should analyze empirically existing hegemonic masculinities at three levels: local (constructed in arenas of face-to-face interaction of families, organizations, and immediate communities), regional (constructed at the society-wide level of culture or the nation–state), and global (constructed in such transnational arenas as world politics, business, and media). Obviously, links among these levels exist: global hegemonic masculinities pressure regional and local hegemonic masculinities, and regional hegemonic masculinities provide cultural materials adopted or reworked in global arenas and utilized in local gender dynamics.

With these reformulations in mind, I want to investigate an assortment of selected studies that demonstrate how knowledge on hegemonic masculinity has been constructed differently since 2005. From the 128 core articles, I focus in the next section on two sets of articles (three each) that appropriate the concept of hegemonic masculinity in two distinct and contrasting ways. ⁴

Contrasting Appropriations

The first set demonstrates how hegemonic masculinity is legitimated at the local, regional, and global levels and thus confirms the reformulated model of the concept. Seventy-two percent of the core articles constituted this type of appropriation. The second set appropriates the concept of hegemonic masculinity as exclusively constituting “masculine” character traits and consequently falls back on earlier statements of hegemonic masculinity that solely utilize trait terminology. Eighteen percent of the core articles accounted for this kind of appropriation.

Legitimating Hegemonic Masculinity

Of the vast majority of core articles that concentrated on legitimating hegemonic masculinity, 55 percent examined hegemonic masculinity specifically at the local level. An excellent example is the work of Morris (2008), who studied gender difference in academic perceptions and outcomes at a predominantly white and lower-income rural high school in Kentucky. Appropriating the concept of hegemonic masculinity as a specific contextual pattern of practice that ideologically legitimates the subordination of women and femininity to men and masculinity, Morris utilized a mixed methodology by observing in-school interaction, interviewing students (eight boys and seven girls), and analyzing school records and documents. Morris found that girls generally outperformed boys academically and that they had higher ambitions for postsecondary education. Morris demonstrated that in-school interaction positioned masculine qualities as superior to the inferior qualities attached to femininity as well as to certain forms of subordinate masculinity, thereby providing an in-school justification for unequal gendered social action. The article highlighted how in the localized, face-to-face settings of a rural Kentucky high school, gender inequality was legitimated through the construction of hierarchical relations between a particular classed, raced, and sexualized hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Morris concluded that the boys’ academic underachievement was embedded in these unequal gender relations.

Ten percent of the core articles examined the construction of regional hegemonic masculinities at the level of society-wide culture or the nation–state. An excellent example is an article by Weitzer and Kubrin (2009). These authors appropriated the concept of hegemonic masculinity as the ideological subordination of women to men and used the concept to examine all the rap albums that attained platinum status (sales of at least one million copies) from 1992 to 2000. Weitzer and Kubrin chose platinum albums because their numerical success ensured analysis of a rap-music sample that reached a large segment of the US population, thus justifying regional status. Their methodology involved content analysis of a random sample that consisted of 403 songs from 130 different albums. Analysis of the data identified five themes: (1) degradation of women, praise of men; (2) sexual objectification of women, sexual empowerment of men; (3) women as distrustful, men as invulnerable: (4) normality of violence by men, normality of women as victims; and 5) women as prostitutes, men as pimps.

Weitzer and Kubrin’s (2009) study revealed how much of this rap music constructed a regional form of hegemonic masculinity by depicting men and women as inherently different and unequal and by espousing a set of superior-/inferior-related gendered qualities for each, for their “appropriate” behavior toward each other, and for the necessity of sanctions if anyone violated the unequal gender relationship. Thus, this study demonstrated how within-popular culture, through the widespread distribution of rap music, gender inequality was legitimated at the regional level, thereby providing a society-wide cultural rationalization for patriarchal relations. Moreover, Weitzer and Kubrin showed how rap music initially had local roots but came to exercise a society-wide regional influence on youth of all racial and ethnic groups.

Discussion of hegemonic masculinities constructed at the global level (in transnational arenas such as world politics, media, and business) accounted for 7 percent of the core articles. In this regard, Hatfield (2010) examined the popular US-based television program Two and a Half Men. Hatfield concentrated her scrutiny on the way gender is constructed by the two main characters—Charlie and Alan—who are white, middle-class, professional brothers living together. Hatfield also examined the changing gender constructions by Alan’s son, Jake. Since its debut broadcast in 2003, the program has led the US sitcom ratings in popularity, is the second most popular (behind Family Guy) US television show for males eighteen to twenty-four, averages approximately fifteen million US viewers per week, and is screened worldwide in twenty-four different countries (which approximately triples the number of weekly viewers). Thus, this show has both extensive regional and global influence.

Hatfield employed a content analysis in reviewing 115 episodes of the show, concluding that Two and a Half Men offers a media representation of hegemonic masculinity through the gender performance of, and the relationship between, the two main characters. Appropriating hegemonic masculinity as a specific form of masculinity that subordinates both femininity and alternative masculinities, Hatfield found that Charlie constructs hegemonic masculinity and Alan employs a male femininity, and in the process Alan’s femininity consistently is subordinated to Charlie’s hegemonic masculinity.

Hatfield’s study admirably demonstrates how a particular sitcom—which has widespread transnational distribution—is an important example of the global legitimation and rationalization of gender inequality through the depiction of a superior/inferior hierarchical relationship between the two main characters. To be sure, a salient aspect of this sitcom is how it primarily represents and legitimates an unequal masculine/feminine relationship in and through two male bodies.

“Masculine” Character Traits

Of the core articles, 18 percent exclusively equated hegemonic masculinity with certain “masculine” character traits. For example, Logan (2010) studied gay male escorts occupying the dominant position in the male prostitution industry. Logan was interested in how hegemonic masculinity might be reproduced through the practices of these gay male escorts: how these practices might be dominant in the male prostitution business because they allegedly aligned with a society-wide monolithic hegemonic masculinity that subordinated them. Logan (p. 683) appropriated the concept of hegemonic masculinity by identifying such “masculine” traits (that he claimed defined this monolithic hegemonic masculinity) as drive, ambition, self-reliance, aggressiveness, and physical strength, as well as such bodily traits and practices specific to the hegemonically masculine “sexual arena” as physical appearance (muscularity, body size, body hair, and height) and sexual behaviors (sexual dominance, sexual aggressiveness, and penetrative sexual position).

Using a quantitative online data source that described gay male sex workers, Logan found that muscular men enjoyed a dominant position in the male prostitution market (overweight and thin men faced a penalty) that was “consistent with hegemonic masculinity” because “conformity to hegemonic masculine physical norms is well-rewarded in the market” (p. 697). Because muscularity signified maleness and dominance, “the premium attached to muscularity in this market is consistent with hegemonic masculinity” (p. 694). Furthermore, according to Logan, the reward of being a “top” (sexually penetrative position) was substantial, as was the penalty for being a “bottom,” and thus this finding was “consistent with the theory of hegemonic masculinity” (p. 697). Finally, when Logan studied the interaction of these masculine traits with race, he found that black men were positioned at both extremes: they assigned the largest premiums for top behavior and the largest penalties for bottom behavior. Consequently, Logan argued that the gay community valued black men who conformed to racial stereotypes of sexual behavior and penalized black men who did not. And Logan concluded that gay men who frequented male escorts “adopt and reiterate hegemonic masculine norms among themselves” (p. 698) and that this in turn was reinforced through the idealized “masculine” traits of dominant-gay-male sex escorts.

A second example of associating hegemonic masculinity with “masculine” traits is an article on aging, independence, and hegemonic masculinity. Smith et al. (2007) specifically examined how men fifty-five years of age and older were encouraged by close acquaintances to seek independence as part of the successful aging process, yet simultaneously were criticized for maintaining their independence from health service use. These authors appropriated hegemonic masculinity as “the traditional, patriarchal view of men and men’s behavior as the most influential and culturally accepted notion of ‘manliness’,” that is constituted through “masculine” traits of independence, toughness, assertiveness, emotional restrictiveness, competitiveness, hardiness, aggression, and physical competence (p. 326).

Smith et al. (2007) interviewed twenty-two men older than fifty-five and twelve men sixty-five or older. For the majority of these men, independence meant self-sufficiency as an indication of their masculinity and the capacity to maintain a good quality of life as they aged. These authors also found that such traits as being tough, strong, and in control were associated with independence and that not wanting to rely on others—and thus avoiding help seeking and health service use—was a consistent theme influencing the men’s ability to enact “masculine” traits.

In addition to masculinity, the ability to function independently was a reflection of one’s quality of life. Smith et al. (2007) found that maintaining daily physical and cognitive functioning was important for supporting the men’s independent state of being but also reflected the way they positioned themselves as men. Thus, these authors concluded that the concern of men fifty-five and older about independence reflected both their identity as men and their identity as older people. For these subjects, independence was a characteristic of masculine identity and a marker of successful aging, both of which were important to the assessment of how they negotiated help seeking and health service use.

Finally, a third example is an article written by Gage (2008) who examined the impact that male college athletes’ participation in different sports had on their gender attitudes, hegemonic masculinity, sexual behavior, and sexual aggression. Gage argued that her study offered “an opportunity to refine understanding of what it is about sports participation that leads to hegemonic masculinity and sexual aggression” (p. 1018). Unfortunately, this study never formally defined hegemonic masculinity yet created the impression that the concept amounted to specific toxic character traits.

By means of a survey, Gage measured the “gender role identification,” “attitudes toward women,” “hyper-masculinity,” and “sexual behavior, sexual aggression, and sexual orientation” of 148 college males, both athletes (football, tennis, and track and field) and nonathletes. Gage found that football players scored significantly higher on hypermasculinity and sexual aggression scales (toxic traits) than did the athletes in the other two sports but scored significantly lower than the same athletes on attitudes-toward-women scales (harmless traits). A similar pattern emerged when football players were compared to nonathletes, but fewer significant differences were noted between nonathletes and tennis and track and field athletes.

Despite never actually defining or measuring hegemonic masculinity, Gage concluded that her research on the role that participation in sports—especially football—had on college males indicated a “more nuanced understanding of the relationship between hegemonic masculinity, attitudes toward women, and violence against women” (p. 1029). But the most we can reasonably deduce from this article is that for Gage hegemonic masculinity reduced to such toxic, hypermasculine character traits as “negative attitudes toward women,” “violence as manly,” and “calloused sex attitudes toward women” that primarily were embodied in football players.

Summary

No social science concept is ever fixed and no social science scholar has a monopoly on its correct use. Nevertheless, the concept of hegemonic masculinity was originally formulated to conceptualize how patriarchal relations are legitimated throughout society. The juxtaposition presented here of two contrasting appropriations of the concept demonstrates how the meaning of hegemonic masculinity has differed within the 128 core articles. The first three articles confirm the Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) reformulation of the concept by demonstrating that empirically existing hegemonic masculinities exist at local, regional, and global levels; that hegemonic masculinities are formed through an unequal and hierarchical relationship between masculinities and femininities (even though femininities may be constructed in and through male bodies); and that through this relationship, hegemonic masculinities circulate a legitimating justification for gender inequality. The second three articles reveal that the meaning of the concept continues to be a troubled area in research on hegemonic masculinity. Although these latter three articles are similar in their concentration on “masculine” traits, they differ in the way they associate these traits with hegemonic masculinity: as constituting widespread character traits, as equated with the most influential manliness, and as consisting exclusively of specific toxic traits consolidated in a particular group of men (football players).

New Directions

Of the core articles, 13 percent conducted research on hegemonic masculinity that takes the engendering of gendered knowledge in promising new directions. ⁵ This new directions work demonstrates (1) how women contribute to the cultivation of hegemonic masculinity, (2) how hegemonic masculinity actually can be contested and thus challenged, and (3) how neoliberal globalization influences the orchestration of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities in periphery countries. Here, I focus on six articles (three sets of the two) that represent these trends.

Cultivation

Research is emerging that features how the agency of women contributes to the cultivation of hegemonic masculinity. This category amounted to 2 percent of the core articles. For example, Talbot and Quayle (2010) argued that the production of hegemonic masculinities requires “at least some kind of ‘buy-in’ from women” and that thus under certain circumstances and in specific situations women construct “emphasized femininities,” whereby they “contribute to the perpetuation of oppressive gender relations and identities” (p. 256). Through in-depth interviews and an extensive focus group session with five heterosexual, middle-class, and university undergraduate South African women, Talbot and Quayle explored interviewee involvement in a variety of localized contexts—work, social, romantic, and family—and found that the five women uniformly grouped these four contexts into two parts: “work and social” versus “romantic and family” situations. In each part, the women reported supporting specific and unique types of gender relations; that is, they identified certain inviolable masculine and feminine qualities that each considered essential to each situation.

In romantic and family situations, the women argued that men should be in control and dominant, should financially provide for family members, and should protect those in their care. In work and social settings, however, the women desired their male workmates and male friends to possess masculine characteristics centering on platonic, friendly, and equal relationships. In work and social relationships with men, male passivity was valued and male agency was undesirable; in romantic and family relationships, agency was valued and passivity was undesirable. In work and social contexts, then, the women expected to be treated in an egalitarian and gender-progressive manner, they considered romantic and family masculine features as “violations,” and they valued those masculine features that “violated” hegemonic masculine qualities.

Although not a representative sample, the interviewees in this study supported and expected different types of gender relations in different local contexts. Accordingly, this study demonstrated how various forms of gender relations might be produced contextually and validated by both men and women and how women might construct differing forms of femininities—emphasized and liberated—in differing contexts as they recognize and support situational masculinities. And in regard to the specific cultivation of hegemonic masculinity, the women in this study were “particularly willing to accept subjugation to engage in ideals of romantic partnership congruent with emphasized femininity” (p. 255).

As a second example, in an article on hegemonic masculinity and the profession of veterinary medicine Irvine and Vermilya (2010) demonstrate that, despite contemporary veterinary medicine being numerically dominated by women, it is the women in this profession who often sustain, justify, and preserve hegemonic masculinity. Through interviews with twenty-two women who were practicing veterinarians or veterinary students, Irvine and Vermilya found that certain “inferior” gendered characteristics, such as nurturance, compassion, and emotionality, traditionally were attached to female veterinarians. However, the women veterinarians interviewed placed little value on these particular characteristics, and, in fact, they distanced themselves from these traits through their on-the-job practices. The women veterinarians actually constructed practices traditionally viewed by the profession as “superior,” such as emphasizing science rather than nurturance, insensitivity in place of compassion, and control instead of emotionality. Irvine and Vermilya thus showed how women veterinarians participated in “the patterns of practice that sustain and justify the status quo, and thus preserve hegemonic masculinity” (p. 74). These women appropriated the same practices that men had long used to keep women out of the profession and therefore exemplified how hegemonic masculinity might be cultivated by those deemed subordinate and with interests at odds with that hegemonic masculinity. Indeed, the consequences of hegemonic masculinity in this profession actually lower salaries for women relative to men, underrepresent women in the administration of veterinary schools, concentrate women in companion-animal services, and maintain low numbers of women who own veterinary practices.

Contestation

Always open to challenge when contested, hegemonic masculinities often inspire new strategies in gender relations and result in new configurations of hegemonic masculinities. Three percent of the core articles concentrated on such contestation. For example, in an examination of autobiographical accounts of British soldiers involved in peacekeeping duties in Bosnia in the 1990s, Duncanson (2009) explored whether or not a subsequent peacekeeping masculinity challenged the local hegemonic masculinity of the British military. Duncanson identified the British military hegemonic masculinity as consisting of the brave, strong, and tough masculine soldier/protector in contrast to the timid, weak, and tender feminine wife/mother in need of protection.

Through an analysis of four autobiographical accounts of British soldiers/officers involved in peacekeeping missions (formal and informal activities designed to prevent, halt, or resolve conflicts) in Bosnia, Duncanson found first that each of these soldiers experienced both emasculating and masculinizing aspects of peacekeeping: regarding the former, each soldier considered peacekeeping inferior, frustrating, and less masculine than “real fighting”; concerning the latter, each attempted therefore to position peacekeeping as 100 percent masculine behavior. For Duncanson, the former (emasculation) reinforced the local military hegemonic masculinity but the latter (masculinist) both disrupted that hegemonic masculinity and attempted to position peacemaking masculinity as a new form of localized hegemonic masculinity in the British military. As Duncanson explained, “When soldiers valorize peacekeeping tasks as masculine, they are not only asserting that there is another way to be a ‘real man’; they are asserting that it is the way” (p. 69). Thus, while all the soldiers/officers regarded peacekeeping as often emasculating, they simultaneously constructed peacekeeping as masculine by claiming that actually it was tougher, more dangerous, and more challenging than participating in war.

At the same time, these soldiers/officers did not challenge the notion of women solely as wives and mothers in need of protection, and they feminized Balkan male soldiers as weak, irrational, and emotional while masculinizing themselves as controlled, civilized, and intelligent. Thus, peacekeeping masculinity challenged traditional British localized military hegemonic masculinity yet simultaneously was constructed in relation to subordinate racialized and feminized “Others.” The end result was a new form of hegemonic masculinity that legitimated hierarchical gender relations between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men.

A second example of the contestation of hegemonic masculinity is a study of high school rugby in Australia by Light (2007), who appropriated hegemonic masculinity as a localized discourse in the particular setting of the high school and operated “at an unquestioned, common-sense level” (p. 323). Light argued that this particular hegemonic masculine discourse shaped the performance of the high school rugby team members by emphasizing physical force and power during play instead of skills and tactical knowledge. Through interviews with team members and the coach, as well as observations of practices and games, Light found that the majority of players described this discursive approach to the sport as “no mistakes rugby,” which was “highly structured, predictable, and heavy” (p. 329). The hegemonic masculine discourse encouraged players to take an instrumental view of their bodies as weapons to dominate and actually injure opponents. Value was placed on employing powerful and purposeful physical contact, bodily force, and mastery to overcome the opposition; to take control of “enemy” territory on the field; and to move the team forward throughout the season. Players were thus compelled to embody “heavy contact” so as to establish superior power and a dominant position over opponents. Indeed, there was little room allowed for player autonomy, independence, and creativity in generating and utilizing space.

Within the confines of the high school setting, then, a powerful discourse emphasized a characteristic hard and tough hegemonic masculinity that the boys on the rugby team felt obliged to reproduce. No boy wanted to “let down the tradition” of the school, and this credo made it difficult for any player to challenge the contextual hegemonically masculine discourse in any explicit way. Moreover, because of its power, the boys reproduced this particular pattern of hegemonic masculinity over generations.

Nevertheless, and despite the struggle, the boys did attempt to contest the no mistakes form of rugby through a much-less-structured and more creative style of play. During a two-week break at school, the team participated in a rugby tournament, and it was here that the players decided collectively to change their style of play in a way that allowed more risk taking on the field and more support for each other when mistakes occurred. The new style also involved much less structure, better communication, respectful understanding among players, and increased excitement—enthusiasm for the new “open” rugby as opposed to the “no mistakes” rugby was dramatic. And because of the success with the new style of play, following the tournament, the coach decided to allow the team to play open rugby in the remaining games of the season. However, owing to an important loss to a regular season team, school administrators and coaches quickly dropped the new style of play. Again, Light attributed this to how deeply embedded the hegemonic masculine discourse was in the culture of the school. In other words, although the players attempted to mount a new form of masculinity that contested the established no mistakes rugby, the traditional hegemonic masculine discourse was far too entrenched in the school culture for any new hegemonic masculinity to emerge. Accordingly, Light insightfully documented the social processes involved in a localized struggle over hegemony and the reinstallment of a traditional hegemonic masculinity that had been contested and briefly displaced.

Periphery

Research also is appearing that highlights how neoliberal globalization influences the construction of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities in periphery countries, such as those in Asia, Africa, and Central and Latin America. These particular pieces formed 5 percent of the core articles. An excellent example is a study that utilized a mixed methodology—a survey, focus group discussions, and interviews. In this article, Groes-Green (2009) examined the impact of neoliberal globalization on both urban middle-class and urban working-class young men (ages sixteen to twenty-three) in Maputo, Mozambique. Groes-Green found that in the local arena of Maputo, an established form of hegemonic masculinity involved men providing economically for their female partners and families, a practice that primarily defined hierarchical relations between them. Although both the middle-class and the working-class young men Groes-Green studied intended to construct such hierarchical gender relations, with the arrival of neoliberal globalization only the former were able to live up to this particular hegemonic masculinity.

In 1987, the Mozambican government, through economic support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, allowed considerable foreign business investment into the country. This policy subsequently heralded a growing middle class with access to higher education, steady and secure jobs, and excellent incomes. Nevertheless, the downside of this development was economic impoverishment of the majority of the population, mass unemployment among primarily working-class youth, and an increasing gap between the middle and working classes.

During his fieldwork, Groes-Green observed how middle-class and working-class young men constructed different hegemonic masculinities, and he attributed these contrasting masculinities to the neoliberal economic changes impacting Maputo. In particular, the middle-class young men had easy access to higher education, stable employment, and high incomes. Consequently, they were able to easily attract young women as partners who also supported hierarchical gender relations. Thus, these young men effortlessly constructed this particular type of localized hegemonic masculinity.

However, the working-class young men, who experienced much less access to higher education as well as escalating unemployment rates, were unable to live up to the standards of hegemonic masculinity in this localized environment. Consequently, as Groes-Green put it, these men developed “a masculinity that takes the body and its physical powers as its sources” (p. 299). In other words, in the absence of higher education, stable jobs, and an adequate income, these working-class men engaged in two specific “corporeal performances” to construct masculine power relations over their female partners. The first corporeal performance involved their becoming preoccupied with particular “sexual techniques” (such as consuming large quantities of aphrodisiacs), allegedly to increase their sexual skills and sexual stamina and thereby provide “a gateway to staying in power” by preserving a sense of superiority over their partner by managing her sexual satisfaction (p. 298). The second corporeal performance involved some of these men increasingly engaging in physical violence against their female partner primarily to “make her respect you” (p. 294). Thus, the two identified corporeal performances were impetuous attempts to somehow legitimate patriarchal relations through particular practices of sexuality and violence at the local level.

For Groes-Green, then, the two masculine corporeal performances were bifurcated reactions to the inability of these young men to construct and legitimate traditional hegemonic masculinity because of neoliberal-produced poverty-stricken circumstances. Indeed, both forms of corporeal performances became an “option to which poor young men in Maputo resort when their hegemony (i.e., their ‘taken for granted’ authority based on stable jobs and financial abilities) is contested” (p. 296).

Similarly, Broughton (2008) examined how neoliberal globalization in Mexico created a novel northward mass departure from the Mexican southern states by working-age men and women. In particular, Broughton analyzed how economically dislocated southern Mexican men negotiated hegemonic masculinity while confronting extraordinary pressure to migrate as well as the gendered strategies, practices, and identities they adopted during the undertaking.

Following implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on January 1, 1994, numerous trade barriers to foreign investment in Mexico were removed; NAFTA created the conditions for the concentration and acceleration of foreign investment and manufacturing growth at the US–Mexico border, thereby “creating a strong draw for job-hungry, impoverished Mexicans” (p. 570). Moreover, NAFTA opened Mexico’s agricultural sector to US agribusiness by increasing trade quotas and decreasing tariffs for major crops (such as corn), necessarily compressing rural economies and boosting northern migration.

Through life history interviews of sixteen low-income men (eighteen to forty-two years old) who contemplated migrating north from southern Mexico, Broughton found that these men constructed three differing masculinities in reaction to migration pressures in neoliberal Mexico. Drawing on a specific localized hegemonic masculinity that emphasized hierarchical gender relations in the family and vigilant fathering, these men deployed what Broughton labeled “traditionalist,” “adventurer,” and “breadwinner” masculinities, all of which provided differing gendered responses “to realizing both instrumental and identity goals in a time of rapid and wrenching change” (p. 585).

The traditionalist emphasized maintaining the established local hegemonic masculinity primarily through family cohesion. Viewing the border as a “minefield of moral hazards,” the traditionalist decided to endure destitution in the south and refrain from migrating in order to protect his family from such dangers up north. Thus, the traditionalist maintained local hegemonic masculinity in his southern home “in spite of political and economic forces working against the maintenance of such ideals” (p. 577).

For the adventurer, the northern border and beyond offered a place to earn considerable money and to “prove” his masculinity in new ways, such as through seeking thrills and breaking free from the inflexibility of rural life. Rejecting the localized notion of hegemonic masculinity, migration to the north presented a progressive, avant-garde means to survive economic disorder by upgrading one’s masculine status and assessing his bravery. It proffered a “new and exciting life away from the limitations of a neglected and declining rural Mexico” (p. 585).

Finally, like the adventurer, the breadwinner migrated to the north, yet unlike the adventurer, such migration was a reluctant but necessary choice under desperate circumstances—he had to do so to adequately provide for his wife and children. The breadwinner coped with “symbolic indignities” so that he could acquire sufficient economic resources that would conceivably promote social mobility for his entire family. The breadwinner accepted work at or beyond the border “as an inescapable duty” so that his family would enjoy a higher standard of living (p. 585).

Broughton’s study then demonstrated how low-income Mexican men experiencing economic dislocation intrinsic to neoliberal Mexico negotiated with a specific localized hegemonic masculinity and in the process orchestrated old and new hegemonic and new nonhegemonic masculine configurations. This differing process of masculine identity formation involved much more than simply instrumental calculations; these men had to “make sense of the migration experience as men and arrive at specific and adaptive gendered strategies and decisions regarding northward migration” (p. 586). To be sure, one of the important aspects of this article was its demonstration of how specific forms of complicity (traditionalist and breadwinner) with, and resistance (adventurer) to, a localized hegemonic masculinity were constructed under identical neoliberal conditions.

Summary

These six studies have engendered gender knowledge in new and innovative ways by (1) recognizing how under certain situations women might be a salient factor in the cultivation of hegemonic masculinities, (2) revealing how hegemonic masculinities may be open to challenge and possibly reproduced in new form, and (3) demonstrating how neoliberal globalization impacts the construction of various forms of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities in periphery countries. All six articles illustrate contemporary creative scholarship that contributes distinctively to academic gendered knowledge on hegemonic masculinity. The two articles on cultivation show that in studies of hegemonic masculinities, the focus can no longer center exclusively on men and instead must give much closer attention to both the practices of women and the social interplay of femininities and masculinities. Several of the new directions pieces document various ways hegemonic masculinities have been contested, resulting in the construction of new strategies of patriarchal relations and thus redefinitions of hegemonic masculinities. And within periphery countries experiencing the effects of neoliberal globalization, the articles reveal how attempts by men at the individual level to maintain localized power relations over women might occur and further display how certain alternative nonhegemonic masculinities might arise under such conditions. Each article in its own particular way then breaks new ground by concentrating on academic domains that previously have been disregarded (cultivation and contestation) or seemingly deemed incapable of exploration and analysis (periphery). Thus, this work can inspire additional gender research that further extends our knowledge in similar and/or previously unexplored areas.

Discussion and Conclusion

The primary purpose of this article is to assess the academic appropriation of the reformulated concept of hegemonic masculinity and the processes involved in gendered knowledge construction. The analysis reveals first that contrasting interpretations of the concept by gender scholars (but not by academic discipline) persist and that such disparities have crept into the accepted academic accumulation of gendered knowledge. Published articles hold an extremely salient position in academic gender-knowledge construction, and the publication of an article in an accepted academic journal sanctions its scholarly stature. It is through such journals that specific forms of gendered knowledge are substantiated academically and upon such journal articles that the academic community depends for the dissemination of new forms of gendered knowledge.

Nevertheless, a published journal article results from more than the author’s research and writing. As with all forms of social action, the publishing of an academic journal article involves interaction among editor/editors, reviewers, and the author/authors, and such interaction indispensably shapes the ultimate content of the final published draft. Published academic articles, then, are shaped so that they conform to the parameters fixed by the particular reviewers and editors. Contrasting and disparate forms of gendered knowledge—here regarding conceptualizations of hegemonic masculinity—thereby result from interaction among a variety of editors, reviewers, and authors.

More than twelve years ago, Martin (1998) raised the issue of inconsistent appropriations of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, insightfully observing that some scholars equated the concept with a fixed type of masculinity or with whatever type of masculinity that happened to be dominant at a particular time and place. More recently, Beasley (2008) and Elias and Beasley (2009) labeled such inconsistent appropriations “slippage,” arguing that “dominant” forms of masculinity—such as those that are the most culturally celebrated or the most common in particular settings—may actually do little to legitimate men’s power over women and that some masculinities that legitimate men’s power actually may be culturally marginalized. Similarly, Schippers (2007) argued that it is essential to distinguish masculinities that legitimate men’s power from those that do not.

Although these scholars have correctly pointed to the relevant ambiguities in appropriations of the concept, what this study illustrates is that sundry scholars are demonstrating impressively through their published academic articles how specific hierarchical gender relationships between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men are legitimated—in my view superbly capturing certain of the essential features of the omnipresent reproduction of patriarchal relations. Additionally, these articles reveal in various ways how hegemonic masculinities express models of gender relations that articulate with the practical constitution of masculine and feminine ways of living in everyday circumstances. To the extent they do this, they contribute to our understanding of the legitimation and stabilization of patriarchal relations locally, regionally, and globally.

Notwithstanding, “slippage” in the conception of hegemonic masculinity in this study has centered exclusively on equating the concept with “masculine” character traits. However, this particular form of slippage is not solely a matter of individual interpretation of the concept. Within the core articles examined, there remains a fundamental collective intellectual tendency by numerous editors, reviewers, and authors “to read ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as a static character type, i.e. to psychologise the idea and ignore the whole question of gender dynamics” (Connell 2008, 245). The articles in this study that conceptualize hegemonic masculinity in this way—typified by Logan (2010), Smith et al. (2007), and Gage (2008)—unquestionably offer intriguing insight into the adoption of certain “masculine” traits by particular groups of men. Nevertheless, in terms of hegemony in patriarchal relations that is explicit in the concept of hegemonic masculinity, their presentation is noticeably abbreviated. That is, their work calls for an additional step to be taken, involving an analysis of the downstream consequences of how the particular “masculine” traits actually legitimate gender inequality and the subordination of women, femininities, and nonhegemonic masculinities. And the articles by Morris (2008), Weitzer and Kubrin (2009), Hatfield (2010), Talbot and Quayle (2010), Duncanson (2009), and others discussed herein represent some promising approaches as to how such downstreaming can be accomplished. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do this vital extended analysis on Gage’s (2008) data because examination of the legitimation of patriarchal relations cannot methodologically be well articulated and formulated.

Accordingly, I agree with Schippers (2007) that to elucidate the significance and salience of hegemonic masculinities, gender scholars—which includes editors, reviewers, and authors—must distinguish masculinities that legitimate a hierarchical relationship between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men from those that do not. Hegemonic masculinities are unique among the diversity of masculinities, and making this distinction unambiguous will enable scholars to recognize and research various forms of mundane, run-of-the-mill, nonhegemonic masculinities, such as those constructed by the older men in the Smith’s et al’s (2007) article, as well as risky and daring types of masculinities, such as the adventurer masculinity discussed by Broughton (2008). Indeed, labeling these particular types of masculinities “hegemonic masculinity” confounds any analysis as to how nonhegemonic masculinities differ from hegemonic masculinities, thereby essentially confusing and obscuring the academic engendering of gendered knowledge.

Moreover, certain men may maintain power over other men (without legitimating patriarchal relations) by constructing dominant and/or dominating masculinities. In this regard, I (Messerschmidt 2010) recently distinguished these two types of nonhegemonic masculinities: “dominant” masculinities refer to the most powerful or the most widespread types in the sense of being the most celebrated, common, or current forms of masculinity in a specific social setting; “dominating” masculinities involve commanding and controlling specific interactions and exercising power and control over people and events—“calling the shots” and “running the show.” Neither dominant nor dominating masculinities necessarily legitimate hierarchical gender relations between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men. Even though at times hegemonic masculinities also may be dominant and/or dominating, these latter masculinities are never hegemonic if they fail culturally to legitimate patriarchal relations (see further Beasley 2008). To conceptualize fully hegemonic masculinities, then, scholars must unravel dominant, dominating, and other types of nonhegemonic masculinities from hegemonic masculinities. And this distinction between hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities further facilitates the discovery and identification of “equality masculinities”: those that legitimate an egalitarian relationship between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men. ⁶

Finally, although identifying a single society-wide or global “ascendant” hegemonic masculinity may be possible, no one to date has successfully done so. This is probably the case because it is extremely difficult to measure such ascendancy and thereby determine which particular masculinity—among the whole variety in the offering—is indeed the ascendant hegemonic masculinity. Until a method is devised for determining exactly which masculinity is indeed the hegemonic ascendant, we must speak of hegemonic masculinity—as the reformulated concept suggests and the current evidence documents—wholly in plural terms, analyzing hegemonic masculinities at the local, regional, and global levels. Such research will provide a growing expansion of our understanding of the pervasive and omnipresent nature of how hegemonic masculinity and thus patriarchal relations are legitimized and solidified from the local to the global.

Mindful of the foregoing, I close with certain brief suggestions for future research on both hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities. First, it would be invaluable for gender scholars to increase and diversify research on how patriarchal relations are legitimated and stabilized at the local, regional, and global levels (especially the latter two levels) and on how each level impacts the other levels as well as how such hegemonic masculinities are related to nonhegemonic masculinities at each level. Second, we need much more scholarly work on how various “subordinated” groups (not solely women) may help cultivate hegemonic masculinity and how such inequality legitimately may be challenged and contested. Third, considerable work must be undertaken on intersectionality, or how class, race, ethnicity, age, sexualities, and nation impact both hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities. Fourth, gender knowledge will enormously benefit from further research on how hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities are constructed in and through the body. Fifth, there is an essential need for in-depth research on how globalization impacts regional and local hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities in periphery countries, research that includes the type of masculinities and femininities constructed within global political and economic organizations themselves. ⁷ Finally, the majority of studies discussed in this article have engendered gendered knowledge from the position of what Connell (2007) refers to as the “metropole”—the result therefore is not simply minor omissions but major incompleteness in the study of masculinities (p. 226). Exploring how hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities are constructed in the periphery countries through the theories, concepts, and data peculiar to the periphery countries themselves is not only a requisite but also a critical element in narrowing the scholarship distance from completeness.