Is “Hegemonic Masculinity” Hegemonic as Masculinity? Two Israeli Case Studies

Introduction

In this article, we set out to reflect on a phenomenon we encountered in our respective research projects, one focusing on the construction of masculinity among early Zionist ideological workers (Hebrew: halutzim, lit. pioneers) and the other focusing on masculinity and ethnicity in the contemporary Israeli army. In both contexts, a bodily performance which marks the breach of “civilized behavior” is adopted in order to signify accentuated masculinity. In both, a symbolic hierarchy of masculinities emerges, in which Arabs—and in the second case study also Mizrahi Jews, that is, Jews who descended from Arab countries (pl. Mizrahim)—are marked as more masculine than hegemonic Ashkenazi men, that is, men of European descent (pl. Ashkenazim). Although enhanced masculinity bordering on the animalistic has been a part of the arsenal of racist representations since long (Stepan 1986; Mosse 1996, 65–66), in both these cases Arabs are not associated with excessive and dangerous masculinity but rather with valued masculine qualities, both in the context of agricultural labor and in the context of military service. Thus, while our case studies support the notion that masculinity may be practiced in various ways, the hierarchical relationship between masculine styles appears to be more multilayered than Connell’s model of “hegemonic masculinity” suggests.

Various scholars, most notably historians of gender, have noted how western discourses on the emasculating effects of modern civilization participated in constructing the masculinity of subordinate groups such as racial minorities, working-class men, and indigenous populations in the colonies as superior to that of white, bourgeois men (e.g., Bederman 1995; Forth 2008; Belkin 2012). In this article we do not seek to expand on the historical process but rather use this phenomenon to reflect on Connell’s theory of masculinity. While this theory offers many advantages for the study of masculinity as lived relation, we argue that it does not sufficiently take into account the existence of a conventional and partially autonomous repertoire of masculinity, and consequently the tensions which may ensue between social status and masculine style.

The two case studies discussed in this article are based on two separate research projects. Dafna Hirsch’s study focuses on the construction of masculinity among early Zionist ideological workers (halutzim), that is, Jewish settlers who arrived in Palestine in the first decades of the twentieth century and undertook agricultural work from ideological reasons. It is based mostly on the analysis of first-person sources which appeared in print. Grosswirth Kachtan’s (Kachtan 2010) sociological study on the construction of masculinity among two military combat units—Golani and the Paratroopers—is based on semistructured interviews, conducted in the years 2006–2007 in the framework of her dissertation research.

After a short introduction to Zionist politics of masculinity, we present the two case studies. We then discuss Connell’s theory in relation to the phenomenon under consideration, focusing on its advantages as well as its limitations. In the final section, we consider the notion of masculinity as a cultural repertoire, from which people make situated selections (Even-Zohar 1997; Swidler 1986; see also Schwalbe 2014, 56). The repertoire of masculinity is where the elements and models that organize both masculine practice and perceptions concerning masculinity are stored. While selections from available repertoires are never a matter of “free choice,” the notion of “repertoire” assumes the conventional nature of culture and hence allows for some leeway in the selections that people make. Thus, it shifts the focus from the more rigid notion of “masculinities” to the flexible terrain of situated social practice, which makes use of available models in specific contexts. Moreover, it allows to consider masculinity both as a normalizing cultural ideal (or set of ideals) and as a relational and contextual social practice, without reducing it to either.

“Arab in the Good Sense of the Word” ¹

Given that gender functions as “a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (Scott 1999, 42), the political inferiority of Jews in post-Enlightenment Europe was encoded not only in racial but also in gender terms: Jews were seen as an inherently uncivilized “oriental race,” whose men were feeble-bodied and emasculate (Gilman 1991; Boyarin 1997; Presner 2007). It was not so much that Jewish men lacked means of achieving acknowledged masculinity on an individual level, and more that representations of the Jews as a collective emphasized the lack of certain “masculine” qualities among them, most notably physical strength, courage, a sense of honor, and autonomy marked by their lack of political sovereignty.

The Zionist solution to the predicament of European Jews bound together the attainment of political sovereignty through colonization with the shaping of a new type of Jew: modern, Western, and masculine. In Zionist discourse, Jewish settlement in Palestine, modernization cum westernization, and the attainment of “proper” masculinity were seen as part and parcel of the national project, conceived as a process of “regeneration” (Boyarin 1997; Presner 2007). For example, Russian physician Max Mandelstamm, who had spoken at the second Zionist congress on the importance of physical exercise for the “sickly youth, degenerating in distress and poverty,” made an explicit connection between physical power, masculinity, and colonization, when he called on the Jews to take example from the British. When the British ascended to the position of the world’s leading colonial power, noted Mandelstamm, “it was not least thanks to their personal courage, the real masculine courage, which they appropriated from childhood through physical exercise of all kinds, through harmonious development of their muscle power” (Mandelstamm 1898, 90).

If Mandelstamm saw gymnastics as the best means to develop a Jewish breed of fierce colonizers, for other writers it was the hardships of colonization itself that was to turn Jews into proud, hardworking, and self-defending men. For instance, German Jewish physician Elias Auerbach had written on the occasion of the establishment of a Jewish-German gymnastics movement, that Jewish “national consciousness” turns into a consciousness of power and self-help. The “healthiest national sentiment” Auerbach attributed to the Jewish settler, who “subdued the land with hard labor and the Bedouin with a gun in his hand” (Auerbach 1901, 129). Auerbach here marks the contour of what was to become the most powerful construction of the New Jew as a farmer-warrior. In this construction, national pride, conquest of land through labor, combative spirit, physical power, and masculinity became impossible to disentangle. Although with the years the place of agricultural labor within the pantheon of exemplary masculine models in Israel has waned, combative military service defines Israeli notions of worthy masculinity to this day (Sharoni 1995; Kaplan 2003; Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport 2003; Sasson-Levy 2003, 2008).

However, although the role of masculinity in the Zionist construction of a New Jew is by now well established, its constitution through ethnic/racial relations has received much less scholarly attention (Yosef 2004). As we noted earlier, the Zionist notion of regeneration tied together racial and gender discourses, in response to the construction of the Jews as an effeminate and uncivilized oriental race. At the same time, the solution to these problems was to come through settlement in oriental space. This tension is responsible for the centrality of the East/West distinction in Israeli social structure, politics, and culture. As in other colonial societies, social hierarchies in Israel are racialized, with Ashkenazim on top, Mizrahi Jews in the middle, and Palestinian Arabs at the bottom. ² In hegemonic Israeli culture, this racialized hierarchy is taken to correspond to the hierarchy of civilization.

According to Raz Yosef, Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Arabs have been essential for the construction of the dominant Ashkenazi national subject. Yosef (2004) focuses on the sexualization of Mizrahi and Palestinian bodies and specifically on their construction as “violent savages and primitives,” as a way of projecting Ashkenazi men’s own desires onto the “natives” (p. 86). Following Bhabha, he regards the relationship of Zionism with its ethnic and racial others as characterized by a “colonial ambivalence,” where attraction and repulsion, fear and desire go hand in hand (Yosef 2004, 7). Note that in Auerbach’s fantasy too, the East is marked both as a wild space, which the Jewish settlers need to “subdue,” and as a space of regeneration through physical labor and struggle with the Arab natives.

The sexualization of Mizrahi Jews and Arabs, however, was only one facet of a wider discourse which constructed the relationship between groups of men through the play of oppositions and their transformations—between East and West, between barbarism and civilization, and between femininity and masculinity. In this discourse, the masculinity of Arabs and Mizrahi Jews could attain different forms and values according to the context in question. Especially in the physical contexts of agricultural labor and military combat, the perception of Arabs and Mizrahi Jews as less civilized than Ashkenazi Jews allowed to associate the former with desirable masculine qualities, since less corrupted by the emasculating effects of modern civilization with its refined conduct and sedentary way of life—effects which manual labor and military service were meant to undo.

In what follows we bring two examples for cases where the masculine signification of Mizrahi Jews and Arabs subverts accepted social hierarchies based on nationality and ethnicity/race: the case of early Zionist agricultural workers, and the case of two military combat units, which are differentiated mostly by ethnicity and prestige. No other masculine figures are more congruent with Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, as the masculine configuration which serves to legitimize both patriarchy and social as well as ethnic hierarchy (Connell 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), than the Jewish rural settler of the prestate period and the Jewish warrior, especially in elite combat units, both of them marked as Ashkenazim. And in spite of the difference (and distance) between these two case studies, they nevertheless represent a phenomenon which resonates in the wider Israeli culture, receiving different manifestations in different sociocultural contexts.

Connell’s Hegemonic Masculinity

In face of the relationship between differently positioned masculine styles in both our research projects, Connell’s (2005) theory of masculinities (see also Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) offered several advantages. First, it assumed a plurality of masculinities rather than a singular normative and normalizing ideal which some men achieve and others fail to. Second, it suggested thinking of masculinities as “processes of configuring practice” rather than as sets of traits, thus offering a nonessential and dynamic conception of masculinity—masculinity as a “project” (Connell 2005, 72). Third, it offered to think of masculinities as relational and hierarchical configurations, thus taking questions of power into account. Four, it offered to think about the articulation of gender with other social divisions, most notably sexuality, social class, and ethnicity, the last two being the most relevant in our case.

For Connell, gender is a “structure of social practice.” Her analysis seeks to integrate structure, practice, experience, psychology, and culture in a single model, although not all these levels receive the same attention in her work. She writes, “Masculinity, to the extent the term can be briefly defined at all, is simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in bodily experience, personality and culture” (Connell 2005, 71). Note that culture here is defined only as the effect of social practice and not, also, as a sphere which organizes practice. At the same time, Connell acknowledges that masculinity is conventionally related to specific traits. In fact, the notion of hegemonic masculinity exemplifies Connell’s attempt to bring together structures, practices, and culture. In Masculinities, hegemonic masculinity is defined as “…the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (p. 77). ¹¹ In other words, it is the culturally idealized and naturalized form of masculinity, used to legitimate, and hence, maintain, masculine domination (and more correctly, the domination of specific groups of men). Importantly, Connell (2005) distinguishes hegemonic masculinity from “normative masculinity,” arguing that the latter term is problematic since few men actually inhabit the norm (p. 70). ¹² In a later paper, Messerschmidt (2012) distinguished between hegemonic and dominant/dominating forms of masculinity, arguing that the first concept is distinct from the latter, given its focus on the question of legitimation (p. 72).

As Connell has insisted all along, hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities are not reified social types, but relational patterns, which attain their meaning only in relation to each other, and which may transform over time and between social and historical contexts. The very notion of hegemony assumes a conflictual social process, where the hegemony of specific groups has to be won and constantly reproduced. Moreover, there is no perfect match between masculinities and social groups: those who hold most power are not necessarily the bearers of the cultural ideal of hegemonic masculinity, and members of subordinate groups may come to embody certain aspects of hegemonic masculinity. And yet, there is some correspondence between the cultural ideal and institutional power, as in state, business, and corporate power (Hearn 2004, 57).

The embrace of the concept of hegemonic masculinity has been ubiquitous, if not without critique, and highly productive across a range of disciplines (Beasley 2008; Messerschmidt 2012). Much of the appeal of hegemonic masculinity lies not only in the dismantling of “men” as a unified category and the acknowledgment of hierarchy between masculinities but also in its effort to place gender within a multifaceted and relational social universe. As we thought through the hierarchy of masculine styles which our case studies presented through Connell’s model, however, several problems became apparent. In particular, we would like to point out three problems, which have been discussed in other critiques as well (e.g., Donaldson 1993; Demetriou 2001; Hearn 2004; Tosh 2004; Beasley 2008; Hearn and Morell 2012; Schwalbe 2014). The first concerns the association of hegemonic masculinity with institutional power (Hearn 2004; Beasley 2008) and most notably with social class. As Hearn (2004) argues, it is not always clear whether hegemonic masculinity refers to cultural constructions, everyday practices, or institutional structures (pp. 58–59; see also Beasley 2008). While Connell (2005) rightly argues that “[t]o understand gender…we must constantly go beyond gender” (p. 76), her model makes it difficult to account for the partial autonomy of gender repertoires (see also Donaldson 1993; Hearn 2004, 58), and hence, for those cases where, rather than being used to legitimate existing social hierarchies, the hierarchy of masculinity may stand in tension with hierarchies based on class, ethnicity, or nationality (see also Beasley 2008, 5–6, 10). In other words, if the masculinity of groups whose practices serve to legitimate hierarchy both along gender and along ethnic lines (i.e., between men and women and between different groups of men) is rendered deficient compared to the masculinity of subordinate groups, in what sense is it hegemonic as masculinity? “To elucidate the significance and salience of hegemonic masculinities,” writes Messerschmidt,” gender scholars…must distinguish masculinities that legitimate a hierarchical relationship between men and women, between masculinity and femininity, and among men from those that do not” (Messerschmidt 2012, 72). Yet practices such as the exercise of physical power, combative military service, productive (in contrast to reproductive) labor, and so on, have been used to legitimate the hierarchical relationship between men and women across the social space, and would be difficult to explain without recourse to the binary system of gender symbolism (Butler [1990] 2007; Bourdieu [1998] 2001). By associating the configuration of practices which serves to legitimate gender hierarchy with a legitimization of hierarchies between men, this formulation, rather than detaching hegemonic masculinity from specific social groups, necessarily realigns hegemonic masculinity with social dominance.

The second, related problem concerns Connell’s focus on “patterns of masculine practice” associated with specific positions vis-à-vis hegemonic masculinity rather than on situated social practice (see also Wetherell and Edley 1999; Beasley 2008, 4). Practice is detached from specific institutionalized contexts and related to specific positions in the social field. Whereas “hegemonic,” “subordinated,” “marginalized,” “complicit,” “dominant,” and “dominating” are useful as heuristic concepts for distinguishing between groups of men who are differently positioned in the field of social power, the relationship between these positions and distinct configurations of practices remains obscure. If we are right in arguing that the hegemony of men is legitimated through practices which are performed throughout the social field, it is unclear why associate a certain widespread legitimating practice with a specific “masculine configuration” and not with others. A research strategy which focuses on relational social practice in specific institutionalized settings, rather than on life stories, may reveal not only that the same men “do gender” in quite different ways in different social contexts and circumstances (West and Zimmerman 1987; Wetherell and Edley 1999; McDowell 2009, 131; see also Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 840); it may also reveal that practices which are conventionally associated with the masculine pole of the gender binary, such as the exercise of physical power, may serve nonhegemonic groups of men in challenging the masculinity of the hegemonic group, as in the case of Golani soldiers.

The third problem concerns Connell’s assumption that men’s domination over women is the organizing principle of masculinity, whereas (some) men’s domination over other groups of men is derivative. Yet, as studies on the history of gender relations have clearly demonstrated, other power structures, such as ethnic, national, or colonial, may come to play themselves out in the field of gender relations. As Tosh (2004) writes:

One can accept the profoundly hierarchical character of masculinities, and the investment of men in power and dominance, without concluding that maintaining power over women is the deciding imperative. The logic of a dominant code of masculinity may be to uphold class power, or to consolidate the ascendancy of one religious denomination over another, and in these cases power over men may be more significant than power over women. (pp. 53–54)

Our argument is modest: the notion of hegemonic masculinity fails to account for the tension which may arise between masculine status, understood as a location within a symbolic hierarchy of masculine styles, and social status, with its possible manifestations in different contexts of social practice. It is this tension which made the halutzim feel inadequate in relation to Arab workers and which allows Golani soldiers to construct the masculinity of Paratrooper soldiers as deficient compared to their own. Although it can be argued that the masculinity of the halutzim cannot be considered hegemonic in the complex social field of late Ottoman Palestine—rather, they became hegemonic in the Zionist community only in later periods, when agricultural labor became much more nationally segregated—the Paratrooper soldiers represent a hegemonic masculinity par excellence.

Connell does acknowledge the challenge of “protest masculinity”—marginalized masculinity which picks up themes of hegemonic masculinity but reworks them in the context of poverty—however, she considers this macho masculinity as merely a cul-de-sac (Connell 2005, 114). In their 2005 article, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) cite the challenge which may arise to hegemonic masculinity from the protest masculinity of marginalized groups as one example attesting to the need to find better ways of understanding gender hierarchy (pp. 847–48). Yet Connell and Messerschmidt do not explain what makes this challenge work, since they discuss it mainly in terms of representing the agency of marginalized groups. The effort to link social power with a specific masculine configuration of practice comes at the expense of acknowledging the conventional nature and partial autonomy of the repertoire of masculinity. It is exactly this partial autonomy of masculine and feminine repertoires which allows for other struggles to be fought through the idiom of gender. Both the halutzim and Golani soldiers did not simply pick up certain themes of hegemonic masculinity. Rather they sought to embody (historically specific) qualities which are seen as essential in signifying the possession of a “masculine core,” most notably physical strength and autonomy (e.g., refusal to entirely submit oneself to the disciplinary demands of the army, in the case of Golani soldiers), and thus invert the accepted hierarchy of social value. ¹³

Masculinity as a Cultural Repertoire

In both our case studies, a specific group of men is engaged in a “masculinity project,” adopting a masculine style which is associated with the physical masculinity of lower status groups. In the case of the halutzim, rejection of the repertoire of civilized behavior signified masculine values like physical strength, a capacity for manual labor and endurance, and was associated with the Arab workers. In the case of Golani soldiers, rough and untamed masculinity is associated with Mizrahi Jews and Arabs and contrasted with the masculinity of mostly Ashkenazi Paratrooper soldiers.

Should we consider the masculine style adopted by these two groups as a protest masculinity of the marginalized, as Connell suggests? To our mind, this would be a very partial explanation. While this masculine style does contain an element of protest or defiance, it would be wrong to regard it as only—or even mainly—that. First, both the halutz and the combat soldier belong to the pantheon of masculine symbols in Israel, and both have functioned as major channels for social mobility for men. ¹⁴ The halutzim, moreover, were thought to epitomize the New Jew, and the labor movement, with which they were affiliated, became the hegemonic power in Jewish society in the 1920s. Second, given that both the halutzim and Golani soldiers adopt this masculine style in order to gain value and prestige, the source of this prestige needs to be explained. “Picking up themes of hegemonic masculinity” does not tell us which themes are adopted and why. Here we would argue that the masculine style of the halutzim and Golani soldiers is not just a case of alternative value regime adopted at the local level (e.g., Skeggs 2004, 25). Rather it embodies the tension within the modern construction of “worthy masculinity.”

Scholars have shown how in the modern west and beyond, constructions of white middle-class masculinity were inextricably bound with the notion of civilization: white male privilege was based on the claim to civilized status (Bederman 1995; Forth 2008). The civilized masculinity of middle-class men—associated with self-control, rationality, and respectability—was constantly pitted against the irrationality and uncontrolled behavior attributed to women, the lower classes and “inferior races” (Stepan 1986; Stoler 1995; Bederman 1995). Civilization, however, was a contradictory concept, associated not just with human progress and white superiority but also with weakness and effeminacy. Developments which were central to the concept of civilization—such as sedentary lifestyle, material comfort and luxury, and refined manners—threatened to render men soft, cowardly and effeminate, and erode the corporeal foundation of male claim to privilege (Forth 2008, 4–5, 141; Kimmel 2005). In contrast, men of subjugated groups like peasants, proletarians, and some indigenous people, with their rough physicality and “primitive” way of life, were sometimes seen as embodying the lost masculinity of civilized men (Forth 2008, 14, 17, 89–91). In other words, as a normative cultural construction, modern masculinity is structured by a contradiction (Belkin 2012).

Clearly such imaginary constructions have little to do with the masculine practice of real peasants, proletarians, and indigenous people. Rather, they derive their efficacy from the system of binary symbolic structures and their articulations. As feminist scholars have argued, we should distinguish between the binary gender symbolism, gender organization, and gender identity, as distinct, albeit interrelated, levels on which gender concepts, representations, practices, and relationships operate (Harding 1986, 18; Scott 1999). While the binary structure—though not specific contents—of gender symbolism seems to be universal (regardless of the plurality of gender arrangements and identities; see Shapiro 1991), identities and practices are always more complex and heterogeneous than binary symbolic structures (McCall 1992). At the same time, given the symbolic power of these structures as schemes for interpreting and evaluating practices, they are often taken up, played with and sometimes reworked in “gender projects” undertaken by various groups of social actors. Both the halutzim and Golani soldiers do not simply attempt to imitate a masculine “ideal”; rather, the style of masculinity they adopt embodies, and capitalizes on the tension within the modern construction of worthy masculinity. The masculinity of Golani soldiers in particular builds on this tension to challenge the masculinity of the hegemonic, Ashkenazi group.

Thus, a theory of gender has to account for both normativity and heterogeneity (Kimmel 1996, 5–6), operating both on the level of practice and on the level of perception and interpretation. Connell in her discussion of masculinities emphasizes the heterogeneity of social practice, but by replacing normativity with hegemony the binary logic of gender symbolism tends to become subordinated to the logic of social class and sexuality (see also Beasley 2008). Although in real-life gender never appears in a “pure” form and is always articulated with other social divisions, it has its distinct social and cultural logic, which produces specific effects in different contexts.

A concept which incorporates both gender normativity and the heterogeneity of social practice is the concept of cultural repertoire, from which people make situated selections. ¹⁵ By “cultural repertoire” we mean more than a set of discourses and representations. We use the term repertoire to refer to a structured set of models for organizing human action and perception (Even-Zohar 1997), or in Swidler’s (1986) words, “a ‘tool kit’ of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct ‘strategies of action’” (p. 273), to which we may add “perceptual strategies,” or strategies with which people understand the world (Even-Zohar 1997, 20–21; see also Wetherell and Edley 1999). Inherent to the notion of cultural repertoires is the understanding that culture has a conventional nature, which allows for some leeway in the selections people make from available repertoires (Sela-Sheffy 1997, 38). In other words, women too may select from the repertoire of masculinity, albeit their practices will be judged differently as when performed by men (Schwalbe 2014, 59–60). By “selection,” we do not mean to suggest that these are voluntary, conscious, and calculated acts (although in certain cases they may be). While selections from the repertoire of masculinity may reflect the dispositions of the habitus, ¹⁶ they may also conform to the logic of a certain gender project. Thus, the halutzim could adopt a masculine style which, rather than reflecting the dispositions of an existing habitus, was part of the effort to construct a new habitus—that of the “authentic worker.”

The repertoire of masculinity is where the elements and models which organize both masculine practice and perceptions concerning masculinity are stored. Underlying these models is a set of “organizing principles,” conventionally associated with masculinity as the “positive” pole of a binary symbolic structure (e.g., physical strength, toughness, endurance, autonomy, activity, productivity, rationality, control, and self-control; Tosh 2004, 54; McDowell 2009, 131). These principles are manifested in specific models for action and interpretation, which performance and evaluation are always context dependent (for instance, in the feminine domestic sphere of reproductive labor, masculine inaction is not coded as “passivity” but is rather accepted and even encouraged, as a form of masculine autonomy, i.e., the freedom from serving others). Cultural repertoires don’t have to be coherent; they may contain contradictory elements. One of the main contradictions in the repertoire of masculinity concerns the relationship to the body: on the one hand, masculinity has been associated with reason and with the civilized ideal, both of which deny the body, which has conventionally been associated with femininity (Spelman 1982). On the other hand, the association of masculinity with physical strength puts the body center stage. Likewise, masculine autonomy stands in tension with the civilized ideal of discipline and self-control. At the same time, in different periods and social contexts, some of the principles associated with the masculine pole of the gender binary may come to the fore as representing the “true masculine essence.”

Both the halutzim and Golani soldiers make situated selections from the repertoire of masculinity. Both adopt a masculine style which defines the norms of civilized behavior in order to increase their masculine prestige, and in the case of Golani soldiers, challenge the hegemony of Ashkenazi men. Rather than simply picking up themes from hegemonic masculinity, the style they adopt is associated with qualities which in the context of agricultural labor and military struggle are seen as defining the “masculine essence,” most notably physical strength, endurance, and autonomy. And although masculine prestige in itself cannot render a certain group socially hegemonic, it may play an important role in shaping interactions between men as well as in affecting men’s sense of worth.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed Connell’s theory of masculinities in light of a phenomenon we discovered in both our research projects: the association of Arab men with valued masculine qualities and the construction of Arab and Mizrahi Jewish men as more masculine than Ashkenazi men. While Connell’s theory directs our analytical attention to the plurality of masculinities, and the hierarchical relationship between them, the notion of hegemonic masculinity cannot account for the tension between social and masculine status in our case studies, since it tends to associate social hierarchy with hierarchy in the field of gender. Following historians of masculinity we argue, that this tension is not incidental or marginal to the field of masculine relations. Rather, it stands at the heart of dominant constructions of masculinity in the modern West, with their ambivalent relationship with the racialized and ethnicized concept of civilization.

The relative value of specific masculine styles varies according to the field in question, and its position within the wider social space. The prestige of masculine styles associated with nonhegemonic social groups in the masculine and physical arenas of agricultural work and military service stems from their association with qualities which came to occupy a central place in representing the true masculine essence, most notably physical strength, endurance, and autonomy—qualities which have allegedly been undermined in the course of the civilizing process. In the Zionist context, both these arenas gained special importance and social prestige due to their essential role in the national cum colonial project. And both were seen as mechanisms for shaping the desired type of Jewish man.

Connell’s theory of masculinities, with its emphasis on “configurations of practice,” makes it difficult to account for masculinity as relational and contextual social practice, and for the tension which may arise between social position and masculine status in specific interactional contexts. We argued that in order to account for this kind of tensions we need a concept of masculinity as a cultural repertoire, from which people make situated selections. While selections from the repertoire of masculinity cannot be conceived as voluntary, the conventional nature of cultural repertoires allows for some leeway in the selections that people make. The repertoire of masculinity contains both normativity (based on the binary symbolic structure of gender) and heterogeneity, manifested both in models for action and in models for perception and interpretation. While the binary logic of gender symbolism does not fully determine practice (even if it is by no means devoid of generative power, see Bourdieu [1998] 2001; Butler [1990] 2007), it may be taken on in various gender projects aimed at inverting other social hierarchies, such as those based on ethnicity, nationality, or social class.