Abstract
Masculinities under Neoliberalism, edited by Andrea Cornwall, Frank G. Karioris, and Nancy Lindisfarne, is a thought-provoking, cohesive, and engrossing collection of anthropological research that will be of interest to all masculinity scholars. Composed of seventeen chapters, the text comprehensively draws on international research on men experiencing dramatic social and economic changes while still adhering to their conceptions of normative masculinities. The collection will be of relevance to ethnographers interested in deep ethnographic research on gender practices. Comprised of chapters from a variety of countries, such as Russia, Zimbabwe, and Brazil to name a few, the authors investigate how masculinities are enacted in neoliberal times with reference to intergenerational politics, the homosocial, religion, sexuality, well-being, and employment. This review provides a brief summary of scholarship on the relationship between neoliberalism and masculinities to date. It then discusses three chapters from the collection, which represent the scope of analysis, before concluding with some thoughts on the significance of the text within the masculinity studies.
The scholarship on the relationship between masculinities and neoliberalism remains limited to date. Recent research has largely focused on how masculinities are formed in schooling where young men contend with neoliberal conceptions of aspiration. In the era of globalized neoliberalism, subjects are bound by multiple logics of capital: cultural, economic, human, and social. Neoliberal prerogatives privilege a competitive, status-based conception of the self, which, in turn, has arguably produced anxieties in masculinities and boyhood cultures. While recent theorizations in masculinity studies have drawn attention to its diversity, existing scholarship on neoliberalism and masculinity has concentrated on a narrowing of scope around one acceptable form of masculine subjectivity—aligned with the entrepreneurial self.
In Masculinities under Neoliberalism, the authors consider the salience on the entrepreneurial self in western and nonwestern contexts. The text emphasizes the relational theorizing between dominant forms of masculinity and what the editors call “subordinate variants.” This theoretical underpinning provides a sturdy foundation and is used to unearth the range of practices and performances that men enact in their daily interaction. In relation to the circumstances of their locales, the masculinities under study are rendered through binaries of dominant/submissive, residual/emergent, and aligned/oppositional. The book examines both the pull of traditional masculinities alongside various adaptations. Through an anthropological approach in investigating everyday realities, the contributors “make strange the familiar,” interrogating “our assumptions, and looking at meanings and practices from a range of different angles” (p. 6).
Exploring neoliberalism’s “variegated effects on men’s lives and identities in particular cultural and geopolitical locales” (p. 9), each chapter calls attention to difference and power, and we will briefly highlight three. Lin’s work (chapter 4) captures how rural–urban migrant workers in China actively negotiate their identity formation–through new ways of performing their filial responsibility to their parents that differ from the traditional practices of past generations. However, as these men adapt, Lin draws our attention to enduring gender norms as they “live out their dislocated familiar masculine identities” (p. 66). Haynes’ (chapter 6) research in Morocco illustrates how the subordinate masculinities of marketplace workers are performed. As they engage in a difficult balancing act around power and shame in the pursuit of financial capital through ways they often find emasculating. Enria’s research (chapter 9) in Freetown, Sierra Leone, shows how young men come to be designated as security risks and how their frustrations regarding a lack of social status are tied to their struggles to conform to the postconflict hegemonic. These three case studies demonstrate how men are excluded but also how they employ strategies to accrue value, whether it be within their immediate peer groups, among their fellow employees, or their communities.
In conclusion, the editors have brought together an exciting collection that takes little for granted in investigating masculinities under neoliberalism. What makes the work dynamic is how traditional analytical tools in researching masculinities are given their due diligence (hegemonic masculinities, heteronormativity, othering, etc.), however, the researchers also problematize these common theories often in reference to powerful empirical data, which, in some cases, must have been very difficult to attain. It should be noted that the collection is less about the economic theoretical perspectives of neoliberalism (e.g., consolidation of class power, deregulation, and extraction of profit) and more focused on the cultural perspective (e.g., reconstitution of identity, inner subjectivity, and its alignment with new configurations and assemblages of identity making). We were compelled by how the scholars sought to go beyond the theoretical apparatus of the neoliberal subjectivities which does require further exploration, especially when considering second and third world contexts. In short, while the “pressures of entrepreneurial masculinity” (p. 10) are evident throughout the collection, the scholars are not beholden to theory, letting the data unearth new insights regarding how men strategize and restrategize their gendered performances in contemporary times.