Men and Masculinities in Modern Britain - by Matt Houlbrook & Katie Jones & Ben Mechen (Hardcover)

About the Book

Men and masculinities provides a critical overview of ongoing debates in the history of masculinities and the making of men's lives and ideas of masculinity in Britain between the 1890s and present day.It proposes a new agenda, urging histories to reflect on the enduring influence of patriarchy in contemporary Britain.

Book Synopsis

Men and masculinities provides an engaging, accessible and provocative introduction to histories of masculinity for all readers interested in contemporary gender politics. The book offers a critical overview of ongoing historiographical debates and the historical making of men's lives and identities and ideas of masculinity between the 1890s and the present day. In setting out a new agenda for the field, it makes an ambitious argument for the importance of writing histories which are present-centred and politically engaged. This means that the book engages head-on with ferocious debates about men's social position and the status of masculinity in contemporary public life. In establishing a critical genealogy for the proliferation of this crisis talk, it sets out new ways of understanding how men's lives and ideas of masculinity have changed over time while patriarchy and male power have persisted.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

From the Back Cover

This book offers a striking and pointed reflection on what histories of masculinity in modern Britain have been and where they might go next. Addressing the constant contemporary talk of crisis around men's lives, Men and masculinities argues that we need histories of masculinity which are present-centred and politically engaged. In so doing, it sets out a new agenda for the field.

Ranging over the past 130 years, a series of engaging and original chapters trace how men, like masculinity, were made. Contributors demonstrate the radically different ways in which men made sense of the world and their place in it. The book provides compelling evidence of how individual life-stories can transform how we think about the time- and place-specific formation of men's experiences and ideas of masculinity. Through vivid case studies that include trans men's encounters with the welfare state; the experience of wounded Jamaican servicemen; and the social world of the public librarian, the book interweaves histories of masculinity with wider histories of society, culture, economy and politics. It is on that basis that it shows how thinking critically about histories of masculinity also provides new ways of understanding the making and remaking of modern Britain.

Men and masculinities provides a critical genealogy for contemporary gender politics and the persistence of patriarchy and male power, and establishes new ways of understanding how men's lives and ideas of masculinity have (and have not) changed in modern Britain.

About the Author

Matt Houlbrook is a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham
Katie Jones is an Independent Scholar living in Birmingham
Ben Mechen is a Researcher at the University of Bristol