Masculinity and the English Working Class
Masculinity and the English Working Class

Author: Ying Lee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-06

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1135860327

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This book examines representations of working-class masculine subjectivity in Victorian autobiography and fiction. In it, Ying focuses on ideas of domesticity and the male body and demonstrates that working-class masculinities differ substantially from those of the widely studied upper classes. The book also maps the relationship between two trends: the early nineteenth-century efflorescence of published working-class autobiographies (in which working men construct their identities for a broad readership); and a contemporaneous surge of public interest in "the lower orders" that finds reflection in the depiction of working-class characters in popular novels by middle-class authors. The book mimics this point of convergence by pairing three working-class autobiographies with three middle-class novels. Each chapter focuses on a particular type of work: domestic service, manual (not artisanal) labour, and literary labour (and the opportunities it offers for social advancement). Ying considers the specific ways in which classed and gendered consciousness emerges autobiographically and its significance in the writing of working-class subjectivity for public consumption. Then mainstream novels by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley are re-read from the perspective of these autobiographical pressure points.

Young Working-Class Men in Transition
Young Working-Class Men in Transition

Author: Steven Roberts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-27

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1315441268

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Young Working Class Men in Transition uses a unique blend of concepts from the sociologies of youth and masculinity combined with Bourdieusian social theory to investigate British young working-class men’s transition to adulthood. Indeed, utilising data from biographical interviews as well as an ethnographic observation of social media activity, this volume provides novel insights by following young men across a seven-year time period. Against the grain of prominent popular discourses that position young working-class men as in ‘crisis’ or as adhering to negative forms of traditional masculinity, this book consequently documents subtle yet positive shifts in the performance of masculinity among this generation. Underpinned by a commitment to a much more expansive array of emotionality than has previously been revealed in such studies, young men are shown to be engaged in school, open to so called ‘women’s work’ in the service sector, and committed to relatively egalitarian divisions of labour in the family home. Despite this, class inequalities inflect their transition to adulthood with the ‘toxicity’ of neoliberalism - rather than toxic masculinity - being core to this reality. Problematising how working-class masculinity is often represented, Young Working Class Men in Transition both demonstrates and challenges the portrayal of working class masculinity as a repository of homophobia, sexism and anti-feminine acting. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as youth studies, masculinity studies, gender studies, sociology of education and sociology of work.

Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism
Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism

Author: Charlie Walker

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 3319631721

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This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men’s experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies—from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria—that move beyond discourses positing a ‘masculinity crisis’ or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family.

A Man's Place
A Man's Place

Author: John Tosh

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0300143680

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divDomesticity is generally treated as an aspect of women’s history. In this fascinating study of the nineteenth-century middle class, John Tosh shows how profoundly men’s lives were conditioned by the Victorian ideal and how they negotiated its many contradictions. Tosh begins by looking at the experience of boyhood, married life, sex, and fatherhood in the early decades of the nineteenth century—illustrated by case studies representing a variety of backgrounds—and then contrasts this with the lives of the late Victorian generation. He finds that the first group of men placed a new value on the home as a reaction to the disorienting experience of urbanization and as a response to the teachings of Evangelical Christianity. Domesticity still proved problematic in practice, however, because most men were likely to be absent from home for most of the day, and the role of father began to acquire its modern indeterminacy. By the 1870s, men were becoming less enchanted with the pleasures of home. Once the rights of wives were extended by law and society, marriage seemed less attractive, and the bachelor world of clubland flourished as never before. The Victorians declared that to be fully human and fully masculine, men must be active participants in domestic life. In exposing the contradictions in this ideal, they defined the climate for gender politics in the next century. /DIV

Representations of Working-Class Masculinities in Post-War British Culture
Representations of Working-Class Masculinities in Post-War British Culture

Author: Matthew Crowley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0429535716

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This book presents an analysis of representations of white, heterosexual, working-class masculinities in British culture between 1945 and 1989 to trace the development of the sociocultural and material conditions that shaped the masculinities which are helping to shape contemporary culture. This book seeks to fan the ‘spark of hope’ in the past that informs our present. The period which saw the establishment of the welfare state and the construction and breakdown of the post-war consensus in British politics was of great significance in the formation and maintenance of working-class masculinities and their correspondent representations. The author engages with a variety of cultural texts across various modes and media including films (Alfie), plays (Don’t Look Back in Anger), television (Boys from the Blackstuff), and music (The Beatles), and employs the analysis of the representation of working-class masculinities as a lens through which to examine a range of historical and cultural moments. This book reinstates class as a central precept in the study of British cultural representations and offers a timely intervention in ongoing debates around class and gender identities in Britain. The book will be key reading for students and researchers with interests in twentieth-century social and cultural British history, masculinities and gender studies, twentieth-century British literature, British television, and cultural studies more broadly.

A Small Man's England
A Small Man's England

Author: Tommy Sissons

Publisher: Watkins Media Limited

Published: 2021-01-12

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1913462285

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An exploration of white working-class English men, showing how and why some have been captured by the far-right and what the left can do about it. IS THE WHITE WORKING CLASS RIGHT-WING? AND IS IT RIGHT-WING TO EVEN SPEAK OF A "WHITE WORKING CLASS"? In recent decades, as class consciousness has been suppressed and eroded, many white working-class men have turned their backs on the left in favour of the right and the far-right. Why is this? A Small Man's England is a polemic aimed at the structures of hierarchy that ceaselessly maintain power across Britain and elsewhere, and a call for multicultural solidarity amongst the working class. In analysing the roles that class, race, masculinity and nationality play in neoliberal Britain, Sissons offers a solution to the indoctrination of white working-class English men by the right and the far-right, and explores how working-class people can collectively shape a "Common England" -- a country based on equality and justice for all.

White Working Class
White Working Class

Author: Joan C. Williams

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1633693791

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"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017 Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Author: John Tosh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1317877152

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In the space of barely fifteen years, the history of masculinity has become an important dimension of social and cultural history. John Tosh has been in the forefront of the field since the beginning, having written A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (1999), and co-edited Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britainsince 1800 (1991). Here he brings together nine key articles which he has written over the past ten years. These pieces document the aspirations of the first contributors to the field, and the development of an agenda of key historical issues which have become central to our conceptualising of gender in history. Later essays take up the issue of periodisation and the relationship of masculinity to other historical identities and structures, particularly in the context of the family. The last two essays, published for the first time, approach British imperial history in a fresh way. They argue that the empire needs to be seen as a specifically male enterprise, answering to masculine aspirations and insecurities. This leads to illuminating insights into the nature of colonial emigration and the popular investment in empire during the era the New Imperialism.

From Labouring to Learning
From Labouring to Learning

Author: Michael R.M. Ward

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1137441755

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Highly Commended in the Society of Educational Studies Book Prize This book explores how economic changes and the growing importance of educational qualifications in a shrinking labour market, particularly effects marginalized young men. It follows a group of young working-class men in a de-industrial community and challenges commonly held representations that often appear in the media and in policy discourses which portray them as feckless, out of control, educational failures and lacking aspiration. Ward argues that for a group of young men in a community of social and economic deprivation, expectations and transitions to adulthood are framed through the industrial legacy of geographically and historically shaped class and gender codes. These codes have an impact on what it means to be a man and what behaviour is deemed acceptable and what is not.