Abstract
This book is a careful and thoughtful contribution to the study of masculinities from a feminist perspective. It brings to the fore the diverse experiences of men in different contexts and the reassertion and/or questioning of their own masculine identity. Beyond the exploration of the concept of masculinity, the authors also investigate the exercise, or in the authors' words, the ‘doing of masculinity’, and ask to what extent men nowadays move between a public world of employment – which to a certain degree is masculinised – into a feminised home environment. Further, Robinson and Hockey question the legitimacy of ‘the public and private notion’ as separate spheres where men, and also women, perform gender (p. 4).
In order to disentangle the ‘doing of masculinity’ and its multiple aspects, the authors carried out an almost three year long field study in a city in the north of England. The field study involved interviews with men and with women in varied relationships with the men, as partners, relatives and friends. The field study was further comprised of participant observation in three occupational areas. The occupations carefully chosen by Robinson and Hockey reflect gendered stereotypes attached to these kinds of work: firefighter (stereotypically masculinised), estate agent (gender neutral), and hairdresser (feminised work). Moreover, the fieldwork takes into consideration aspects of age and class in the interviewees and their areas of observation by including in its sample young, mid-life, and older men, as well as working-class and middle-class social environments.
The book is structured in three main parts, each having an introductory chapter where the main theoretical aspects of this work are contextualised: masculinity in transition, body in embodiment, and intimacy and emotion.
In the first part, for Robinson and Hockey, transition becomes a substantive theoretical aspect of their work because this serves as a tool to understand how masculinity is considered in public and private spaces, in men's different stages of life development (age, civil status, (un)employed) and in relation with their social class status. Questioning whether public and private performance may stimulate the reformulation of gender identities or reinforce an established hegemonic masculinity, this section develops the identity category of masculinity (p. 33). Echoing Richard Jenkins (2004), for Robinson and Hockey identity is seen as a process in motion with no ending; thus with regard to masculinity, the authors argue this is explained in relation to heterosexual identification and as an opposition to a feminine identity. Nevertheless, with the data presented, particularly in chapters three to six, the authors then conclude that hegemonic masculinity, and as a consequence how it is understood as masculinity identity, can be and in fact is customized in relation to the context and situations that men experience in their work places, in their home, and with their partners, co-workers, and friends.
The second part of the book moves on to theories of the body and its relation with masculinity, and explores the fluidity of the male body situated in particular times and spaces and in connection with what the authors call embodied others (partners, friends, family, among others) (p. 77). By introducing a clear distinction between gendered conceptions of the body and individual men's experiences of embodiment, the section shows through the data collected how dominant discourses of masculinity in the three chosen occupations (firefighter, estate agent, and hairdresser) are jeopardized by those men performing contradictory masculinities in relation to their jobs. Yet at the same time these men are affirming a ‘professional’ identity. These contradictory observations of the same man performing what we can name intertwined-entangled identities constitute the body in relation to which men's embodied subjectivities are negotiated (p. 97). Furthermore, Robinson and Hockey dedicate a specific chapter to each profession, exploring the embodied experiences of each of them. This allows them to conclude that men manage embodied transitions into different social contexts, age periods and activities.
Finally, the third part deals with the still little studied area of emotions. In an impeccable and innovative work, the authors look into men's emotional lives in the public (work) and private (home) arenas. Albeit in different and diverse ways, and through their every day work and life, hairdressers, firefighters and estate agents perform emotional labour. By doing emotional labour, Robinson and Hockey argue, men also find themselves gendering and re-gendering feelings rules, and the understanding of their own occupational identities. Moreover, in further chapters within this section, the book engages in how emotional labour can be used to challenge or maintain a hegemonic masculinity linked with the stereotypes of the occupations. The authors also claim that emotion(s) and the different styles of them precede in the doing and expression of specific kinds of masculinity and femininity which permeate the boundary between work and home.
Robinson and Hockey successfully present innovative research on the area of masculinities. It is important to mention to future readers that the book is situated in English-British society which is indeed very much divided by social class. Ethnic or racial aspects of masculinity as well as locations (where they come from or live) are absent in the research. Although the authors cover men at different age ranges and with diverse class backgrounds, Robinson and Hockey do not consider specific ethnic minority groups in which masculinity can be understood, performed, and exercised in very different ways.
This aside, Masculinities in Transition is much needed research that aptly explores the ‘mutability of doing masculinity’ (p. 2). The book presents data which transit between men's work, household and recreational environments and concludes that the doing of masculinity vary not only between men but within the same subject (men) as his social contexts is altered.