Abstract
Research on men and masculinities produced in the global North in the past forty years fails to adequately discuss the relationship between gender, men and masculinities, and globalization. Consequently, important questions have gone unanswered. How are men (re)producing globalization? How is globalization (re)defining men and masculinities? In what ways is globalization a gendered and gendering institution? In his illuminating and comprehensive book, Men of the World: Genders, Globalizations, Transnational Times, Jeff Hearn proposes interesting and relevant answers, discussing how men’s hegemony can (and should) be problematized, theorized, and conceptualized in relation to transnationalizations. He deems “transnationalization” a more useful concept than globalization since the former emphasizes the importance of analysis at the nation–state level within political economy. Moreover, various transnationalizations—which take place outside, among, and inside nations—“involve multiple forms of difference, presence and absence for men, and women, in power, and men, and women, who are dispossessed materially, as in forced migration or in terms of aspects of citizenship” (p. 20). He applies a material-discursive analysis to examine the transnational impacts on men and gender relations as well as on their construction and (re)production.
Hearn further argues that an intersectional approach to critical studies of men and masculinities need to take transnationality into consideration, in addition to gender, class, race, sexuality, age, disability, and so on. He writes, “transnationality can be a social division or intersection itself, just as real as age or class” (p. 95). Such “transsectionalities”—transnationality and intersectionality—draw attention to important, though often neglected, intersections between nationality, citizenship, location, language, culture, and mobility. His conceptualization of transsectionalities also strengthens the connection between two broad bodies of knowledge within which he situates his work: (1) research and theory regarding political economy, international relations, and globalization studies (i.e., transnationality) and (2) research and theory on feminist and gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory (i.e., intersectionality).
Men of the World is an important book for students and scholars of gender, sexualities, and globalization. It is an excellent introduction to the work that has been done in the field of men and masculinities in the past four decades. Broadly, the book can be divided into two sections. In the first section (chapters 1–4), Hearn clearly and coherently discusses main theories and concepts within Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities in order to shed light on and problematize the interconnections between men, gender relations, hegemony, patriarchy, and transnationality/globalization. In the second section (chapters 5–8), he closely interrogates examples of transpatriarchies—patriarchies in transnational and intersectional contexts. He uses this concept “to speak of the structural tendency and individualized propensity for men’s transnational gender domination” (p. 19). More specifically, these chapters focus on transnational issues that operate in transpatriarchies and reproduce hegemony of men: (1) violence and violation in the context of transnational bodies of emotions; (2) empires, states, business corporations, and men’s activism and feminism in the context of transnational structures of organizations; and (3) movements (e.g., of people, information, attitudes, representations, etc.), environmental movements, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and sexualities in the context of transnational processes. He makes the point that “structures and processes also inhabit embodied experiences, as embodied experiences and processes inhabit structures, and embodied experiences and structures inhabit processes” (p. 99). One of his best achievements is showing how intersections between gender, sexualities, and ICTs not only reproduce patriarchy and hegemony of men through the interlocked aspects of transpatriarchies (i.e., embodied experiences, structures, and processes) but also how men’s sexualities are constructed, transformed, and regulated within the network societies. The book’s final two chapters challenge the gender category of “men” by putting forward future possible scenarios of gendered/sexualized social relations. These possibilities contemplate on and indorse the deconstruction of dominant transpatriarchies and the “abolition of the gender category of ‘men’ as a social category of power—the bleating hegemony of men” (p. 199; italicized in original text).
Men of the World is a thought-provoking and well-organized book with major contribution to the critical studies of men and masculinities in feminist and gender studies, queer and transgender studies, and sustainability studies. Hearn relies on empirical research, theoretical analysis, and autobiographical reflections to explore gendered, sexualized, embodied, intersectional, and transnational social relations. By transnationalizing men and by gendering globalization, he makes visible the invisible “men of the world.” These men, as individuals, groups, and as a gender category, operate transnationally and gain access to even more power and dominance by controlling and regulating processes of globalizations and transnationalizations.