Deconstructing Men & Masculinities (review)

Feminist scholars often point out that although men as a group tend to be dominant, men as individuals tend towards insecurity and crisis. The masculinities literature calls this a “paradox of masculinity” and argues that the social category masculinity itself is crisis filled. Since the 1980s, the literature has primarily been guided by R.W. Connell’s concept “hegemonic masculinity” that argues the socially ideal version of manhood that men are encouraged to strive for is largely impossible to achieve and attempts come with tremendous costs and usually fall short. Hence, the paradox and crisis that so many men experience. Recent years have seen challenges to the tradition inspired by Connell. Deconstructing Men & Masculinities by sport sociologist Michael Atkinson offers a postmodern-cultural studies perspective on masculinity crisis. Atkinson’s central argument is that the conditions of late modernity break down certainties of the past, such as the narrative of patriarchal privilege, which forces men to construct new ways of being a man in institutional spaces and social relations. A lack of certainty in old forms of patriarchy triggers crisis filled reactions to contemporary conditions. Some men, Atkinson finds, react to the new conditions by retrenching in older traditions of manhood while other men “discover innovative ways to reframe their bodies/selves as socially powerful in newly masculine manners” (p. 5). Atkinson calls this “pastiche hegemony” to signify how the new ideal is based on a creative bricolage that is responsive to changes in contemporary culture, gender relations, new social movements, the workplace, and neoliberal capitalism in order to reproduce masculine privilege. Although crisis is Atkinson’s central analytical category, he remains ambivalent about the claim that masculinity is in crisis since it “is one of perception, and not an objective, unchanging reality that has altered the life histories and experiences of all Canadian men” (p. 12). The bulk of the book is then organized around case studies that explore how different Canadian men respond to and negotiate the crisis filled conditions of late modernity. The case studies look at backyard wrestling, laddism, bugchasing, ultra-endurance running, straightedge culture, übersexuality, sport subcultures, hosers, and transhumanism. The book thus provides a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary (mostly youthful) Canadian masculinities.

Without a doubt, Deconstructing Men & Masculinities is an ambitious statement on contemporary Canadian masculinities and the masculinities literature. Atkinson’s pastiche hegemony has many potentially valuable insights to offer the literature. Unfortunately, the book falls short of its potential. Minor problems include typographical errors, citations missing from the bibliography, and an incorrect URL (p. 163). Others are more significant, such as when Atkinson locates the philosophical origins of libertarianism in “seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine” (p. 191, emphasis added). A more serious concern is when Atkinson makes poorly supported claims, such as “the preponderance of evidence suggests that the salience of class in late-modern societies is declining, and that many of the more developed countries can no longer be considered class societies” (p. 167). Given the reality of wage-suppression since the 1970s, the end of the family-wage that underwrote “traditional patriarchy”, the movement of wealth upwards during neoliberal capitalism, and the importance of omnivore consumption patterns in high status lifestyles, these are large claims. However, Atkinson never provides clear, documented evidence for the declining significance of class in late modernity.

It is curious that Atkinson denies the salience of class in embodied masculine identities given that chapter’s focus on “hoser” masculinity. The hoser, Atkinson argues, is a “truly and uniquely Canadian” version of masculinity unaffected by late modernity, he “is the last bastion of traditional working-class and lower middle class masculinity” (p. 169). A discussion of the popular television show Trailer Park Boys (2002–2009) allows Atkinson to argue that the organization of late modernity marginalizes (i.e. affects) working class men (p. 178), which is in fact a class analysis! These working class slobs are represented as such degenerates that Atkinson argues they signify “biologically inferior men” (p...