Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

identity construct #3: gender 131
can talk about in social analysis. To grapple with the full range of issues
about masculinity we need ways of talking about relationships of other
kinds too: about gendered places in production and consumption, places
in institutions and in natural environments, places in social and military
struggles [. . .].
What can be generalized is the principle of connection. The idea that one
symbol can only be understood within a connected system of symbols applies
equally well in other spheres. No masculinity arises except in a system
of gender relations.
Rather than attempting to defi ne masculinity as an object (a natural character
type, a behavioral average, a norm), we need to focus on the processes
and relationships through which men and women conduct gendered lives.
“Masculinity,” to the extent the term can be briefl y defi ned at all, is simultaneously
a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and
women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in
bodily experience, personality and culture [. . .].
The History of Masculinity
I have stressed that masculinities come into existence at particular times
and places, and are always subject to change. Masculinities are, in a word,
historical [. . .].
To understand the current pattern of masculinities we need to look back
over the period in which it came into being. Since masculinities exists only
in the context of a whole structure of gender relations, we need to locate it
in the formation of the modern gender order as a whole—a process that has
taken about four centuries. The local histories of masculinity recently published
provide essential detail, but we need an argument of broader scope
as well [. . .].
Transformations
The history of European/American masculinity over the last two hundred
years can broadly be understood as the splitting of gentry masculinity,
its gradual displacement by new hegemonic forms, and the emergence of
an array of subordinated and marginalized masculinities. The reasons for
these changes are immensely complex, but I would suggest that three are
central: challenges to the gender order by women, the logic of the gendered
accumulation process in industrial capitalism, and the power relations of
empire.