Jon
There is a vast area of work in 'masculinity studies', much of which has
been combined with gender (just type 'masculinity studies' into any search
engine: 'Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory' is just one book for
example). Some of this has crossed over into geography - Peter Jackson and
others stuff on men's lifestyle magazines for example - I expect there is
lots more but I am no expert.
As for 'crisis of masculinty', personally I would be wary to dichotomise
between said 'series gender and sexuality' theorists and a so
called 'crisis of masculinity'. Such dichotmoies have resulted (in the
past) in blaming feminism/women for the problems which face men, such as
domestic violence (whereas , on the contrary 'masculinity studies' has a
series feminist component). Equally, and for this reason, I would also be
wary to straighforwardly correlate issues such as the high rates of male
suicide with a 'crisis of masculinity'. No doubt much of suicide research
is quantitative (with varaibles correlated such as unemployment, marital
status, psychiatric status etc) but interestingly enough the qualitative
work/popular discourse seems to blame the taboo against men talking about
their problems.
Louisa
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