58 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK andVolume 6 Number 1 January 1999 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Masculinities in Organizations edited byCliff Cheng. Sage, 1996, i–xxii, 210pp.

Language and Masculinity edited by SallyJohnson and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof.Blackwell, 1997, i–x, 244pp.

Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movementsby Michael A. Messner. Sage, 1997, i–xviii,137pp., pbk £12.50.

Reviewing these three volumes has beenboth informing and frustrating, for it

has left me with the sense that the study ofmasculinity, like certain critical sociologicaltheories before it, is reluctant to progressbeyond the comfortable security of its ownparticular heritage. Maybe this is a con-sequence of its relative youth. Certainly themetaphor that springs most readily to mind isof the child who has gone through universityeducation; independent, educated and eagerto make their mark on the world, but whoinsists on living at home and believing inFather Christmas. For all their new foundsophistication they have not yet come of age.Or perhaps this is a more considered recog-nition that the world is not a benign place and why not enjoy the benefits of parentalsupport for as long as possible? Whether themetaphor is appropriate or not, it seems that,for whatever reason, masculinity as critiqueremains very much the child of its mother —‘traditional’ feminist enquiry — and appar-ently reluctant to step into the wider socio-logical spotlight — even the wider feministspotlight. The three books under review hereencapsulate this frustration, for while theyundoubtedly contribute to the critical studyof masculinity they theoretically advance itonly a fraction.

For me, the most telling example of this isin the concept of hegemonic masculinity, aperspective that, in differing ways, is theor-etically central to each of these three texts.When Carrigan, Connell and Lee (1985) intro-duced this concept into feminist and pro-feminist debate, did they suspect that over adecade on it would still be used by so manywriters in such an unproblematical, uncritical

fashion? Yet one can appreciate its attraction;the combination of just two words allows the theorist to write/speak of masculinity in asimplified, political and critical way; there is the understated association with the sub-stantial and sophisticated heritage ofGramsci; and its very utterance maintainsfeminist and pro-feminist writers’ distancefrom the to-be-avoided-at-all-costs ‘Iron John’syndrome exemplified by Robert Bly. Instating this, I am not seeking to denounce theimportance of the concept, for it undoubtedlycaptures some of the social and legitimizingprocesses that help constitute gender relations.But hegemonic masculinity can only explainso much. And its own legitimacy is weakenedonce we stress the fluidity, contingency andmultiplicity of masculinities — and identities.For example, if we consider hegemonic mascu-linity to be ‘the culturally idealized form of the masculine character’ (Connell 1993)exemplified in homophobia and ‘the dreadand flight from women’ (Donaldson 1993,quoted p. 57), does it then follow that womenand gay men cannot behave in an hegemonicmasculine fashion; competitive, combative,calculative, focused on self and the control ofothers — women and men? Well hardly, asmany women and gay men would testify.

What hegemonic masculinity does soeffectively is exemplify, at a macrostructurallevel, a masculinist ethos that privileges whathave traditionally been seen as natural maletraits. One could proceed to describe this interms of a dominant ideology of masculinism:an ideology which seeks to sanction thecultural boundaries of ‘masculine behaviour’while ‘naturalizing’ the sex/gender categoriesof man/woman. But it still leaves us wonder-ing what is going on for these men, and women,as individuals/subjects. For the concept ofhegemonic masculinity goes little way towardsrevealing the complex patterns of inculcationand resistance which constitute everydaysocial interaction. Furthermore, it is unable toexplain the variant identity meanings attachedto the concept of masculinity at this particularmoment in the social history of Euro/American/Australasian countries. It is at this

REVIEW ARTICLEHegemonic Masculinity RevisitedStephen Whitehead

juncture that the critical study of masculinity,as personified in these three books, looks weak.For the paradigm shift that has undoubtedlyimpacted on virtually every shade of socio-logical discourse (even to the emergence ofpost-modern Marxism), has barely wet thetheoretical shores of masculinity. The debatehas not moved on.

The question might then justifiably beasked, ‘Does it need to?’ Well, frankly, yes, for reasons which are evident in each of thesethree texts but especially apparent in CliffCheng’s volume of essays. The book is intro-duced by the Series Editor, Michael Kimmel.He sets the tone by referring to Ros Kanter’swork of 1977 and ‘proportionality’, fromwhich he proceeds, very accurately and suc-cinctly, to expose the dilemma of howgendered institutions remain ‘masculine’, inspite of those instances where women havemoved into positions of seniority in signifi-cant numbers. In raising this issue, theattention inevitably shifts from ‘men’ as adominant, oppressive gender category, on tomasculinity as a dominant gender ideology in organizations and this theme is taken upquite effectively by a number of the book’scontributors. Cheng’s introductory chapterelaborates this focus. He states:

writing about masculinities need not beabout the male sex. Masculinity can be andis performed by women. Women who aresuccessful managers perform hegemonicmasculinity. (p. xii, original emphasis)

This is a critical statement in every sense andprobably the most important statement in thebook. It raises the question of whether it is‘men’ who are the ‘problem’ here or mascu-linity. Also, it demands further criticalenquiry into the relationship between organ-izational culture and gender. But what theoriesto utilize in this interrogation? The key factorhere is surely identity, for the statement sug-gests an act of post-structuralist deconstruc-tion on the lines advocated by, for example,Judith Butler (1990): it rejects ‘men’ as agrounded category while raising funda-mental questions concerning power, genderidentity and identity formation. All veryrelevant and very pertinent to contemporarydebates in organization studies and else-where. Like a number of gender theorists inthe UK especially, I would consider feministpost-structuralism, framed within a feminist/post-modernist perspective, and likely in-formed by an anthropological understandingof organization culture, to be the most usefultheoretical tools in developing this intriguingdebate. However, Cheng’s volume sidesteps

these possibilities. Like many American textson men and masculinities, this book appearsmore comfortable with a structuralist, mod-ernist, dare I say it, even a positivist informedunderstanding of gender, identity, power —and knowledge. For the ‘useful knowledge’that Cheng declares to be an outcome of hisbook, is one informed by applied social andbehavioural science — organizational be-haviour — and an ethnomethodologicalapproach that understands gender identity tobe primarily a constructed performance bycognitive, reasoned actors. Consequently, thebook falls between two stools. In raising animportant point at the outset and thusconnecting to current sociological debatesconcerning power, identity and subjectivity,while remaining firmly rooted to notions ofthe autonomous, rational, reasoned and con-trolling (male) actor, the theoretical rigor thatthe contributors seek remains, unfortunately,largely elusive. Thus, sadly, a useful oppor-tunity to progress the debate has beenmissed. Nevertheless, this is not to deny thestrengths of this work. In particular, theimportant empirical contribution the volumemakes to exposing gender dynamics indiverse, cross-cultural and some previouslyunexamined, organizational arenas.

Following the introduction, the volume’snine chapters are divided into three sections.Part One (‘Occupational and OrganizationalHegemonic Masculinity’) examines diverseorganizational sites for the perpetuation ofhegemonic masculinity. The contributors areJennifer Pierce (the law), James W. Messer-schmidt (US space programme), and JudiAddelston and Michael Stirratt (the military).Part Two (‘Sex Segregation, Homosociality,and Hegemonic Masculinity’) explores thegendered patterns and consequences ofhomosociality within various occupationaland social groupings. The contributors areRosemary Wright (computing), Amy Whartonand Sharon Bird (work teams), and MartinKilduff and Ajay Mehra (elite universitystudents). Part Three (‘Marginalized Mascu-linites’) with contributions by Laurie Telford,Tomoko Hamada and Cliff Cheng, considersthe ways in which certain masculinitesbecome subordinated and marginal to domin-ant organizational discourse, hegemonicmasculinity being recognized as historicallycontingent and privileged in the organiza-tional setting.

It is tempting to compare this book with avery similar text also published by Sage in1996, Collinson and Hearn’s Men as Managers,Managers as Men. Of the two, I prefer the latter,as I feel the authors did produce an inter-disciplinary volume which pushes back the

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999 Volume 6 Number 1 January 1999

HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY REVISITED 59

theoretical boundaries somewhat. However, Iwould recommend Cheng’s book as a usefuladdition to any collection in which genderand organization figures prominently.

Another theme which is implicit through-out Cheng’s volume, yet remains under-stated, is language. For example, in JenniferPierce’s chapter, her study of gamesmanshipin the male-dominated legal profession isfundamentally a study of men talking mascu-linity; of engaging in dominant/dominatingmale (organizational/professional) speech(identity) patterns. The empirical data isfascinating and revealing and yet there is noreference to linguistic theories, feminist orotherwise. Consequently, these men’s sub-jective engagement with language remainsinvisible and under-theorized. This theor-etical absence emphasizes the point that ifever a focus needed developing in the studyof masculinities it is language and mascu-linity. Fortunately, Johnson and Meinhof’svolume of essays opens this area of studyquite effectively.

The authors introduce their volume byrecognizing that while the critical study ofmasculinity goes back to the 1970s, littledirect analysis has attended the relationshipbetween language, masculinity and malepower. Broadly positioned within the field offeminist linguistics — the creation of ‘alter-native paradigms’ in which women’s voicescan be heard and explored — this book goes asignificant way towards redressing the sub-stantial gap that has subsequently emerged inthe academic literature regarding the criticalstudy of male speech patterns. Welcoming thefact that ‘feminist linguistics has come of age’,the writers argue that only by reference toboth feminine and masculine discursivespeech/writing patterns can a broader under-standing be gained on the complex workingsof gender performance, male power and themasculine/feminine dialectic.

Following an introduction, Johnson andMeinhof’s volume is divided into twelvechapters with contributions from: RogerHewitt, Deborah Cameron, Scott FabiusKiesling, Joan Pujolar i Cos, Jennifer Coates,Frank Finlay, Vivian de Klerk, JoAnne Neffvan Aertselaer, Mary M. Talbot and JohnHeywood. From the outset, each writer iskeen to recognize the multiplicity and vari-ability of masculinity, discounting any essen-tialistic possibilities for differences in theways men and women talk and write. Draw-ing on, at times, fascinating and provocativeempirical research, the contributors examinethe linguistic constructions informing mascu-linities in diverse cultural and social settings.These include the Spanish media, the Sun

newspaper, a television sports programme, a US college, a London School and a gaymagazine. However, as Johnson and Meinhofstress, the motivation for the book is not tounderstand men better, but rather to contestmale power and a patriarchal world order;the application of feminist linguistic method-ologies to the study of men’s language beingseen as a valuable tool in understanding and consequently challenging masculinehegemony.

Having personally and politically locatedtheir volume thus, it can be of little surprisethat the concept of hegemonic masculinityonce again emerges as a central referencepoint for ‘understanding’ masculinity andmale dominance. This association explicatesthe structuralist interpretations underpinningmuch of this book. For example, while poweris a central theme throughout the book, thereis little engagement with this concept otherthan in terms of a simplistic ‘juridico-discursive’ model. Similarly, although thetext is littered with references to discourseand discursivity, most of the authors prefer toutilize the concept whilst avoiding becomingimmersed in the post-structuralist and decon-structionalist possibilities. Only the chaptersby Pujolar i Cos, Talbot and Cameron movetentatively in this direction. As with Cheng’sbook, this desire to engage with notions ofidentity work, difference and diversity, whileremaining committed to theories founded on a structuralist concept of men and womenas binary opposites, creates a theoreticalframework which is based on a fundamentalincompatibility. And it is not as if there is littlework to draw on in the field of language andgender. The writings by feminists and pro-feminists on, for example, Lacan, Foucaultand Derrida, have opened up excellent possibil-ities for furthering the critical interpretationof male discursivity and masculine subject-ivities — without losing a personal/politicalstandpoint. Prominent in this regard are ofcourse, Irigary, Kristeva, Grosz, Cixous, Elam, Sawicki, McNay, Weedon, Butler andMiddleton. Without serious engagementwith at least a number of these writers thereseems little possibility for furthering thecritical study of masculinity, certainly interms of vividly interrogating the inter-relationships of power, difference, identity,femininities and masculinities, embedded inthe complex and often contradictory elementsof language.

However, while I have reservations aboutthe narrow theoretical positioning of thisvolume, I have none in terms of its valuablecontribution to empirically illuminating rep-resentations of masculinities, linguistically,

Volume 6 Number 1 January 1999 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999

60 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

across diverse cultural, social and organ-izational sites. The book comes highlyrecommended as the first text in what islikely to become a developing area of study. Itwill I suspect be widely read and drawn uponby many writers.

Having earlier had a slight dig at my trans-atlantic colleagues, it is apposite that the finalbook reviewed be by one of the foremost(American) writers on men and masculinities— Michael Messner. Messner’s contributionto the study of masculinities needs littleintroduction, having constituted a majorreference point in the academic literature onmen, especially masculinities and sport, forover ten years. Like many students of genderin the early 90s, I found his co-edited bookwith Donald Sabo, Sport, Men and the GenderOrder, to be one of the defining texts duringmy own introduction to feminist and pro-feminist writing. Given then that the abovebook, together with much of Messner’sacademic writing, constitutes an extendeddiscussion and promotion of the concept ofhegemonic masculinity, it seems churlish tocriticize this latest work for merely followinga well-ploughed furrow. Nevertheless, one is entitled to ask ‘how much has the debatemoved on in the last twelve years?’ Accord-ing to this contribution by Messner, not a lot.

The crux of Messner’s argument is thatmen are changing, largely randomly, butincreasingly in a ‘social context that has beenpartially transformed by feminism’ (p. 2).Messner suggests that a primary outcome ofthe women’s movement has been a growingawareness of ‘the problem of masculinity’.Recognizing deindustrialization, structuralunemployment and the decline in the malefamily breadwinner role as contributingfactors, Messner suggests that a consequenceof these social, political and cultural config-urations is that it is now ‘getting harder andharder for a young male to figure out how tobe a man’ (original emphasis, p. xiv). Flirtingwith the ‘crisis of masculinity’ thesis, Messnerthen proceeds to examine how certain groupsand organizations of men are engaging in a‘politics of masculinity’ and responding tothis historical crisis in the gender order.Informed by three key themes — (1) thematerial privileges accorded to men; (2) thecosts to men in conforming with narrowdefinitions of masculinity; and (3) the struc-tural inequalities contained in the hegemonic/subordinated masculinity relationship —Messner examines eight ‘political tendencies’in the contemporary politics of US masculin-ities. These are: the mythopoetic men’smovement, Christian Promise Keepers, men’s

liberation movement, men’s rights move-ment, radical feminist and socialist feministmen’s movements, racialized masculinitypolitics, and gay male liberation.

If the description of the text soundsfamiliar, so it should. Indeed one of my mainconcerns about Messner’s book is that it givesscant recognition to an almost identical textpublished all of seven years past — KennethClatterbaugh’s Contemporary Perspectives onMasculinity. Like Messner’s, Clatterbaugh’swork is an examination of men’s variouspolitical responses to feminism and thechanging framework of American society’s‘social reality’, and, like Messner’s work, itexplores the gamut of diverse US men’smovements. This close similarity should havebeen acknowledged if not engaged with. How-ever, there are strengths in Messner’s book,notably his very approachable, informed andpersonable style, together with his importantinterrogation of racial and sexual identitypolitics in the context of changing responsesto shifts in the definition of hegemonicmasculinities. But are variations on the themeof hegemonic masculinity the only routesavailable to critically interrogating these newsocial movements? Surely not, for questionsare raised here in terms of, for example, invest-ment of identity, the personal/political self,embodiment, resistance, knowledge, malesubjectivity, and subversion. Any broad-brush, macro-structuralist interpretations canonly reveal so much.

In conclusion, Messner’s work, as with thetwo books reviewed earlier is, I feel, mostnotable for its representation of the intel-lectual impasse now apparent in the criticalstudy of masculinity. Unable to proceedfurther until it has exorcized the ghosts of itsown particular heritage, much of the criticalwriting on masculinity appears locked in anunproductive, sterile and incestuous rela-tionship with concepts that, while useful,have little more to tell us about men — andeven less about the multiple masculinities, as ways of being, now apparent in late orpost-modernity. The challenge is to move thedebate on. It is happening in many relatedareas already. A few recent examples of newideas on an old landscape include, identitypolitics (Nicholson and Seidman 1996);moralities and sexual values (Weeks 1995)and the organizational arena (Casey 1995).Masculinity, as an important and legitimatefield of critical study, should be contributingto these debates much more intensely than isapparent from the three texts reviewed here.However, to do that it must first break free ofits ‘secure’ past and come of age in its ownright.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999 Volume 6 Number 1 January 1999

HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY REVISITED 61

References

Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and theSubversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Carrigan, T., Connell, R.W. and Lee, J. (1985)Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity. Theoryand Society, 5, 551–604.

Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society: afterindustrialism. London: Routledge.

Clatterbaugh, K. (1990) Contemporary Perspectiveson Masculinity. Boulder, Colorado: WestviewPress.

Connell, R.W. (1993) The big picture: Masculinitiesin recent world history. Theory and Society, 22,597–623.

Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (eds) (1996) Men asManagers, Managers as Men. London: Sage.

Donaldson, M. (1993) What is Hegemonic Mascu-linity? Theory and Society, 22, 643–57.

Messner, M.A. and Sabo, D.F. (eds) (1990) Sport,Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Per-spectives. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics.

Nicholson, L. and Seidman, S. (eds) (1996) SocialPostmodernism: beyond identity politics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Weeks, J. (1995) Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: PolityPress.

STEPHEN WHITEHEAD Keele University

Volume 6 Number 1 January 1999 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999

62 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION