Remaking a “Failed” Masculinity: Working-Class Young Men, Breadwinning, and Morality in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

Much of the sociological work examining the changing fortunes of working-class young men has emphasized their newly precarious position as well as the “hollowed out” nature of their class subjectivities. By contrast, and echoing work on the adaptability of hegemonic forms of masculinity, this article points to the ongoing salience of working-class masculinities, drawing on longitudinal research with young men in Russia’s Ul’yanovsk region between 2004 and 2013. It examines how young men are able to shift from a position of marginality to one of a complicit, breadwinning masculinity by bringing to bear a variety of social, cultural, bodily, and institutional resources rooted in their class, gender, and ethnic location. This journey also reflects young men’s negotiation of dialogical, moral selves, central to which is their acquired ability to reflect upon different ways of being a man by appealing to wider moral currents within Russian society.

Researching Lay Perceptions of Inequality through Images of Society: Compliance, Inversion and Subversion of Power Hierarchies

“…The article enhances our understanding of inequality by exploring the moral and symbolic signification of the social structure in postsocialist society. The study contributes to the debate on moral classes and class feelings (Bottero, 2020;Clément, 2022;Irwin, 2018;Lamont, 2000;Morris, 2016;Rivkin-Fish, 2009;Salmenniemi, 2012;Sayer, 2005aSayer, , 2005bSkeggs, 1997;Walker, 2022) by focusing on lay perceptions of inequality through the lens of the social imaginary that I analysed as a semantic structure (Barthes, 1993;Castoriadis, 1975;Williams, 1961). The article develops an innovative artsinformed method of 'drawing of society' (Bikbov, 2007) by applying it to a multi-sited ethnography of everyday inequalities experienced by members of deindustrialising communities in several locations.…”

“…Workers, especially working-class men, are morally judged by wealthier classes as 'backward' and 'passive', bearers of Soviet cultural values and 'losers' incapable of meeting the challenges of the new economic reality (Walker, 2011(Walker, , 2022. As Walker (2022Walker ( : 1491Walker ( -1492 argues, in the context of social insecurity and economic instability in Russia, young working-class men experience difficulties in sustaining normative breadwinning masculinity through economic capital. However, they gain dignity and self-worth by using various other resources: cultural, social and bodily, shaped by constellations of their class, gender and ethnicity (Walker, 2022).…”

“…As Walker (2022Walker ( : 1491Walker ( -1492 argues, in the context of social insecurity and economic instability in Russia, young working-class men experience difficulties in sustaining normative breadwinning masculinity through economic capital. However, they gain dignity and self-worth by using various other resources: cultural, social and bodily, shaped by constellations of their class, gender and ethnicity (Walker, 2022). A similar trend of devaluation and stereotypisation of working-class men was revealed in other post-industrial countries, including Australia, the UK and the USA (Roberts and Elliot, 2020).…”

“…After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 the shift from a command-driven to a neoliberal economy resulted in a change of social stratification in Russia, with an increasing gap between rich and poor and the emergence of a new system of social divisions (Kivinen, 2021; Nikula and Chernysh, 2020). This new stratification is based on unequal distribution of wealth and moral worth (Salmenniemi, 2012; Walker, 2022). A heated debate continues as to what type of social structure Russian society has now as a result.…”

Inequality and social stratification in Russia during the Putin regime: From market transition to war on Ukraine

“…Ethnographic and interview-based studies have probed aspects of gender relations that are hard to study quantitatively. Morris (2016) and Walker (2018Walker ( , 2022 portray how working class Russian men embrace notions of traditional masculinity associated with the breadwinner role, observing how blocked access to breadwinner status through manual employment due to market reforms is a source of seething frustration. Utrata (2015Utrata ( , 2019 shows how Russian men and women coproduce hegemonic masculinity through bargaining and compromise within intimate relationships, reinforcing typical patterns of male parental irresponsibility and destructive alcoholism.…”