The Quality of Manhood: Masculinity and Embodiment in the Sociological Tradition

Abstract

This paper argues for the need to revisit classical sociological texts with a view to excavating the masculinity that inheres in these texts and saturates the concept of the social. Primarily through an examination of Durkheim and Simmel, it explores the strategies whereby masculine individuals could be released from corporeality and granted the sort of embodiment that allowed them to transcend their particularity and become social agents. It is argued that male embodiment is deeply sedimented in the sociological imaginary as the very condition of social action and the constituent of social agency. Thinking through the conceptual lenses of corporeality, embodiment and agency exposes some of the ways in which the analytical scaffolding of 'the social' rests on a deeply gendered ontological foundation. While the sociological tradition may indeed have continued salience for contemporary sociologies of the body, a relatively unreflexive recuperation of these texts is problematic. This paper challenges those who seek to rehabilitate the classics in the service of an embodied sociology to produce a much fuller accounting of the truncated corporeal terrain upon which classical sociology developed, and one which explicitly recognizes its gender.'The quality of a social scientist's work is dependent on the quality of his manhood' (Gouldner, 1971) 'The erection is the jester in the wings of the civilizing process' (Morgan, 1993)

Men and their groomed body

“…It is thus timely to recognise men's embodied concerns (e.g., increasing difficulty to obtain sense of self-worth, relationship building, felt authenticity or external approval/rewards), how they emerge and the ways in which men attend to these concerns to accomplish their life projects. As increasingly more boys today struggle with body image issues and eating disorders and with higher suicide and substance abuse rates among men (Ridge et al, 2011;Witz & Marshall, 2003), the research findings offer preliminary insights for mental health practitioners into how the male body shapes men's identity development and experiences of wellbeing.…”

Managing difference in feminized work: Men, otherness and social practice

“…Through the lived experience of difference, and reflecting the need to manage that experience, some men used what we call 'projects of femininity' to create and maintain distance from traditional masculinity (Witz & Marshall, 2003). Here traditional masculinity was partly 'undone' and, in the following quote, concepts of rationality used, paradoxically, to create distance from the masculine: Whilst Kerfoot sees men as denying 'the possibility for 'play' within social relations -of shifting between subject positions' on the grounds that masculinity 'necessitate(s) that the other is subordinated to self' (Kerfoot 1999: 197), in our interviews there were some examples of men engaging comfortably with the feminine.…”

Embodiment and social and environmental action in nature-based sport: spiritual spaces

“…Nevertheless, increasing interest in the body and its agency emerged in research, particularly that exploring femininity and masculinity. Further, analyses by feminist theorists maintain that much theorising about the body both from feminist and other perspectives is abstracted and tends to ignore the material (biological) and sentient body (Grosz, 1994;Grosz & Probyn, 1995;Witz, 2000;Witz & Marshall, 2003). The body's absence is echoed by sociologists, albeit frequently gender-blind, exploring physical activity and bodily performance.…”