Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism: Reviewing the Field

   • Charlie Walker, Steven Roberts

   Pages 1-28

3. Men, Masculinity and Labour-Force Participation in Kaduna, Nigeria: Are There Positive Alternatives to the Provider Role?

   • Colette Harris

   Pages 29-52

4. Yearning to Labour? Working-Class Men in Post-Industrial Britain

   • Darren Nixon

   Pages 53-75

5. Formulating the Postindustrial Self: The Role of Petty Crime Among Unemployed, Working-Class Men in Stoke-on-Trent

   • Ian Mahoney, Tony Kearon

   Pages 77-99

6. Young Working-Class Men Without Jobs: Reimagining Work and Masculinity in Postindustrial Sweden

   • Åsa Andersson, Anita Beckman

   Pages 101-123

7. ‘I Am Going to Uni!’ Working-Class Academic Success, Opportunity and Conflict

   • Michael R. M. Ward

   Pages 125-145

8. Becoming a Working-Class Male Adult Learner: Formations of Class and Gender in the Finnish Learning Society

   • Toni Kosonen

   Pages 147-169

9. Automobile Masculinities and Neoliberal Production Regimes Among Russian Blue-Collar Men

   • Jeremy Morris

   Pages 171-193

10. Masculinities, Bodies and Subjectivities: Working-Class Men Negotiating Russia’s Post-Soviet Gender Order

    • Alexandrina Vanke

    Pages 195-218

11. The Inertia of Masculinity: Narratives of Creative Aspiration Among Arab-Australian Youth

    • Sherene Idriss, George Morgan

    Pages 219-241

12. Gender, Neoliberalism, and Embodiment: A Social Geography of Rural, Working-Class Masculinity in Southeast Kansas

    • Levi Gahman

    Pages 243-264

13. Working-Class Masculinities at the Nexus of Work, Family and Intimacy in the Age of Neoliberalism: Or, Are the Times Really A-Changin’?

    • Kirsty Whitman

    Pages 265-287

14. Driving Through Neoliberalism: Finnish Truck Drivers Constructing Respectable Male Worker Subjectivities

    • Timo Aho

    Pages 289-310

15. Masculinities and Health Inequalities Within Neoliberal Economies

    • Steve Robertson, Brendan Gough, Mark Robinson

    Pages 311-334

16. Back Matter

    Pages 335-338

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This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men’s experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies—from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria—that move beyond discourses positing a ‘masculinity crisis’ or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family. 

• Neoliberalism
• Masculinity
• Working class
• Employment
• Training
• Family
• Male
• Identity
• working-class men
• economic marginalization
• symbolic marginalization
• masculinity crisis
• consumerism
• consumption
• provider role
• postindustrial
• blue-collar work
• Neoliberal Production Regimes
• gender roles
• unemployment

“This is the book we have been waiting for.  All the myth-making about working-class men has needed a dose of reality, and here it is. The economic tsunami, precarious work, and challenges to breadwinner status can be devastating; responses vary, and remarkable strategies emerge.  With close-focus research from four continents, vivid life histories and careful analysis, this book is a tremendous resource for understanding men’s lives in the market-dominated world.” (Raewyn Connell, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, author of Masculinities and co-author of Gender: in World Perspective)

“Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism does what it says on the tin. The wisdom and new ideas of Walker and Roberts are evident in their strong introduction, while the thirteen new ethnographies make an impressive collection. The lives of working class men around the world have been greatly diminished by the vast changes wrought by the global neoliberal economy. The hidden injuries ofclass, the class loyalties and the few new chances for young working-class men to make good are all here, in hard-hitting and poignant detail.” (Nancy Lindisfarne, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, and co-editor of Dislocating Masculinity and Masculinities under Neoliberalism)

“Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism: Working-Class Men in International Perspective represents a major contribution to critical studies of men and masculinities.  Walker and Robert’s edited collection – which is truly international in scope – captures the working-class male experience in an era of robust neoliberalism where precarious employment dominates the global labour market.  The collection should be required reading for those interested in cutting edge scholarship on working-class masculinities.” (Garth Stahl, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of South Australia, author of Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration in White Working-Class Boys)

• University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

  Charlie Walker

• Monash University, Clayton, Australia

  Steven Roberts

Charlie Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet Russia: Vocational Youth in Transition and the co-editor of Innovations in Youth Research and Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. 

Steven Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University, Australia. His sole and co-published works include Youth and Social Class: Enduring Inequality in the UK, Australia and New Zealand; Debating Modern Masculinities; Class Inequality in Austerity Britain; Young People and Social Policy in Europe; and Digital Methods for Social Science.

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