Suchergebnisse

1. 'Postmodern' muscle : the embodied pleasures of vibrant physicality -- 2. Cosmetic surgery : men who walk/erase the gender line -- 3. Burly 'bouncers,' cardboard cutouts and physical violence : an ethnography of nightclub security work -- 4. Masculinity on the menu : body slimming and self-starvation as physical culture -- 5. Challenging the obesity myth : men's critical understandings of the body mass index -- 6. Schoolboys, physical education and bullying : 'hey, leave those kids alone!'.

Drawing on extensive field research conducted in North America and Britain over a twenty year period, this book challenges masculine myth making. Mindful of a rich sociological tradition that seeks to understand the social world as lived and experienced, the authors provide insights that are likely to challenge common perceptions of various groups of men and boys, their diverse physical cultures, shared ways of being and identities.

International debate on COVID-19 policy issues, notably negative social consequences, is vital when grappling with the pandemic legacy. Drawing from the second author's experiences in the Irish healthcare and higher education sectors, this commentary scrutinises measures that discriminated against students who declined novel COVID-19 pharmaceuticals. In so doing, it serves as a point of contrast to fear-based interventions. Connections are made with relevant literature when urging those in authority to ensure that policies intended to maximise vaccine coverage are seen to be fair and convincing. The commentary concludes with some reflections that could underpin more defensible policymaking and inform future research.

The word Casanova is often treated as a synonym for womaniser, variously interpreted in a positive or negative light depending upon the audience. The Seduction Community (SC) largely comprises young heterosexual men who follow and adapt the teachings of commercial pick-up artists, typically in an effort to embody the Casanova-myth. This paper reports and analyses findings from a qualitative study of the SC. Drawing from life history interviews ( n =29) and understandings generated during fieldwork in California in 2009 and 2013, the paper explores the meanings of the Casanova-myth qua urban legend. As explained in studies that view modern society as a 'folk community', urban legends help mediate anxieties following the Great Transformation in American community life. However, this paper contends that such legends may also produce the same gender anxieties they aim to ameliorate. Lascivious myth-making, which finds clear expression within the rationalised SC, constitutes a double-edged sword under conditions of rapid social change comprising confluent intimacies and the potential marketisation of everything.

peer-reviewed ; While the human consequences of Ireland's economic crash have been well documented and scrutinised, the systemic deceptions underpinning the so-called Celtic Tiger have received far less attention. The boom years were characterised by speculation, with government policy ever more attendant to the interests of property developers and lenders, leading to an increasingly unstable financial pyramid that eventually imploded. Though the crash demonstrated that much of the wealth creation was actually debt creation, this did nothing to mitigate the pervasive influence of finance capital over broader institutions. On the contrary, the dominance of finance capital, its capacity to preserve fictitious claims on wealth, to burden others with private debt, was demonstrated in full. We critique the ponzi character of Ireland's property bubble, banking crisis and subsequent 'solutions'. In doing so we draw attention to civil and state institutions that contributed to, or facilitated, the illusions of sustainable growth alongside observed efforts to maintain secrecy and silence, obfuscations, and ultimately the post-crash closing of ranks and scapegoating of myriad targets. We call this the Madoffization of Irish society, since the core enabling elements of this process were paralleled in Bernie Madoff's $65bn scam that was exposed in 2008 as the US financial crisis went global.

In 2009, US financier Bernard (Bernie) L. Madoff was jailed for 150 years after pleading guilty to running a massive ponzi scheme. While superficial condemnation was widespread, his US$65 billion fraud cannot be understood apart from the institutions, practices and fictions of contemporary finance capitalism. Madoff's scam was rooted in the wider political prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion and the deregulated, desupervised and criminogenic environment facilitating it. More generally, global finance capital reproduces many of the core elements of the Madoff scam (i.e. mass deception, secrecy and obfuscation), particularly in neoliberalized Anglophone societies. We call this 'Madoffization'. We suggest that societies are 'Madoffized', not only in the sense of their being subject to the ill-effects of speculative ponzi finance, but also in the sense that their prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion makes fraudulent practices, economic collapse and scapegoating inevitable.

Sudden explosions of street violence and disorder tend to evoke simplistic responses. Echoing Victorian moralising and condemnation of urban street fighting at the end of the nineteenth century, politicians depicted England's August 2011 riots as 'mindless criminality'. Critical of such rhetoric, we maintain that the recent riots should not be misrecognised through the class politics of the advantaged. Instead, we locate this unrest in a larger historical, social, economic and political context. This context includes the progressive predominance of finance capital in the post-1970s era and related neoliberal policy agendas and ideological forms. We posit that neoliberal transformations in the economy and society have undermined many young people's capacity to lead useful and meaningful lives, and that the potential for hopelessness, resentment, frustration and outbursts of anger has significantly increased as a consequence. We argue that the alienation of young people today cannot be separated from forms of accumulation that depend on massive debt-expansion. Neither can it be separated from the proliferation of related practices and institutional supports that enable this expansion, further accelerating the deterioration of already disaffected young people's prospects and futures. We refer to the enabling elements of this process as 'Madoffization' at a time when ponzi finance has made economic collapse and ongoing social unrest inevitable.

AbstractThis paper extends our previous discussion on embodied heterosexual masculinities, men's emotional lives and health (Monaghan and Robertson 2012). First, we foreground writings on men's health within and outside of heterosexual relationships given the interrelations between masculinities and other structures (e.g. the political economy). Second, we critically consider writings on masculinities, male bodies and emotions in a relational context. In conclusion, we underscore the need for future research. Such research would foreground men's corporeal meanings, practices and relations while also critiquing global neoliberalisation, a pernicious process that impacts everyday lives within and beyond heterosexual configurations of body‐reflexive practice.

AbstractThis and an accompanying article (Robertson and Monaghan 2012) constitute a developmental 'think piece' on embodied heterosexual masculinities, emotions and health. After highlighting the imbrications of heterosexual intimacy, hegemonic masculinity and health – alongside a note on the relevance and limitations of existing literature – our discussion includes: a critical acknowledgement of (different) feminist scholarship and queer theory; reflections on the 'pure relationship' and 'confluent' or 'liquid love'; the 'individualisation thesis' and the rise of 'abstract knowledge'; the separation of love from sex as a possible masculine ruse; corporeality, eroticism and the rationalisation of sex. In conclusion, we underscore the need for more research on embodied masculinities, heterosexualities and emotions.

peer-reviewed ; In 2009, US financier Bernard (Bernie) L. Madoff was jailed for 150 years after pleading guilty to running a massive ponzi scheme. While superficial condemnation was widespread, his US$65 billion fraud cannot be understood apart from the institutions, practices and fictions of contemporary finance capitalism. Madoff's scam was rooted in the wider political prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion and the deregulated, desupervised and criminogenic environment facilitating it. More generally, global finance capital reproduces many of the core elements of the Madoff scam (i.e. mass deception, secrecy and obfuscation), particularly in neoliberalized Anglophone societies. We call this 'Madoffization'. We suggest that societies are 'Madoffized', not only in the sense of their being subject to the ill-effects of speculative ponzi finance, but also in the sense that their prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion makes fraudulent practices, economic collapse and scapegoating inevitable.

Introduction: obesity discourse and fat politics: research, critique and interventions / Lee F. Monaghan, Rachel Colls and Bethan Evans -- Fatuous measures: the artificactual construction of the obesity epidemic / Julie Guthman -- 'Diabesity' down under: overweight and obesity as cultural signifiers for type 2 diabetes melitus / Darlene McNaughton -- Resisiting biopedagogies of obesity in a problem population: understandings of healthy eating and healthy weight in a Newfoundland and Labrador community / Deborah McPhail -- 'It's worse for women and girls': negotiating embodied masculinities through weight-related talk / Lee F. Monaghan and Helen Malson -- 'We're kind of devolving': visual tropes of evolution in obesity discourse / Francis Ray White -- 'Must I seize every opportunity?' Complicity, confrontation and the problem of researching (anti-) fatness / Karen Throsby and Bethan Evans -- Theorizing health at every size as a relational-cultural endeavor / Jennifer Brady, Jacqui Gingras and Lucy Aphramor -- Public health pedagogy, border crossings and physical activity at every size / Louise Mansfield and Emma Rich -- Obesity in the media: social science weighs in / Natalie Boero