Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009. / Directed by Sandra Westervelt; submitted to the Dept. of Sociology. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 6, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-193).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, August, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-65)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Duncan Smith. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-298). Also available online.

Chapter One introduces the field of evolutionary psychology as well as provides a review of factors influencing facial attractiveness. Chapter Two presents empirical evidence that online studies may provide a distorted perspective on cross-cultural face preferences since online samples are not representative of the populations in developing countries. In El Salvador, participants without internet access preferred more feminine men as well as heavier and more masculine women when compared to participants with internet access. One possible explanation for such findings is that the level of harshness in the environment may be influencing preferences. One individual difference that is influenced by environmental harshness is age of menarche. Chapter Three thus provides exploratory evidence that age of menarche also influences masculinity preferences. Chapter Four further examines this environmental harshness hypothesis by repeatedly testing students undergoing intensive training at an army camp. Increases in the harshness of the environment led to an increased male attraction to cues of higher weight in female faces. Such changes in preferences may be adaptive because they allow for more opportunities to form partnerships with individuals who are better equipped to survive. An alternative explanation for the empirical findings in Chapters Two and Four is that familiarity may also influence preferences. Chapter Five tests this familiarity hypothesis by examining the faces of participants in different areas of El Salvador and Malaysia. Rural participants preferred heavier female faces than urban participants. Additionally, the faces of female participants from rural areas were rated as looking heavier. This finding suggests that familiarity may indeed influence attractiveness perceptions. Lastly, Chapter Six draws conclusions from the empirical findings reported in Chapters Two-Five and lists proposals of future research that could further enhance our understanding of what we find attractive.

This research explores boys’ perspectives on peer ‘bullying’ in one Ghanaian secondary school. Since the 1970s, empirical studies on bullying in the UK (and other global north countries where the term bullying is commonly used) have received increasing attention (Sondergaard, 2012). This extensive body of work, which is often multidisciplinary, has examined bullying in schools and focused particularly on harassment and aggression amongst peers (Sercombe and Donnelly, 2012). To date however, no empirical studies on understanding bullying in schools in Ghana have been conducted. This exploratory qualitative study is positioned within a constructivist paradigm using a case study design. Twenty boys from one secondary school in Ghana were interviewed using one-to-one semi-structured interviews, which were supplemented by using a vignette (hypothetical scenario) in order to stimulate discussion among boys. In addition, group interviews, observations, school mapping exercises, and interviews with adults were conducted. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. The key findings of this research include the observation that while the boys engaged in interactions and competitive behaviours that have been readily associated with ‘bullying’ in other national settings such as the UK, boys who participated in this study did not use the term bullying (or any similar word) to describe such behaviour. Many of ‘bullying-like’ behaviours amongst the boys were not construed as negative; rather, they tended to be normalised and viewed as a ‘natural’ way in which children mature and grow up. They were also interpreted by boys as a way of gaining status which warranted little or no adult intervention. This study suggests that ‘bullying’ acts were not named or labelled as such because they happened in a friendly and generally supportive atmosphere, where the boys related to each other as members of a cohesive community. The boys coped with such ‘bullying’ behaviours by acting in ways defined as masculine, as expected in their socio-cultural (as well as institutional) context. It followed that those boys who did not play out the expected and quintessential masculine roles were disadvantaged in such interactions. The informal socio-cultural conventions of the current case study school dictated a hierarchical environment where boys (men) were placed on a socially advantageous platform that also expected them to be tough and to hide their vulnerabilities. The current study emphasizes the need to thoroughly examine the socio cultural setting when understanding the phenomenon of ‘bullying’ and related behaviours. This study’s approach, informed by symbolic interactionism (Goffman, 1959), has unveiled an alternative understanding of ‘bullying’ behaviours in the case study school which has some implications for understanding the phenomenon of bullying behaviour more generally in other national settings.

Although menstruation is typically regarded as an indication of health (Kissling, 1996), strong cultural messages about menstruation perpetuate the belief that it is dirty, disgusting and a state that must be managed (Ussher, 2006). Many women internalize this belief and go to great lengths to hide their menstrual status (Chrisler, 2007). Negative attitudes toward menstruation have been linked to decreased body satisfaction (Schooler, Ward, Meriwether, & Caruthers, 2005), perceptions of decreased competence and likability (Roberts, Goldenberg, Power, & Pyszynski, 2002), and the belief that menstruating women are more emotional, less attractive, and more irritable than non-menstruating women (Forbes, Adams-Curtis, White, & Holmgren, 2003). Whereas there is a relatively large body of literature regarding the significance of women and girls' experiences of menstruation, comparatively little is known about the development of men's attitudes towards menstruation. The lack of focus on how men learn and think about menstruation may have important implications on their attitudes toward women, particularly in their gendered relationships. Therefore, a grounded theory approach using semi-structured group interviews was used in this qualitative investigation. The purpose of the study was to better understand how perceive menstruation, where these ideas come from, and how their perceptions about menstruation may inform their view of women. Two group-interviews were performed and comprised of men in two different student-interest groups. During the interview process, participants described their childhood and present-day experiences with menstruation, including how they learned about menstruation, the messages they received, and how they think about menstruation in the present day. In addition, participants were each asked to create and describe an image depicting the way that they think about menstruation. A Grounded Theory approach was used to analyze the data. The emergent themes from this study were characterized by participant's feelings that they were too young to learn about menstruation in early adolescence and the internalization of dominant cultural messages that menstruation is not something that men should know or talk about. Participants were found to still hold these beliefs as adults, and also revealed they perceive menstruation to be associated with the display of heightened emotions and physical pain. Thus, menstruation was perceived as an overall negative event. Their negative associations with and feelings of disgust toward the presence of blood led to the development of means of avoiding menstruation (e.g. not talking about it and avoiding sexual encounters with menstruating partners). Overall, the participants indicated that they internalized three main beliefs about menstruation: (a) menstruation is associated with affective changes in women, (b) menstruation is irrelevant to men's lives, and (c), menstruation is disgusting because of its association with blood. The implications of the internalization of these beliefs for women, men and practitioners were discussed, and future directions were identified.

This dissertation is a postcolonial analysis of four films: The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), Dances with Wolves (1990), The Last Samurai (2003), and Avatar (2009). While previous scholarship has identified the Eurocentric worldview of early 20th-century ethnographic film, no book-length work has analyzed the time consciousness of turn-of-the-21st century films that feature portrayals of the colonial encounter. By harmonizing film theory with postcolonial theory, this dissertation explores how contemporary films reiterate colonial models of time in ways which validate colonial aggression. This dissertation concludes that the aesthetics of contemporary popular cinema collude with colonial models of time in such a way as to privilege whiteness vis-à-vis constructions of a primitive other. Contemporary primitivism works through the legacy of classical Hollywood style, nostalgia for the western film, the omnipotence of the white male gaze, and a reverence for technology.

Mid-nineteenth-century England saw great social transformation in the face of industrialisation, changing working and living conditions, and voting reforms, and with these changes came new conceptions of masculinity and what it meant to be a man and a gentleman. Though much critical attention has been given to Elizabeth Gaskell's representation of women—not surprisingly, given titles such as Wives and Daughters, Mary Barton, Cousin Phillis, and Ruth—her works span class, region, time, and genre to grapple with ideas of masculinity. This thesis aims to explore her understanding of masculine identity as a social construct, to examine the representation of manliness in her novels, and to consider how her writing engages with Victorian ideologies of masculinity. The introduction provides context on Gaskell's background and Unitarian faith, discourses of sympathy, Victorian manliness, and masculinity studies. The thesis is presented in three sections, each comprising two chapters. The first examines working-class masculinity and the gentleman in her industrial fiction; the second explores intertextuality, examining the ways in which she borrows and transforms notions of masculinity from contemporaries' works; and the third examines her representation of previous models of manhood in her historical fiction. Together, these sections reveal that Gaskell views masculinity not as monolithic but rather as relational and shaped by many contexts, from regional identity and historic change to intertextuality and sympathy, which echo throughout her entire oeuvre; in examining her longer fiction in juxtaposition, this thesis makes it clear that just as Gaskell views masculinity as a category that cannot be neatly contained, she systematically excludes male characters from her resolutions, struggling to contain her models of masculinity within the form of the novel. The appendix, based on archival research, presents a list of the books that Elizabeth and/or William Gaskell borrowed between 1850 and 1865 from Manchester's Portico Library.

We are presented with a situation in which ‘the male identity is a fragile and tentative thing with no secure anchorage in the contemporary world’ (Brittan, 1989:3). However, empirical evidence surrounding the commonly perceived contemporary crisis of masculinity fails to support any overall crisis of masculinity thesis (Edwards, 2006:16). Instead, the different perceptions of the crisis tend to rest on at least one of the three propositions pointed out by Edwards (2006:17): Firstly; masculinity as a set of values, practices or dispositions may be suffering a crisis in so far as it is being undermined and devalued, or, moreover that masculinity per see is now to a greater or lesser degree equated with a series of negative rather than positive associations and connotations. Secondly; masculinity may be in crisis due to its perceived tendency to implore into femininity, whether through an undermining of any gender role distinctions or through feminization of some forms of masculinity as, for example, in the case of the rise of contemporary consumerist, fashion conscious or sexually uncertain masculinities such as metrosexuality. Thirdly, the crisis of masculinity may relate to the sense that masculinity in terms of the male sex role is itself ipso facto crisis-inducing. In this sense, masculinity is not in crisis, it is crisis. This study was based on the second proposition. In the patriarchal Kenyan society where gender roles are fairly traditional, and the male person perceived superior to the female and male things valued above female things, the aspect of feminization of masculinity is not just new but indeed strange. This investigation was intended to find explanations for the feminizing behaviour by males. The sex role paradigm developed in the 1970s explains acquisition of masculinity through socialization, sex role learning and social control. These mainstream theories of learning gender were explored in the assumption that they form the basis for the contemporary theories, and further, although much had changed with the times, a large part of the society still perceived gender roles from this traditional viewpoint. The masculine crisis theory and the constructionist views of gender constituted the theoretical framework of the study. This was due to the researcher’s acknowledgement that individuals were active participants in the construction of their own gender identity, and that there was likelihood for the individuals to deviate from the social expectations of what masculinity means and should be. As a result they could construct a masculinity that did not reflect normality, hence portraying a crisis. Data relating to the respondents’ perception of and reasons for feminine behaviour among young male adults was gathered from young males, young females, and both male and female parents through questionnaire and interview methods. Information about the home environment of the respondents was also necessary to help explore environmental factors that contribute to gender construction. In addition, observation was used to obtain information to dispute, confirm or complement the findings from the other mentioned methods. An exploratory-descriptive qualitative type of research was undertaken at Moi University, Eldoret in Kenya, where the feminization of masculinity was observed. 100 male students chosen through both purposive and simple systematic sampling responded to the open-ended questionnaire which contained perception-eliciting items. A discussion with two focused groups of seven female students each, from the same institution obtained their opinion on the subject of cross-gender behaviour of their male colleagues. Selection of the females was based on willingness to participate. An in-depth interview with two male and three female parents of young male adults whose selection was upon availability, was done on a one-on-one basis to capture the view of adults (likely reasons for, and attitudes) on the matter of feminine behaviour among boys. Data was qualitatively processed and analyzed, taking into account issues of dependability and accuracy. Explanations, findings and conclusions were made, based on the fairly rich data. Overall, the researcher concluded that an interplay between various factors in the young males’ environments, including peers, media, parents and the general dynamics of society (including the feminist movements) explained the feminization of the masculine identity. All these were perceived as influenced by the postmodern movement that had transcended boundaries, thanks to modern communication techniques, to reach the initially very traditional societies. The researcher acknowledged the irreversibility of the clock of time and behaviour trends, hence suggested inclusiveness of this group of males for overall society development, but against the backdrop of responsible guidance and understanding. The study was seen as significant, both for education as an institution that empowered individuals for social function, as well as for peaceful coexistence for the society at large. Conclusively, a redefinition of ‘masculinity’ and a change in the current social attitudes about masculinity and femininity was recommended. Hopefully this was a step towards enhancing an understanding of behaviour dynamics in the largely changing social systems which, in the same vein, remained the touchstone for behaviour formation, modification and prediction not only in Kenya, but Africa as a whole.

This doctoral research addresses the relationship between the sport of boxing and men’s desistance from violent crime. It examines how men make sense of violence as a result of participating in the sport, and how they subsequently rehearse and practice violence in their everyday lives both in and outside of the gym walls. Thirteen men were interviewed using Biographical Narrative Interviewing techniques as part of a six month ethnography in an inner-city boxing gym in the north of England. Furthermore, I spoke with three policy makers in the field of sport and desistance from crime, to ascertain whether or not they determined sport to be beneficial in promoting pro-social behaviour among adolescents. Throughout this thesis I pay particular attention to the participant’s understanding of violence and also how the logic of the gym reinforces attitudes favourable to violence and the maintenance of respect. Thus, this research discusses and elaborates on previous assumptions in sporting and desistance literature, and argues that while relevant, diversionary activities and sport-based rehabilitative programmes are only one element in the theory of change. In conclusion, arguments are put forward that state that boxing actually traps men in an attendant culture of respect that requires them to respond in aggressive ways to maintain an image of both masculinity and respect. This attendant culture - that is transposable between gym and street – can override the pro- social desisting elements that the gym can offer, and reinforces the logic and discourses that evokes and traps men in habits of responding to violence, therefore in terms of future policy and practice new directions need to be sought.