Ph.D. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012 / The current study was aimed at exploring multiple voices of masculinity amongst township black adolescent boys in a particular South African setting of Alexandra Township, historically a working class community situated on the east side of Johannesburg. Thirty-two adolescent boys between the ages of 12 and 19 were recruited from two high schools in Alexandra and provided with disposable cameras to take 27 photos under the theme ‘my life as a boy’ in South Africa. Arrangements were made for these photos to be collected and processed. These photos were used to facilitate in-depth focus group discussions and individual interviews with each of the participants. In analyzing the data, the researcher combined discursive and applied psychoanalytic perspectives to identify meanings and contradictions that boys made in spoken texts about hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. The key themes that emerged are that there are different ways of being a boy and that this process is characterised by mixed feelings of ambivalence, hesitation and self-doubt. It was evident that the process of negotiating all these voices of masculinity was not easy. The participants in the study seemed to simultaneously comply with and oppose hegemonic norms of masculinity in their narratives, revealing that negotiating alternative voices of young township masculinities is fraught with emotional costs and sacrifices. In conclusion, it is recommended that appropriate interventions need to be initiated and implemented to reduce high risk-taking behaviours associated with ‘hegemonic’ views of masculinity.

No description available.

The question of the necessity of women’s colleges has been posed by a variety of online news sources. Headlines reading, “Are Women’s Colleges Outdated?” and “Why Women’s Colleges Are Still Relevant” are sprinkled throughout the webpages of news conglomerates like Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Jezebel. I argue that the belief in a post-sexist society and the prevalence of hegemonic masculinity renders the necessity of women’s educational institutions invisible. Through an anti-racist feminist lens with a focus on the hegemonic practices of our patriarchal society, I shed light on how women’s colleges are currently positioned in the United States. I conducted a discourse analysis on 40 articles about U.S. women’s colleges in the corporate press from 1970 to 2015. Data analysis reveals that women’s colleges are depicted in the media as struggling for survival in our society, regardless of studies that document their strengths. They have faced and continue to face image issues, financial issues, and the reinforcement of heteronormativity throughout their history. These issues play a major role in how the media depicts them.

International Relations in modernity have undergone phases of nation-state struggle and, more recently, globalized conflict. Theorists have used the paradigms of idealism and realism to explain state actor motivations in such conflicts; yet in the early 21st century, the United States initiated regime change in Iraq with claims of necessity pertaining to morality and security that could not be adequately explained using either framework. This thesis postulates that a paradigm shift in International Relations, as described by John Vasquez via Thomas Kuhn, is occurring as evidenced by the conduct of United States foreign policy towards Iraq. This new paradigmatic approach, which Edward Weisband has titled Hegemonic Moralism, is analyzed in this thesis, explicating the ontological assumptions and policy initiatives made by the United States administration in the lead-up to the Second Gulf War. Hegemonic Moralism clashes with the realist beliefs underpinning Germany's foreign policy during the same time period: with the threat of Anglo- American neo-liberal dominance in the Middle East a distinct possibility, Germany realigned its allies to forestall and de-legitimize looming U.S. regime change in Iraq. An analysis of realist theory and its assumptions of human and nation-state behaviour leads into an explication of the paradigm of US Hegemonic Moralism, comparing it with the realist behaviour exhibited by Germany. I suggest that descriptions of German sociopolitical discourse after the September 11 2001 attacks on the US and prior to the Second Gulf War convincingly show Germany's social and political readiness to oppose the hegemonic neo-liberal Anglo-American paradigm. / Master of Arts

This essay examines how young male students get affected by media and how it influences their identity in everyday life. Our theoretical framework is based on masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, parasocial interaction and identification theory. Methods used are qualitative interviews with young men between 20-25 years old. We keep in mind that we have preconceptions of how media affects the male identity and that it affects the results of the study. The essay shows that there are different suggestions of how a man should be and behave according to media image. However, the male images that are seen are all variations of the traditional production of man, but there are also new available ideal images. The result shows that young male students get affected by media messages in forms of identification with popular media-characters, body-ideal, success, responsibility and initiative taking andthat media content perhaps contribute to both positive but particularly negative consequencesfor men's identity.

<p>Player Piano, published in 1952, primarily deals with the theme of men, or masculinities, made redundant by technological advance. This theme has in more recent years been highlighted by, for instance, Men's Liberation groups. The machinery introduced in the Industrial Revolution has, in Vonnegut's future, been refined to the point that manpower has been replaced with mechpower, where those deemed unfit for “academic” studies either must serve twenty-five years in the military or working with the "Reeks and Wrecks", the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. This structure is enforced and maintained by a totalitarian state. However, Vonnegut’s state is slightly different from the popular image of ‘Big Brother’, i.e. an impersonal, near-omniscient and inhuman government. It is highly human, meaning that Vonnegut examines the men behind the machinery on a more personal level, thus making possible an examination of their motives and ideas.</p><p>I argue that the hegemonic masculinity, or the masculinity of the patriarchy, provides both motivation and justification for the men who are constructing the totalitarian state of Player Piano. I will furthermore look at the effects, on both society and the individual, of a hegemonic masculinity.</p>

Player Piano, published in 1952, primarily deals with the theme of men, or masculinities, made redundant by technological advance. This theme has in more recent years been highlighted by, for instance, Men's Liberation groups. The machinery introduced in the Industrial Revolution has, in Vonnegut's future, been refined to the point that manpower has been replaced with mechpower, where those deemed unfit for “academic” studies either must serve twenty-five years in the military or working with the "Reeks and Wrecks", the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. This structure is enforced and maintained by a totalitarian state. However, Vonnegut’s state is slightly different from the popular image of ‘Big Brother’, i.e. an impersonal, near-omniscient and inhuman government. It is highly human, meaning that Vonnegut examines the men behind the machinery on a more personal level, thus making possible an examination of their motives and ideas. I argue that the hegemonic masculinity, or the masculinity of the patriarchy, provides both motivation and justification for the men who are constructing the totalitarian state of Player Piano. I will furthermore look at the effects, on both society and the individual, of a hegemonic masculinity.

This study of forty-nine Christian blogs explores how groups of bloggers in two case studies resist and/or perpetuate hegemonic gender ideologies online and where these bloggers draw authority from for these views. The findings reveal that bloggers are most likely to cite texts as sources of authority and are more likely to affirm authority (78.1%) than to challenge it (25.7%). The bloggers in my sample, who were majority male, use an array of strategies in their efforts to resist hegemonic gender norms. These included, but are not limited to, debating God’s gender, emphasizing women’s roles in the Bible, privileging equality in theological interpretations, redefining masculinity and employing satire and images to delegitimize hegemonic power.

This research adopted the concept Hegemonic Masculinity and inquired how this kind of gender practice influenced early childhood teachers’ pedagogy, in order to interpret the gap between the real teaching practice and the ideal gender equity promoted in the elementary schools in B.C. for current years. Combining my growing and teaching experience in the traditional patriarchal society, I interviewed four elementary school teachers and observed their classes. The results presented: (1) hegemonic masculinity within students’ conversations and parents’ educational attitudes became a barrier to teachers who took gender-neutral pedagogy; (2) hegemonic masculinity emphasized gender binary in teachers’ daily language and teaching materials; (3) teachers’ expectations to students reflected the needs and requirements of the male-dominant society. I also collected teachers’ efforts to avoid hegemonic masculinity and promote gender equity with formulating three stories and my analysis. / Graduate / 0518 / 0515 / xinyanfa@uvic.ca

Transphobia research has focused on predictors and correlations of prejudice toward transgender people. Consistently, male participants have higher transphobic attitudes compared to female participants in various studies. Further, males are overrepresented in crimes against transgender people. However, these studies were correlational and causation cannot be determined. Masculinity researchers outside of psychology have discussed maintenance of masculine privilege as a motivator for oppressive beliefs and actions. Thus, the goal of this study was to provide an experimental study of causes for increased transphobic attitudes in men, based on sociological and gender studies’ research on hegemonic masculinity. To test this, participants were given false feedback that masculinity score was either “feminine” (the experimental group) or “similar to their age group” (the control group). Results of the present study indicated participants in the experimental group reported nearly statistically significantly greater transphobia than those in the control group, p = .047. Although the findings were not significant, further research is needed to validate these findings. The study provides implications for future research on causes of transphobic attitudes and behaviors through sociological frameworks of power and privilege in the context of gender.