<p>The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother.</p><p>The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes. </p><p>The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man’s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain.</p>

The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother. The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes.  The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man’s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the subject field of male vegans and masculinities through empirical method interviews and narrative analysis. The starting-point for this essay is animal ethics, feminist ethic vegetarianism and theories that suggest that eating meat is one part of the social construction of masculinities. The problem formulation is such as follows: How do male vegans construct masculinity? In an attempt to answer such a question there are three problem formulations: What do male vegans think about the connection between manhood and eating meat? How do male vegans relate to the norms in society? What do male vegans think of stereotype conceptions about vegans? I will come to the conclusion that male vegans think that eating meat, as well as drinking beer, is one part of the social construction of masculinities. Male vegans are aware of norms in the surroundings and the strong attachment of meat normativity in the western culture. They are also conscious about the stereotype conceptions about vegans, which affect how they talk about and perform their own veganism.

This work expands the understanding of the "culture of honor" that social psychologists maintain exists in the American South. Social psychologists attribute the higher incidence of violent crimes, especially murder committed by white men in the South as compared to Northern white men, to this "culture of honor." While social psychologists have restricted their work to white men, this work explores how this distinct culture has impacted the Southern black community while uncovering deeper ways in which the culture has affected the Southern white community. Using historically-based literature and film by African Americans, the work provides a more comprehensive look at the Southern "culture of honor." In the "culture of honor" notions of honor involve the entire community, with the family as the central unit of honor. Male and female family members possess significant responsibilities in regards to carrying and protecting family honor. Once familial honor is compromised or lost, a violent retaliation occurs. Legal and social institutions support the culture by assuming an apathetic attitude towards violent acts committed in defense of honor. The four works selected for this study allow for an insightful look into the Southern "culture of honor." While each work presents various aspects of the "culture of honor," they all contribute to a unique understanding of the culture. In Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Bebe Moore Campbell illustrates the damaging affects the culture has on black and white families in the South. Ernest Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men depicts how Southern black men who, for decades, have been victims of violence at the hands of white men choose to assert their own toughness. The film Rosewood by John Singleton represents the film industry's contemporary depiction of strong, black male figures in the South. Finally, Michael Schultz's made for television film For Us, The Living celebrates the passion behind black men like Civil Rights' champion Medgar Evers, who refused to accept the violent "rule of retaliation" adhered to by Southern white men. From this study, the Southern "culture of honor" emerges as a much more complex institution than originally presented by social psychologists.

By analyzing and contextualizing the polarized discourses on coffee and coffeehouses in post-1652 England, this dissertation argues that the divisive worldviews of the English population at this critical historical juncture shaped the contentious reception of coffee. Countless scholarly efforts dealing with seventeenth-century coffeehouses, those of London in particular, have helped explaining the rapid growing popularity of coffee and the establishments in which it was consumed, the coffeehouse. Building upon exiting literature, this work advances a new approach to shed light the interconnection between social and cultural anxieties, paradoxes and contradictions in seventeenth-century English society, and the contradictory discourses surrounding the rise of coffee in England. My project demonstrates that pervasive anxieties about the rise of religious heterodoxy, the ambiguous dispositions of the English people towards the Ottoman Turks, and the ever-present concerns surrounding the tenuous state of patriarchal manhood collectively helped to both encourage and discourage interactions with the Islamic practice of coffee drinking in coffeehouses. Coffee and coffeehouses came from the Ottoman Empire, the land of the presumed Turks. One sector of society, the optimists, embraced the exotic novelty from the Islamic world and participated enthusiastically in a custom shared with their Turkish, Arab and Persian counterparts since the early sixteenth century. Conversely, the pessimists vilified the adoption of cultural and dietary practices from a non-Christian society; they condemned the enthusiasts' cosmopolitanism as a sign of disloyalty that would only deepen discord in the nation. Indeed, they proclaimed the craze for the Turkish-imported habit as a sign of degeneration, threatening not just Englishmen's religiosity, but also their manliness. Coffee and coffeehouse came from the Ottoman Empire, the land of the presumed effeminate Turks at that. Intimate intermingling with this imported novelty thus compromised England's identity and even sovereignty. By relying upon a borderlands approach that is inspired by gender analysis, this dissertation seeks an alternative theoretical path to explain the controversy and contention swirling around a new drink and novel spaces of sociability among a populace dislocated by years of religious, political and cultural turmoil.

The thesis points out the important role of fatherhood in the lives of men. The thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, I draw from available literature, journals, websites and sociological researches, and I focus on fatherhood throughout history, knowledge of male identity, the concepts of father in different scientific disciplines and typology of fathers. The second part consists of a qualitative survey conducted in open and indoor playgrounds in České Budějovice. By means of anonymous interviews with both fathers and mothers I examined how fatherhood affects and completes male identity and how important it is for men. Then I evaluated and compared these interviews.

No século XIX, a consolidação do mundo burguês fez surgir uma nova idéia de masculinidade. Esse homem moderno deveria ser capaz de promover regeneração nacional, por meio do progresso econômico, social e cultural. Em Portugal, nesse período, o fenômeno da emigração é uma perturbadora realidade que marca a produção ficcional de Camilo Castelo Branco. Seus personagens brasileiros torna-viagem - portugueses que retorna ao país após emigrar para o Brasil- aglutinam características do homem burguês e moderno. Para demonstrar essa hipótese, foram analisadas as obras Eusébio Macário, A corja, O cego de Landim e Os brilhantes do brasileiro, sob a ótica dos estudos acerca da masculinidade de George Mosse e Pierre Bourdieu e do conceito de fomentador, proposto por Marshall Berman em sua análise de Fausto de Goethe. / In the nineteenth century a new concept of manhood rose from the consolidation of the bourgeois world. This modern man was supposed to encourage national regeneration through financial, social and cultural progress. During this time, in Portugal, emigration started to come out as a disturbing reality, which is a relevant characteristic in the works of Camilo Castelo Branco, where Portuguese characters who had returned from Brazil the torna-viagem- embody features of both the bourgeois and modern man. This paper aims at proving this hypothesis true based on the analysis of Eusébio Macário, A Corja, O Cego de Landim and Os Brilhantes do Brasileiro, theoretical support from the manhood studies perspectives proposed by George Mosse and Pierre Bourdieu and the concept of developer from Marshal Berman\'s examination of Goethe\'s Faust.

This minor field study describes the situation for the boy-child in rural Kenya and thepossible effects that can be seen after years of focus directed mostly on the girl-child,both in school and through non-governmental organizations (NGO). This study is doneby going in to the field of rural Kenya and meeting people who can give their opinion onwhat is going on for the boy-child in Kenya. This is a qualitative study based on semistructuredinterviews with six social workers. The method of using open ended questionswill give a hint of what is going on in the day-to-day life in the social worker´s context.During the analysis of the interviews it became evident that there is a need to payattention to the boy-child. There is also a slight difference in focus depending onwhether the informant is a woman or a man. Furthermore all social workers have spokenabout the risks that the boy-child and young teenaged boys are facing. The social workersin this study express their perception that the boy-child is vulnerable. Three major areascould be recognized: vulnerable by the neglect of professionals, vulnerable by the Africanculture and vulnerable by exposure to hazards. At the end of this study there will be adiscussion around the findings and analysis of the interviews. The discussion will alsobring up the aspects of manhood, masculinity and the importance of language as a way toconstruct perceptions as well as how the general construction of gender can be a part ofwhat makes the boy-child vulnerable.

The disparity in frequency of orgasms between men and heterosexual women has been linked qualitatively to women purposefully not communicating their sexual needs in order to preserve their partner’s masculinity. In two studies I experimentally evaluated this relationship, sampling heterosexual undergraduate women. In study 1 (N = 246) I demonstrated that women who imagined not having an orgasm rated an imaginary partner as more insecure in his manhood, relative to women who imagined having an orgasm or going on a dinner date. These perceptions of insecurity mediated the relationship between not having an orgasm and reporting anxiety about hurting their partner’s ego. Additionally, this relationship was moderated by the degree to which women believe manhood must be earned and can be lost through sex. In study 2 (N = 282) I predicted women who imagine a partner who is insecure in his masculinity, relative to imagining a secure partner or a control condition, will be less willing to provide open and honest sexual communication, and this relationship would be mediated by anxiety about their partner’s ego, a relationship moderated by endorsement of precarious manhood beliefs. My analyses did not reveal support for these hypotheses. Implications, limitations and future directions are discussed.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This project looks at the Ketcham family of Indianapolis and analyzes how each member had a different sense of duty that led them to take on different activities during the Civil War. It includes both a typical thesis portion and a public history supplement that takes the form of an exhibit brief. The supplement provides an alternate means of presenting the family to the public. The Ketchams were a white, upper-class family, so although many of their ideas and activities aligned with those of others across the northern United States, in this thesis I argue that they also had a unique experience. For example, the matriarch, Jane Merrill Ketcham, chose to serve as a nurse, as did many other women, but her decision took precedence over her husband’s preference. This assertion was noteworthy because, during this time period, women were still typically expected to defer to their fathers or husbands. This conclusion, and others throughout the project, are based on an analysis of both primary and secondary sources. The main primary sources used were the letters included in the Ketcham collection at the Indiana Historical Society, which provided insight to the thoughts, opinions, and activities of most family members – some members had fewer surviving letters than others. Scholarship regarding the Civil War from national, regional, and local perspectives allowed for a fuller picture of what the prevailing views and activities were and understand how the Ketchams were either emblematic of the common experience or different from it.