Redundant Masculinities?: Employment Change and White Working Class Youth (Antipode Book Series, 2)

Redundant Masculinities? investigates the links between the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' and contemporary changes in the labour market through the lives of young working class men.Allows the voices of poorly-educated young men to be heard.Looks at how the labour market is changing.Emphasises the social construction of gender and racial identities.Dispels popular myths about the crisis in masculinity. Contents......Page 7 List of Plates......Page 9 List of Tables......Page 10 Preface......Page 11 1 Introduction: Young, White, Male and Working Class......Page 15 2 The Rise of Poor Work: Employment Restructuring and Changing Class and Gender Identities......Page 40 3 The Contemporary Crisis of Masculinity: It's Hard to Be(come) a Man......Page 70 4 Living on the Edge: Marginal Lives in Cambridge and Sheffield......Page 107 5 Leaving School: Pathways to Employment and Further Education......Page 151 6 Actively Seeking Employment: Committed Workers and Reluctant Learners......Page 167 7 Uncertain Transitions: Accidental and Incidental Workers, the Excluded, and Escape Attempts......Page 192 8 Performing Identity: Protest and Domestic Masculinities......Page 214 9 Conclusions: What Is to Be Done About Boys?......Page 234 Postscript......Page 253 Appendix 1: Research Methodology......Page 257 Appendix 2: The Participants......Page 261 Notes......Page 264 Bibliography......Page 266 Index......Page 291

Failing at school, disadvantaged in a changing labour market, and characterized by policy-makers as thugs, young men are said by some to be experiencing a crisis of masculinity. In Redundant Masculinities? Linda McDowell, known for her path-breaking work on gender relations and identities, investigates this crisis as it relates to young working-class men in the West.

The book focuses on a case study of young, white, male school leavers, based in the contrasting British cities of Cambridge and Sheffield. Drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches as well as interviews with the young men over the course of 18 months, it looks at the level of anxiety unskilled school leavers suffer about their sense of themselves as men and as wage earners. McDowell’s analysis brings together arguments about the social construction of identities and about economic restructuring to reveal that the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' is not what it seems.

"The book focuses on a case study of young, white, male school leavers, based in the contrasting British cities of Cambridge and Sheffield. Drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches as well as interviews with the young men over the course of 18 months, it looks at the level of anxiety unskilled school leavers suffer about their sense of themselves as men and as wage earners. Linda McDowell's analysis brings together arguments about the social construction of identies and about economic restructuring to reveal that the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' is not what it seems."--Jacket Redundant Masculinities? investigates the links between the so-called'crisis of masculinity'and contemporary changes in the labour market through the lives of young working class men. Allows the voices of poorly-educated young men to be heard. Looks at how the labour market is changing. Emphasises the social construction of gender and racial identities. Dispels popular myths about the crisis in masculinity. This book is a study of gender as a social, cultural and economic force but also of individual young men and their lives in particular places. This work looks at how the labour market is changing and emphasises the social construction of gender and racial identities