Drawing from political sociology, pop psychology, and film
studies, Cinemas of Boyhood explores the important yet
often overlooked subject of boys and boyhood in film. This
collected volume features ...an eclectic range of films from British
and Indian cinemas to silent Hollywood and the new Hollywood of the
1980s, culminating in a comprehensive overview of the diverse
concerns surrounding representations of boyhood in film.
Contemporary and historically focused social science studies of amaXhosa (Xhosa) men have focused predominantly on Xhosa men attaining manhood through ritualised initiation (ulwaluko) and ...heterosexual homemaking (ukwakha umzi). These studies have left critical knowledge gaps of the pre-initiation lives of Xhosa men throughout the lifecycle, along with processes of socialisation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork spanning over a year (2013-2014) conducted in rural and peri-urban Peddie in the Eastern Cape, my ethnography shows the necessity of examining the formation of Xhosa masculinities prior to ulwaluko. My research illustrates the importance of boyhood kwaXhosa. I argue that Xhosa masculinities are viable long before initiation and that it is not in manhood that "life" starts for men as one of my research interlocutors, Mthuthu, alluded. My ethnography necessarily challenges recent theorisations and conceptualisations of Xhosa masculinities as well as older canonical writings as far as they place primacy on the initiated Xhosa male phallus in the attainment of masculinity. I argue for scholarly consideration of the nuances and complexities of being a boy. Although there is a developing corpus of work from Black Boyhood studies, I note the limitations of this field especially for its rootedness in the North American Black boyhood experiences that do not have the cultural context of ulwaluko. Ultimately, I argue for an Anthropology of Boyhoods. Through concentrated effort on boyhood, in the study of masculinities, ultimately we can attain more contextual, varied and multifaceted experiences of how men experience masculinity across the life course.
The Boys’ Nation According to Ulf Stark: A Literary Excursion in Stureby A great part of Ulf Stark’s literary œuvre takes place in Stureby, a suburb south of Stockholm, and more specifically Stureby ...in the 1950s, the place and era of the author’s own boyhood. Although the environment we enter via Stark’s authorship is to be regarded as his imaginary universe, an investigation such as this shows that there are several links and correspondences between the literary setting and the real suburb. In order to investigate some of these connections, this study invokes two theoretical fields. The first one is literary geography, more precisely Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad, concerning three both different and interacting ways of understanding a room: the perceived, the conceptualized, and the social. Furthermore this survey takes into account different historical documents concerning Stureby, and also a form of literary excursion, a pondering walking tour around Stureby of today, with Stark’s narrative in mind. The second theoretical field is boyhood studies and in particular the idea of a boys’ own “nation”, a distinct cultural world with its own rituals and own symbols and values: a social space where the boys play outside the rules of the adult world. The book chosen for this investigation is Stark’s Min vän Percys magiska gymnastikskor (My Friend Percy’s Magical Gym Shoes, 1991). The study shows that specific places in Stureby, such as the suburban road, the tunnel, the kiosk, and the subway bridge are invaded and appropriated by the boys, and turned into arenas of different boy culture rituals and adventures. This, in turn, means that the geographical places described in Stark’s work influence the style of the work – for example its narrative action, its vocabulary, the narrative devices, and the compositional form.
•Approaches to promoting boys reading draw on normalized understandings of gender.•Strategies perpetuate social myths about the boys’ literacy crisis discourse.•Boys experience alienation from ...literacy classrooms and practices.
This paper focuses on the ‘boys’ literacy crisis’ and the demand for more boy-friendly literacy practices. Contemporary approaches to promoting reading for boys are commonly underpinned by sex role socialisation and recuperative masculinity theories. In this article, I critique open-access websites created by pseudo-experts for the purposes of promoting reading for boys and explore how they contribute to and perpetuate constructions of a hegemonic masculinity. In analysing these websites, I draw on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to foreground how the recommended strategies suggested on these websites contribute to essentialised understandings of masculinities. Interventions which are focused on stereotypical understandings of boys as messy, naughty and subversive and unmotivated due to a feminised education system are highly problematic. The article draws attention to how these strategies perpetuate social myths created within the boys’ literacy crisis discourse which, rather than supporting boys’ reading, serves to create further alienation from literacy classrooms and practices.
Ulf Starks pojkland Magnus Öhrn
Barnboken: Tidskrift för Barnlitteraturforskning,
03/2022, Letnik:
45
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The Boys’ Nation According to Ulf Stark: A Literary Excursion in Stureby A great part of Ulf Stark’s literary œuvre takes place in Stureby, a suburb south of Stockholm, and more specifically Stureby ...in the 1950s, the place and era of the author’s own boyhood. Although the environment we enter via Stark’s authorship is to be regarded as his imaginary universe, an investigation such as this shows that there are several links and correspondences between the literary setting and the real suburb. In order to investigate some of these connections, this study invokes two theoretical fields. The first one is literary geography, more precisely Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad, concerning three both different and interacting ways of understanding a room: the perceived, the conceptualized, and the social. Furthermore this survey takes into account different historical documents concerning Stureby, and also a form of literary excursion, a pondering walking tour around Stureby of today, with Stark’s narrative in mind. The second theoretical field is boyhood studies and in particular the idea of a boys’ own “nation”, a distinct cultural world with its own rituals and own symbols and values: a social space where the boys play outside the rules of the adult world. The book chosen for this investigation is Stark’s Min vän Percys magiska gymnastikskor (My Friend Percy’s Magical Gym Shoes, 1991). The study shows that specific places in Stureby, such as the suburban road, the tunnel, the kiosk, and the subway bridge are invaded and appropriated by the boys, and turned into arenas of different boy culture rituals and adventures. This, in turn, means that the geographical places described in Stark’s work influence the style of the work – for example its narrative action, its vocabulary, the narrative devices, and the compositional form.
Scholars and social critics are looking at gender and sexuality, as well as masculinity, in new ways and with more attention to the way cultural ideologies affect men’s and women’s lives. With the ...rise of an online “incel” (involuntarily celibate) community and the perpetration of acts of violence in their name, as well as increased awareness about the complexities of sexual interaction brought to the fore by the #metoo movement, it has become critical to discuss how men’s sexuality and masculinity are related, as well as the way men feel about the messages they get about being a man. Prior research on masculinity and masculine sexuality has examined the experiences of adolescent boys. But what happens to boys as they become men and as many move away from homo-social environments into sexual relationships? What happens when they no longer have a crowd of peers to posture or perform for? How do their sexual experiences and sexual selves change? How do they prove their masculinity in a society that demands it when they are no longer surrounded by peers? And how do they cultivate sexual selves and sexual self-confidence in a culture that expects them to always already be knowledgeable, desiring sexual subjects? In Getting It, Having It, Keeping It Up , Beth Montemurro explores the cultivation of heterosexual men’s sexual selves. Based on detailed, in-depth interviews with a large, diverse group of heterosexual men between the ages of 20 and 68, she investigates how getting sex, having sex, and keeping up their sex lives matters to men. Ultimately, Montemurro uncovers the tension between public, cultural narratives about hetero-masculinity and men’s private, sexual selves and their intimate experiences.
Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s forgotten masterpiece
Beed-o Baad
(
Willow and Wind
) (
1999
) is an Iranian children film written by Abbas Kiarostami, that pays tribute to the children of the post-war ...generation. As in other children’s films of the period, the young hero has a mission, which he stubbornly pursues. Set in a village in Northern Iran, the story follows the boy’s efforts to repair a broken glass during very stormy weather. This article will examine the visual motives of
Willow and Wind
(a boy climbing a hill, single trees, wind, rain) paying particular attention to the interaction with nature. The tree and the wind alluded to in the title underline the struggle and determination of Iranian children. In line with the children’s films produced by the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (CIDCYA, aka Kanoon), it applauds the willpower of a generation with enormous responsibilities, while placing his protagonist as a role model for audiences of all ages. However, by rejecting the happy ending, the film opposes the predominant narrative model of Iranian educational films of the 1980s and 1990s while criticizing adults’ treatment of boys in post-revolutionary Iran. In this moral tale, Talebi stresses the dignity and resourcefulness of rural Iran but condemns the solitude of children, and the distance between the worlds of adults and children setting a precedent for future Iranian children’s films.
Internationally, boys from working-class backgrounds are often the most likely to disengage from their formal education. Research on the educational experience of working-class boys has focused ...heavily on their identity barriers, often positioning these young men as either vulnerable or volatile in their formal education. Social theorists have sought to address the historical and cultural embedded (gendered) practices which influence the identity work of working-class boys. This conceptual article contributes to the study of working-class boyhood and education through first synthesizing key themes present in the historic and contemporary literature before adopting a feminist post-structural stance to consider how these themes are informed by our understandings of the discursive production of masculinities. Then, in the second half of the paper, we make visible what has been at the margins in the scholarship - identity versatility - which we define as contextual and agentic adaptation. Attention to versatility, we feel, offers the potential for a nuanced analysis regarding working-class boyhood, learner identities and educational engagement.
Since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, nationalist discourses have been overtly masculinized, continuing to inform Uzbek males' daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic ...fieldwork in Uzbekistan, this article illustrates how Uzbek boys' domestic relations contribute to the way they learn to (re)produce masculinities, foregrounding a high degree of agency and utility. The analysis uncovered three themes central to the (re)production of Uzbek boyhood in Uzbek families as a site of informal learning: (1) being helpful through domestic labour; (2) being social through showing hospitality; and (3) being tarbiyali through practising national culture. Through scrutinizing the intersections of gender, education and nationalism, this article concludes by connecting Uzbek boyhood in the domestic sphere and nationalist campaigns fostering masculine hegemony in Uzbekistan's nation building process. Through domesticity - a contentious concept in feminist criticism - this article expands our understanding of the (re)production of boyhood in a conventionally feminized space.
The study of masculinities and social change continues to gain prominence in the field of Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSMM). This article presents a case study of one Anglo-Australian ...working-class male, Leo, as he experienced multiple transitions - from his final year at secondary school into various service sector jobs and eventually to becoming the first in his family to attend university. The article explores how he constructed his subjectivity in reference to his relationships and diverse experiences. Central to the analysis is the continual and contentious nature of identity work. Drawing on theories associated with both intersectionality and liminality (transitions, in-between-ness), the article explores Leo's journey contributing to scholarship which seeks to complicate historical conceptions of working-class masculinities. As Leo navigates different spaces, we are compelled to think about the discursive construction of masculinity in reference to social change as well as the multiple axes of inequality which inform his subjectivity.
