Personalising the public : a review of four books about masculinity

• Main Author: Parkhouse, Christopher
• Published: Sheffield Hallam University 1996
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.741323

The thesis is focused around a critical literature review of four selected books written on masculinity by men between 1977 and 1989. The works chosen provide evidence of the enormous impact of feminism on the social sciences and represent a British left-wing academic response to this political and ideological challenge. In the first three chapters I have located the writers and their works within their political and historical context. I have also examined the particular social networks that exerted an influence upon the writers under discussion. The main primary research for this dissertation took the form of interviews with three of the writers and an account of these meetings is included. Central to the whole project is the concept of the "personal is political"; its origin, its importance vis a vis the feminist movement and how it applies to men and masculinity, all constitute key questions. Within male ideology the personal had become associated with the private sphere and women, while the political had become associated with the public realm and men. During the course of the thesis I came to realise that if the personal was political then the political/public realm was also personal; many of men's personal experiences occur within the public arena. Although not openly expressed within their works I argue that in retrospect the four writers were in effect struggling to move beyond a feminist-derived definition of the "personal is political". Collectively, their efforts take us towards a new definition of the concept, one which recognises the way in which the public must also be recognised as personal for men. Arising from this study, I construct a new definition of the "personal is political" which I have referred to as "Personalising the public: Men critically examining the way in which the public is also personal".In this way the thesis may signpost a way forward for further research in this expanding area of gender studies.