Men, Masculinities and Methodologies

B. Pini, B. Pease, B. Pini, B. Pease

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137005731
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book contributes to the growing literature on men and masculinities, but does so through a methodological lens. It addresses methodological approaches and challenges for feminist and pro-feminist studies of men and masculinities.

1

Gendering Methodologies in the Study of Men and Masculinities

Barbara Pini and Bob Pease

Introduction

Critical studies of men and masculinities have developed significantly over the last 20–30 years. Connell (2007) refers to the rapid growth of theoretically informed empirical studies of men’s lives in the 1980s as ‘the ethnographic moment’ in masculinity studies. Notwithstanding the growth of this scholarship, we have been struck by the relative lack of interrogation of the epistemologies and methodologies involved in the study of men and masculinities. It is clear from a review of the empirical literature in masculinity studies that masculinity scholars have generally not problematized the methodologies they have chosen to research men’s lives. There is no debate that is comparable to the discussions within feminist scholarship about appropriate methodologies for researching women’s lives. Research on men and masculinities has thus failed to consider power differences in research interviews, cross-gender research, the status of men in fieldwork, the influence of interviewer gender on the interpretation of data or the appropriateness of using feminist methodologies in studying men (Popoviciu et al. 2006; Whorley and Addis 2006; Delamont and Atkinson 2008; Holmgren 2009; Hopkins and Noble 2009; Curato 2010; Robinson 2010). While there are exceptions to this generalization, which we review here, we believe that this lack of attention to methodological issues in undertaking feminist-informed empirical research with men is problematic on a range of counts. Two interconnected concerns occur to us in terms of why methodology matters in relation to the study of men and masculinities.

The first and overarching of these focuses on the political; that is, how the study of men and masculinities is connected to political imperatives for social equality and gender justice. Macleod (2007) notes that while there has been a significant expansion of the literature on masculinity and men’s lives, less consideration has been given to interrogating patriarchy and male privilege. If the study of men’s lives is not linked to wider analyses of gender inequality and is not informed by a commitment to egalitarian gender relations, masculinity studies will become a regressive political project that is more concerned with the liberation of men than gender justice (Weeks, 1996). Further, if methodological approaches to the study of men and masculinities are not interrogated and critiqued, then research on the subject may reproduce rather than challenge disadvantage and discrimination. Male and female researchers studying masculinity and men are themselves gendered subjects working in gendered institutions. In traditional social science, as men are considered unmarked and normative, there is seen to be no need to consider whether researching them should require specific methodologies or gender-sensitive research practices (Schwalbe and Wolkomir, 2003). However, putting aside the need for the majority of men in the social sciences to recognize the implicit gendering of their work, if women and men are researching men as gendered beings, then it is obviously necessary for them to give attention to representations of masculinity in the research process.

Skelton (1998), for example, raises legitimate anxieties about educational work on masculinities in which bonding between male researchers and participants comes at the expense of academics challenging sexist values and views – thus potentially buttressing masculinist ideologies. In another commentary, Vanderbeck (2005, p. 398) counters the oft-repeated call for more reflexive accounts of research, positing that such accounts, by what he labels ‘real man’, ethnographers reinscribe hegemonic masculinity. These types of concerns about the failure of research on men and masculinities to destabilize gendered power would seem particularly urgent given the ascendancy of neo-conservatism and associated backlashes against feminism and broader agendas for social equality.

The second issue which provides both a rationale for a book on men, masculinities and methodologies and highlights the limitations of a lack of critical methodological work on the subject, concerns theorizing about masculinities. Yet, as Walby (2010, p. 639) comments in reviewing his experience of interviewing men about commercial same sex, ‘theoretical assumptions have methodological consequences’. There have been some vexed epistemological debates in masculinities research but the methodological implications of such debates have been ignored, or at least obscured. Contestation has occurred over issues such as how to define masculinity (Clatterbaugh, 1990; Nilan, 1995), whether there is any efficacy in the term ‘masculinity’ itself (Hearn, 1996, 2004), the limitations and potential of the notion of hegemonic masculinity (Demetriou, 2001; Hooper, 2001) and inconsistent if not incoherent engagement of modernist and postmodern modes of thought within critical masculinity studies (Beasley, 2012). These theoretical discussions have been embedded in wider epistemic debates such as those mobilizing around post-structuralism, but largely immune has been a conversation about what all of this may mean methodologically. As Popoviciu et al. (2006, p. 394) contend, seldom does research on men and masculinities acknowledge and address the ‘interplay between theory, epistemology and methodology’. This is in stark contrast to the feminist literature where there have been and remain strong connections between theory and methodology. So, for example, writers have opened up to question how and to what extent, from a feminist post-structural perspective, can we study women (given such a singular category does not exist) or indeed feminine identities (when these are understood as provisional, fractured, fluid and multiple) (St Pierre and Pillow, 2000; Lather, 2006; Livholts, 2011). It is also in contrast to other theoretical fields related to critical masculinity studies, that is, queer theory and intersectional theory which we shall address later in the chapter. To begin, however, we situate the chapters to come by introducing the emergence of feminist research and the masculinist response to this challenge as well as provide an overview of the types of accounts that have largely dominated methodological work on masculinities. That is, reflective accounts of the experiences of a researcher studying men and masculinities as either female or male.

The feminist critique of masculinist research and the rise of feminist research

Research on men and masculinity by male researchers must be understood within the wider context of the feminist critique of mainstream social sciences and the rise of feminist scholarship and research. This is because second-wave feminist scholars’ agenda was not simply to include women – ‘add them on’ – in existing knowledge, but to challenge and recalibrate definitions and practices of knowledge itself (Roberts, 1981; Stanley and Wise, 1983). This politically charged epistemic project emerged from a critique of academic research as embedded in the discourses of masculinism. The central actor in the masculinist academic tradition is the expert and necessarily powerful researcher who can make authoritative claims about his subjects because of his distance, impartiality and objectivity. As Bain (2009, p. 488) explains, ‘This masculinist knower never problematizes his own positionality nor considers the potential partiality of his perspective.’ The feminist concern with the ideologically infused assumptions of masculinist research is that such an approach has considerable capacity to distort or even potentially silence women’s experiences. Entire research subjects such as those concerned with the personal or emotional can be overlooked or dismissed if knowledge is viewed through a masculinist lens. In summary, feminists sought a ‘successor science’ (Harding, 1986) to masculinism: they viewed the latter as reproducing patriarchal inequalities, but the former as potentially emancipatory. The much-quoted axiom was that feminist research should be ‘research for women’ rather than ‘research on women’ (for example, Cummerton, 1986, p. 87; Edwards, 1990, p. 479).

As feminists continued to question the epistemological and methodological tenets of masculinism in the academy, discussion emerged as to the existence of a specific and definable feminist method. Debate ensued, for example, as to whether quantitative methods were, by definition, ‘less’ feminist as they were associated with positivism, enumeration and hierarchical power relations between the researcher and researched (Bowles and Duelli-Klein, 1983). More recently, however, attempts to define a single correct feminist methodology have been rejected as such a process is seen as constraining for the progression of feminist knowledge and, moreover, flawed in that it confuses method with epistemology (Lawson, 1995; Moss, 2002). This is reflected in the literature on feminism and quantitative approaches which today is more inclined to focus on how surveys can be rehabilitated as a feminist method (Scott, 2010). It is also highlighted in work which has demonstrated the potentially disempowering and thereby ‘non-feminist’ impacts of qualitative methods such as ethnography (Pini, 2004).

In much contemporary feminist writing, scholars have abandoned the search for distinctly feminist methods as fruitless (Hughes and Cohen, 2011) and instead focused on ensuring that the what, how and why of their research is informed by feminist epistemology and ontology; for example, the belief that women as a group are disadvantaged compared with men and that addressing gender inequality is a critical political task. This also means understanding that women’s disadvantage is refracted through the prism of other social locations so that social justice requires engagement with other social categories such as age, disability, class, ethnicity, sexuality and indigeneity. These epistemological assumptions have fostered particular approaches to the practices of knowledge acquisition, interpretation and dissemination. For example, one of us (Barbara) has used focus groups in a study with farm women and explained how her approach to them was embedded in her commitment to feminism. She deliberately took a non-directive role as moderator to provide a space for discussion and reflexivity about gender issues, but equally facilitated the connections women made between their individual and collective experiences. She also undertook follow-up focus groups which furthered the capacity of the focus group as an empowering research strategy (see Pini, 2002). More recently, quantitative researchers have argued that instead of the instrumentality and detachment underpinning conventional approaches to surveying, ‘feminist’ approaches need to be reflexive about the design and use of particular statistical techniques so that the nuances and diversity of women’s experiences of inequality are communicated (see Hughes and Cohen, 2011).

Feminist debates about methodology have occurred as definitions of, and assumptions about, knowledge itself have been challenged as a result of post-structuralism (Butler, 1990; Benhabib, 1991). Understandings of power as dispersed and multifaceted and of gendered identities as fractured and contested necessarily opened up new and lively discussions about the possibilities of undertaking research labelled ‘feminist’ and research designed to ‘empower’ (Lather, 1991; Probyn, 1993; Longhurst, 1996; St Pierre and Pillow, 2000). Again, however, the burgeoning of research on men and masculinities over the past two decades has been largely immune to these debates.

Responses by male scholars to the feminist critique

What are the implications of the feminist critique of traditional social science for men doing research on men? Morgan (1992) noted over 20 years ago that sociological practice generally was gendered. Men in sociology were thus challenged to make themselves aware of the feminist critique of the social sciences. As the field of masculinity studies grows, it needs to be remembered that such scholarship exists within a patriarchal institutional context and a phallocentric discourse that values scientific knowledge and objectivity over subjective experience (Hearn, 2007). Thus while the context of gender scholarship remains male dominated, research on gender will have political implications. Research on men and masculinities thus should be understood as existing within the gendered social relations of university life (Morgan, 1992).

However, as Morgan (1981) observed in an earlier essay, men have not found it easy to take gender into account in the production of knowledge. Only a few male social scientists have engaged sympathetically with the feminist critique. While some prominent male scholars wrote hostile rejections of feminist-informed approaches to social research because these challenged the centrality of objectivity, most men in the academy simply ignored the emergence of feminist scholarship and research practices (Delamont and Atkinson, 2008). Sundberg (2003) suggests that men’s silence about their gendered positioning in research reflects the masculinist notion of objectivity. In line with the feminist critique, such research fails to address the ways in which power relations are embedded within all aspects of the research process.

What does it mean for men to take gender into account in their research methodologies? There has been an ongoing debate among feminist social scientists about whether or not men can do feminist research (Peplau and Conrad, 1989; Kremer, 1990). The question has also been raised about whether men can use methodologies regarded as feminist to explore men’s lives. Over 20 years ago, Kremer (1990) asked whether the methods developed for women researching women could be appropriate for men and between women and men. She argued at that time that men should not use feminist methods and that they cannot do feminist research. This is seen to be an issue because men have different gender interests when it comes to researching gender issues. In light of this, when one of us (Bob) utilized feminist-informed methodologies in researching profeminist men, he felt the need to argue a case for using methods that were identified as ‘feminist’ (Pease 2000). Jones (1996) also experienced a similar dilemma in using feminist methodologies as a man.

The debate about whether or not there are feminist methods has implications for men researching men. If there are no such things as feminist methods, then the question about whether men can use methods utilized by feminists is less controversial. If feminist research is more concerned with the objectives of the research and the theoretical frameworks brought to the analysis of the data, then all research methods are gender neutral and any method can be used to explore men and masculinities if the researcher is sufficiently aware of gender assumptions embedded in the research (Curato 2010). It is the latter, that is, theoretical perspective, rather than specific methods which is important to profeminist masculinity studies, according to Haywood and Mac an Ghaill (2003). In their view, existing research methods such as focus groups, interviews, ethnographies and life histories can be used to gather material about men’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Gendering Methodologies in the Study of Men and Masculinities
• 2. Methods and Methodologies in Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities
• 3. Epistemology, Methodology and Accountability in Researching Men’s Subjectivities and Practices
• 4. Issues of Intimacy, Masculinity and Ethnography
• 5. Negotiating Gender in Men’s Research among Men
• 6. Making Connections: Speed Dating, Masculinity and Interviewing
• 7. Gendered Selves, Gendered Subjects: Interview Performances and Situational Contexts in Critical Interview Studies of Men and Masculinities
• 8. Conversations about Otokorashisa (Masculinity/‘Manliness’): Insider/Outsider Dynamics in Masculinities Research in Japan
• 9. Counting Men: Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Men and Masculinities
• 10. Ongoing Methodological Problematics: Masculinities and Male Rock Climbers
• 11. Disability: Cripping Men, Masculinities and Methodologies
• 12. Peering Upwards: Researching Ruling-Class Men
• 13. Getting into the Lives of Ruling-Class Men: Conceptual Problems, Methodological Solutions
• 14. Men Researching Violent Men: Epistemologies, Ethics and Emotions in Qualitative Research
• 15. Encountering Violent Men: Strange and Familiar
• 16. Involving Older Gay Men in Research: The Lure of Group Experience
• 17. Interviewing Older Men Online
• 18. Using Visual Methods to Hear Young Men’s Voices: Discussion and Analysis of Participant-Led Photographic Research in the Field
• Index