Reviews - Hipatia Press

Transcripción

Volume 5, Number 1
Hipatia Press
www.hipatiapress.com
h
Natives, Subjects, Consumers: Notes on Continuities and
Transformations in Indian Masculine Cultures - Sanjay Srivastava
……………………………………………………………………………………....1
Articles
Las Masculinidades y los Programas de Intervención para
Maltratadores en casos de Violencia de Género en España – Victoria A.
Ferrer & Esperanza Bosch
………………..…………………….……………………………………………….28
The Role of Hegemonic Masculinity and Hollywood in the New Korea –
Richard Howson & Brian Yecies
……………………….…...…………………………………………………………54
Dialogic Leadership and New Alternative Masculinities: Emerging
Synergies for Social Transformation – Gisela Redondo
…………….………………….…………………………………...........................70
Reviews
Las Masculinidades en la Transición– Guiomar Merodio
……………..…………………………...………………………………………......92
Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking the
Bush Dynasty and its War against Iraq –Ana Burgués…………………...95
Instructions for authors, subscriptions and further details:
http://mcs.hipatiapress.com
Natives, Subjects, Consumers: Notes on Continuities and
Transformations in Indian Masculine Cultures
Sanjay Srivastava
1) Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Date of publication: February 21st, 2016
Edition period: February 2016-June 2016
To cite this article: Srivastava, S. (2016). Natives, Subjects, Consumers:
Notes on Continuities and Transformations in Indian Masculine Culture.
Masculinities and Social Change 5(1), 1-27. doi: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1905
To link this article: http://doi.org/10.17583/MCS.2016.1905
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
The terms and conditions of use are related to the Open Journal System and
to Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).
MCS – Masculinities and Social Change Vol. 5 No. 1 February 2016
pp. 1-27
Natives, Subjects, Consumers: Notes
on Continuities and Transformations
in Indian Masculine Cultures
Sanjay Srivastava
Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Abstract
This article explores recent histories of masculine cultures in India. The discussion proceeds
through outlining the most significant sites of the making of masculinity discourses during the
colonial, the immediate post-colonial as well as the contemporary period. The immediate
present is explored through an investigation of the the media persona of India's current Prime
Minister, Narendra Modi. Through constructing a narrative of Indian modernity that draws
upon diverse contexts -- such as colonial discourses about natives, anti-colonial nationalism,
and post-colonial discourses of economic planning, 'liberalization' and consumerism -- the
article illustrates the multiple locations of masculinity politics. Further, the exploration of
relationships between economic, political and social contexts also seeks to blur the boundaries
between them, thereby initiating a methodological dialogue regarding the study of
masculinities. The article also seeks to point out that while there are continuities between the
(colonial) past and the (post-colonial) present, the manner in which the past is utilised for the
purposes of the present relates to performances and contexts in the present. Finally, the article
suggests there is no linear history of masculinity, rather that the uses of the past in the present
allow us to understand the prolix and circular ways in which the present is constituted.
Keywords: Indian masculinities, colonial masculinity, post-colonial masculinity,
consumerism
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1905
pp. 1-27
Nativos, Sujetos, Consumidores:
Notas en la Continuidad y las
Transformaciones de las Culturas
Indias Masculinas
Sanjay Srivastava
Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Resumen
Este artículo explora historias recientes de las culturas masculinas en la India. La discusión
continúa a través de esbozar los sitios más importantes de la elaboración donde se han concretado
los discursos de masculinidad durante el periodo de colonización, la post-colonialización inmediata
y en la actualidad. El presente artículo describe una investigación de la personalidad mediática del
actual primer ministro de la India, Narendra Modi. A través de la construcción de una narrativa de
la modernidad de la India en diferentes contextos - como discursos coloniales sobre los nativos, el
nacionalismo anticolonial y los discursos post-coloniales de la planificación económica, la
"liberalización" y el consumismo - el artículo ilustra los múltiples aspectos relacionados con la
masculinidad política. Además, la exploración de las relaciones entre los contextos económicos,
políticos y sociales también pretende diluir los límites entre ellos, iniciando así un diálogo
metodológico sobre el estudio de las masculinidades. El artículo también pretende señalar que si
bien existen continuidades entre el pasado (colonial) y el (post-colonial) actualmente, la manera en
que el pasado se utiliza para los fines del presente se refiere a actuaciones y contextos en el
presente. Por último, el artículo sugiere que no hay historia lineal de la masculinidad, ya que los
usos del pasado en el presente nos permiten comprender las formas circulares y extensas en las
cuales se constituye el presente.
Palabras clave: masculinidades indias, masculinidad colonial, masculinidad postcolonial,
consumismo
2015 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1905
MCS – Masculinities and Social Change, 5(1) 3
T
his article seeks to explore cultures of masculinity in India
through investigating relationships between different kinds of
histories and political economies that characterise Indian
modernity. These relationships emerge out of a number of
contexts, including the social symbolism of the post-colonial state, the
politics of ‘Indian traditions’, ideas regarding economic planning and the
‘free’ market, and articulations between new consumer cultures, family
forms and individual subjectivity.
Masculinity studies is located in a scholarly context within which the
concept of gender has come to be seen to offer a means of renewing
feminist discourse by encouraging a more relational approach to
masculinity and its perceived antithesis, femininity. It also allows of the
investigation, problematization and interrogation of masculinity, equally
with femininity. Notwithstanding these enabling possibilities, however,
gender is still largely deployed in contemporary social science discourse as
a synonym for women, its relational aspect obscured and the invitation to
interrogate masculinities largely ignored. This article proceeds from the
position that the study of masculinity is important in that it ‘is
simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men
and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in
bodily experiences, personality and culture’ (Connell, 2005, p.71). Further,
as the historian Rosalind O’Hanlon has pointed out, ‘A proper
understanding of the field of power in which women have lived their lives
demands that we look at men as gendered beings too’ (O’Hanlon, 1997,
p.1). Hence, the study of masculinity concerns the exploration of power
relationships within the gender landscape, where the dominant ideals of
masculinity impact both on women as well as on different ways of being
men. This way of understanding masculinity is an exploration of the
naturalization of the category ‘man’ through which men have come to be
regarded as both un-gendered and the ‘universal subject of human history’
(O’Hanlon 1997, p.1).
The field of masculinity studies inspired by feminist approaches to
gender has a different history to that of feminist scholarship and activism.
The different histories of women’s studies and masculinity studies account
for this situation. Feminism’s political project sought to identify, contest
and dismantle the naturalization of gendered subjectivity across diverse
4 Sanjay Srivastava – Native, Subjects & Consumers
contexts such as labour, religion, parenting, sexuality, the state, domesticity
and creativity. The historical experience of being a woman has been
fundamental to the project of feminism and personal experience has fuelled
the politics of resistance and change that interrogates patriarchal structures.
Within India-related feminist scholarship, the struggle against patriarchy
has also engaged with the articulation of patriarchal frameworks with those
that derive from, say, class and caste privilege, ethnicity and capital. The
most significant participants in feminism’s project of transformation have
been women since their experience of power has been both immediate and
lacerating. The sites of production of counter-discourses are those where
the effects of power are directly experienced.
The gender politics of Indian modernity has primarily been traced
through exploring discourses surrounding women. The female body and
‘feminine chastity’ have had significant careers as sites of interrogation
within feminist historiography as well as sociological and anthropological
studies that seek to track the complex contours of power in the making of
sociality. India-related scholarship has produced a rich body of work
relating to topics as diverse as women as repositories of Indian traditions
(Mani, 1993; Chatterjee, 1993a; Sunder Rajan, 1993), the nation as goddess
(Ramaswamy, 2010), tele-visual femininity (Mankekar, 1999; Munshi,
2010), women and Hindu nationalism (Bacchetta, 2004; Chakravarty, 1998;
Sarkar and Butalia, 1995) and women and new middle-class class identities
(Donner, 2011).
‘Gender’, however, has rarely been understood in its proper sense as a
relationship: one between women and men, and between men, women and
various other kinds of genders. And yet, as a steadily accumulating body of
work suggest,
A proper understanding of the field of power in which women have
lived their lives demands that we look at men as gendered beings too:
at what psychic and social investments sustain their sense of
themselves as men, at what networks and commonalities bring men
together on the basis of shared gender identity, and what hierarchies
and exclusions set them apart. (O’Hanlon 1997, p.1)
In order to stand in a relationship of superiority to feminine identity,
masculinity must be represented as possessing characteristics that are
binary opposites of (actual or imagined) feminine identity. However, this is
not all. Dominant masculinity stands in a relationship not just to femininity
but also to those ways of being male that are seen to deviate from the ideal.
It is in this sense that masculinity possesses both external (relating to
women) as well as an internal (relating to ‘other’ men) characteristics. Both
these aspects assist in bolstering what scholars have referred to as
‘hegemonic’ masculine identity (Connell, 2005). So, the heterosexual,
white-collar married male who is the ‘breadwinner’ is a useful (if somewhat
caricatured) type to think about hegemonic masculinity. For, embedded in
this representation is an entire inventory of the behaviours and roles that
have been historically valourised as becoming of ‘ideal’ masculinity.
Hence, the dominant modes of being men could be said to be manufactured
out of discourses on sexual orientation (heteronormativity), class, race,
conjugality, the ‘protective’ function of males and women as recipients of
protection, and the place of emotions in the lives of men and women.
Ideas of dominant and ‘hegemonic’ masculinities, as significant as they
are, do not, however, exhaust ways of comprehending male cultures,
particularly in the non-western world with its prolix colonial and postcolonial social, political and economic histories. This article explores the
trajectories of cultures of Indian masculinities across a number of recent
registers of social and political life. It is not exhaustive in scope and is
intended, rather, as a selective introduction to the topic that is, nevertheless,
indicative of significant themes and preoccupations within Indian society.
Recent Histories of Indian Masculinities
Masculinity refers to the socially produced but embodied ways of being
male and, as suggested above, not only does it signify relationships between
men and women but also those between men. The following discussion on
some of the sites and processes of masculine cultures in India is, in this
sense, also an exploration of the hierarchy of male-ness. I will begin by
outlining some recent histories of masculinity as there are specific
relationships between these histories and discourses of the Indian present.
The colonial era was particularly important in the career of modern
masculinity. It can be argued that colonialism consolidated forms of
masculinity that combined the valorisation of science, the ‘feminization’ of
non–European people, and the perceived role of men in expressing their
masculinity. In many ways, then, colonialism became an expression of the
masculine ideal which had been developing in Europe through the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Histories of colonialism also suggest
that an understanding of modern European male identity is incomplete
without a concurrent understanding of the colonial encounter. However, we
should not take from this that colonial powers, such as the British in India,
invented certain types of masculine cultures and introduced them into the
culture of the colonies; and that certain ideas that came to be associated
with masculinity—such as being war-like—simply did not exist in
colonised societies before colonialism. As Rosalind O’Hanlon has argued,
“martial masculinity” (O’Hanlon 1997, p.17), to take just one example, was
an important aspect of pre-colonial life, and the colonizers built upon it and
incorporated it into discourses of colonial masculinity. Nevertheless, it is
important to understand that there was an intensification of certain forms of
discourses around masculinity that occurred during colonialism and that
several of these continued to circulate during the post-colonial period.
The term colonial masculinity expresses the importance of the
relationship between two social contexts, viz., colonialism and masculinity.
Colonial masculinity does not simply refer to the ways in which colonial
processes produced certain ideas about natives; rather, this term also
suggests that colonialism influenced the identities of both the colonized as
well as the colonizers. It is in this sense, for example, that the making of
British male identities during the nineteenth century should be seen as
related to events and processes of the colonial era. One scholar speaks of
this relationship between European identity and the colonial sphere by
asking us to ‘rethink European cultural genealogies across the board and to
question whether the key symbols of modern western societies—liberalism,
nationalism, state welfare, citizenship, culture, and ‘European-ness’ itself—
were not clarified among Europe’s colonial exiles and by those colonized
classes caught in their pedagogic net in Asia’ (Stoler, 1995, p.16). Keeping
the above in mind, let us briefly explore some of the contexts of colonial
masculinity.
The nineteenth century British public school presents us with a rich site
for the analysis of gender configurations during the colonial era. For, these
institutions not only produced the (elite) personnel for the colonial
enterprise—administrators and soldiers who manned the levers of empire—
but they also manufactured a coherent discourse on the connection between
gender, religious identity, and the colonial civilizing mission. The British
public school was a crucial link in the making of discourses of ‘muscular
Christianity’ and ‘moral manliness’ through which colonialism came to be
identified both as divine calling as well as a rite of passage for ‘real’ men
(Mangan 1986). The ideal of moral manhood (Mangan, 1986, p. 147) took
on the nature of an imperative that defined the essence of elite British malehood, and, explained the glittering successes of the imperial enterprise.
The public school emphasis of physical prowess as a significant
ingredient of leadership articulated well with those discourses of
imperialism where ‘manly men’ were to be in charge of the world’s affairs.
As ‘real’ men, the colonizers possessed a justification for bringing vast
areas of the world under colonial rule, for not only were they bringing
civilization to these areas, they were also the harbingers of scientific
thinking to people who had earlier been unscientific and hence wanting as
human beings. ‘It is this vision of rationality as a relationship of
superiority’, Seidler says, ‘that gets embedded within modernity and which
helps organise our relationship with the self within western culture’
(Seidler, 1994, p.16 Emphasis in the original).
Within the colonial sphere itself, the obverse of the masculinisation of
Britishness, was the feminization of the natives, where the latter term refers
to the attribution of ‘women-like’ traits to women in the context of the
lower value placed on feminine gender identity. Hence, whether in Asia, or
in other parts of the colonized world, there emerged a remarkably consistent
discourse on the native’s incapacity for self-government and informed
decision making due to his inherent ‘effeminacy’ (see, for example, Sinha,
1997). This argument was bolstered by a number of others that derived
from a variety of pseudo-sciences (such as colonial psychology and
psychiatry) that sought to provide the proof of this position.
As one historian has pointed out, the process of the feminization of the
native has a history that is intimately connected to perspectives on the
nature of the non-western milieu. At the close of the eighteenth century,
Robert Orme, official historian of the East India Company was to speak of
Indians as ‘people born under a sun too sultry to admit the exercise and
fatigues necessary to form a robust nation’ (quoted in Sen, 2004, p.77). And
that such people:
were naturally weak in their constitution. As a result of this general
lack of strength, the most popular source of livelihood was the
manufacture of cloth, spinning and weaving. The weavers of India
were deprived of the tools and machine skills available in England or
other parts of Europe, yet their cloth was of exceptional quality. Such
remarkable skills were accounted for in the fact that the Indians in the
form of their labouring bodies possessed qualities unique to women
and children (Sen, 2004, p.77).
However, while some natives were feminized, others were represented
as ‘martial races’ (Omissi, 1991) and hence worthy of respect, even though
they could not be regarded as equals of the British since they did not
possess sufficient intellectual prowess. The martial races idea—one that
was never fixed but changed according to circumstances—was particularly
deployed in India in the aftermath of the 1857 Indian mutiny against the
colonial rulers and was significant in the subsequent reorganization of the
Indian army. New groups came to be identified as particularly suitable for
making war, while others—usually those identified as trouble makers
during the mutiny—were effectively excised from recruiting mechanisms.
The Sikhs and Gurkhas—martial races to this day—benefited from the
context produced by post–1857 political anxiety over native loyalty and an
earlier history of ‘racial hygiene’ (Omissi, 1991) that decreed that ‘pure
races’ produced the best kind of military men. As historians have
emphasized, the taint of effeminacy fell most heavily upon those sections of
the native populations who were seen to have formal education of a similar
kind to the rulers, and hence conversant with the ideas of freedom and
liberty which Europeans characterized as the legacy of the Enlightenment.
The ‘effeminate Bengali’ (Sinha, 1997) was the antithesis of a martial race
and, perhaps, the best known of a number of such stereotypes that
circulated during the colonial era.
Closely allied to the effeminacy perspective was the colonial discourse
on non-heterosexual masculinity. In the wake of a European history of the
production of the homosexual as a distinct identity, one that an influential
line of thinking (Foucault, 1979) has identified as closely linked to the rise
of a normalized bourgeois identity during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the colonial sphere saw similar stigmatization of nonheterosexual masculinity. It is now a common enough observation among
scholars and activists that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that
prohibits ‘unnatural sex’ is, in fact, a colonial artefact that was brought into
law in 1861. The relative lack of censure regarding homosexual
relationships as a fact of pre-colonial Indian life – an aspect remarked upon
by many historians – slowly gave way to public and legal
heteronormativity.
The colonial era in India did not, however, completely overwrite those
indigenous contexts where gender identities continued to be ambiguously
inflected. The example of the transvestite performer in the regional Parsi,
Gujarati, and Marathi theatres during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries is a case in point. During this period, Kathryn Hansen points out,
there existed a public cultural space of ‘transgender identification and the
homoerotic gaze’ (Hansen, 2004, p.100) that was sustained by a number of
highly celebrated male performers such as Naslu Sarkari, Jayashankar
Sundari, and Bal Gandharva. Hansen further notes that ‘The Pleasures of
the homoerotic gaze and transgender performance were linked in the urban
theatre with the satisfactions of social and economic privilege. Both
Jayashankar Sundari and Bal Gandharva, rather than bearing any stigma,
became national icons and recipients of the Padma Bhushan [an official
civilian honour]’ (pp.118–119). Finally, in this context, it is important to
note Hansen’s contention that the popularity of the transvestite male
performer such as those above cannot be simply attributed to the lack of
availability of female performers; rather, she suggests, that it may actually
have been due to a preference for female impersonators who, in fact,
competed with women actors. Notwithstanding the existence of hybrid
spaces such as the above, however, it is reasonable to say that the dominant
tendency among the Indian intelligentsia of the period was to accept the
rigid binaries of gender identity that colonialism intensified; after all, the
tradition of the transvestite performer did decline, his place eventually
taken by women actors doing women’s roles. Perhaps the most salient
context within which masculine identities became codified according to the
colonial discourse was that of nationalism. National identity came to be
seen as a way of reconstituting the subject position of Indians on a number
of fronts, and gender was one of these. So, the nationalist response to the
British characterization of ‘Indian effeminacy’ was to both to seek to
provide ‘proof’ to the contrary, as well as embark upon measures of
improving and rejuvenating Indian masculinity. Rather than interrogate the
colonial model, nationalists implicitly, agreed with its premise that Indians
lacked manliness and sought to rectify this ‘defect’ through various means.
Historians have pointed out that this ‘self-image of effeteness’ (Rosselli,
1980) came to be widely accepted among nineteenth century Indian (Hindu)
intelligentsia, and many among them came to believe that the
‘emasculation’ was, among other things, due to the long history Muslim
rule which had reduced Hindus to the status of a subject population.
Attempts at ‘rectification’ were many and varied. So, one response was
connected to the acceptance of the association between science and
masculinity, and consisted in promoting the spread of western science.
Indeed, being scientific also became an indispensable sign of Indian
modernity. Religious thinkers such as Swami Vivekananda and Dayanand
Saraswati sought evidence for Indian manliness and rationality in ancient
texts; and institutions such as famous boys-only Doon School, established
in 1935 with explicitly nationalist aims to produce an Indian boarding
school for the training of a modern intelligentsia, became important sites for
the development of a post-colonial scientific masculinity (Srivastava,
1998).
It was also this context that was the grounds for the emergence of certain
discourses on the relationship between masculinity, caste, science and the
future possibilities of nationhood. I refer to the emergence of a significant
sexology and eugenic movement in the early 20th century in India. In 1927,
N.S. Phadke, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Rajaram
College in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, published his Sex Problem in India.
Being a Plea for a Eugenic Movement in India and a Study of all
Theoretical and Practical Questions Pertaining to Eugenics. Phadke pointed
out that his discussion was concerned with the exploring ways of
maintaining the vigour of a ‘declining race’, for [he said] ‘who could deny
that physical strength and military power will be for us an indispensable
instrument to keep Swarajya [self-rule] after it is won?’ (Phadke, 1927,
p.8). In effect, Phadke was making an argument for the ‘scientific’ nature of
the caste system and how it was based on the ‘science’ of eugenics. ‘It need
never be supposed’, he was to say, ‘that the ancient Aryans were ignorant
of the first principles of eugenics’ (Phadke, 1927, p.18). Along with
Phadke, another significant figure in western India was the medical doctor
AP Pillay, a key personage in the family planning movement that persists to
this day. In 1948 Pillay published The Art of Love and Sane Sex Living and
was many years the editor of The Journal of Marriage Hygiene. In both
Phadke and Pillay’s writings, there is both a concern for the nature of
Indian masculinity after Swarajya (self-rule), and also the play of the
politics of upper caste masculinity at a time when anti-caste movements
were gaining public voice. Their argument connected the caste system and
eugenics with modern nation-hood in as much as the caste system was
presented as being able to produce the kind of men – through ‘scientific’
selection – who would be required for modern and robust nationhood.
From Scientific Masculinity to Homo Economicus: The Five-Year Plan
Hero
Contiguities between colonial and post-colonial regimes of thought across
diverse registers have been extensively documented by scholars (see, for
example, Chatterjee, 1993b). These extend to discourses of masculinities
and include contexts of masculinities and caste politics (Anandhi &
Jeyaranjan, 2001), masculinity and Hindu nationalism (Bannerjee, 2005;
Chakravarty, 1998; Chakraborty; 2011), and celibacy and the male body
(Alter 1992, 2011). Cultural discourses of science and masculinity
continued to play a significant role in the life of the modernizing postcolonial nation-state in the decades following the end of colonial rule. The
discourse of ‘scientific reason’ was deployed during the early post-colonial
period to define modern subjectivity in India and formed a cornerstone of
thinking regarding the project of the transforming the ‘native’ into the
‘citizen’. The national heroes of post-colonial modernity were, typically,
men such as scientist and statistician P.C. Mahalanobis (1893-1972), an
active member of the Brahmo Samaj movement that sought to ‘modernize’
and ‘reform’ Hinduism , keen researcher of anthropometry, founder of the
Indian Statistical Institute, and a leading influence upon the formulation of
India’s second Five Year Plan (Rudra, 1996; see also Chatterjee, 1993b,
chapter ten, for a discussion of social aspects of economic planning in
India).
It is the context of twentieth century theory of economic development,
as expressed through the post-independence planning regime and
concurrently articulated in the Hindi films of the 1950s and 1960s that
animates this part of my discussion. What is of significance is the relatively
popular currency of ideas that located post-colonial Indian modernity
within the spirit of a ‘scientific’ world-view. In another work (Srivastava,
2004) on the career of India’s most famous ‘playback’ singer, Lata
Mangeshkar (b. 1929), I have discussed the emergence during the
immediate post-independence period of a masculine type I have referred to
as the Five Year Plan (FYP) Hero, and have suggested that ‘Lata
Mangeshkar’s shrill adolescent-girl falsetto’ (Srivastava, 2004, p. 2020)
was intended to be the feminine counterpart of a specific post-colonised
masculinity, that of the FYP hero. The FYP hero of Indian films
represented a particular formulation of Indian masculinity where manliness
came to attach not to bodily representations or aggressive behaviour but,
rather, to being ‘scientific’ This was the idea of a middle-class
‘epistemological’ or science-based masculinity as it emerged from
institutions such as the Doon School, a boarding school for boys established
in 1935 (see Srivastava, 1998). One of the ways in which epistemological
masculinity came to be represented in Indian cinema was through the
operation of very specific spatial strategies, where roads and highways and
metropolitan spaces came to be the ‘natural’ habitat of the FYP hero. As
well, an important strand in 1950s and 1960s films was the profession of
the hero: he was an engineer (building roads or dams), a doctor, a scientist,
or a bureaucrat. In significant instances, the filmic presence of the hero was
one which could be quite easily characterised as ‘camp’. However, the
camp persona of the heterosexual hero could co-exist quite comfortably
with a nationalist ideology which identified post-independence manliness as
linked to the ‘new’ knowledges of science which, it was held, would
transform the ‘irrational’ native into the modern citizen. In the field of
popular culture, the immediate post-independence period was particularly
important in terms of representations of what could be called the aesthetic
of planning and development.
The iconic presence of the FYP hero gained some its legitimacy through the
Keynesian models of economic thought, and he stood both for government
intervention and for delayed gratification through the re-investment of
savings for the ‘national’ good. The FYP hero represents, in a broad sense,
a particular formulation of Indian masculinity where manliness comes to
attach not to bodily representations or aggressive behaviour but, rather, to
being ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ (Srivastava, 1996).
In the Indian case, economic development policies, especially in the
guise of the Soviet inspired Five Year Plans, traced a particular lineage to
the world of science through, among others, the public lives of mediating
figures such as P.C. Mahalanobis, mentioned above. Spatial strategies, I
have noted above, played a significant part in representations of the FYP
Hero. So, in the films of 1950s and 60’s, the bitumen road became the
space of encounter between the hero and the heroine, backdrop to crucial
song sequences, and the linear space which provided the musical interlude
for the display of the FYP hero’s technological aptitude as he adeptly
handled that epitome of modernist desire - the motor car. Indeed, roads and
highways in these films carried such an aura of a planned modernity – all
those aspirations of ‘progressing’ in both literal and figurative senses – that
the woman at the steering wheel and women on bicycles riding along the
open highway become one of the most powerfully evocative representations
of ‘modern’ Indian woman-hood.
The recurring association between the road/highway and the FYP hero
served to emphasise another point: that of the ‘natural’ milieu of the FYP
hero: the metropolis. We get some idea of the metropolis as a structuring
trope through a series of post-independence Hindi films. So, ‘in films such
as Shri 420 (1955, Raj Kapoor), New Delhi (1956, Mohan Segal), Sujata
(1959, Bimal Roy) and Anuradha (1960, Hrishikesh Mukherjee), the
struggle over meaning and being in a post-colonial society takes place in a
context where the metropolis is always a willful presence’ (Srivastava,
1998, p. 165). Here, as in other films, the metropolis is, by turns, a site of
decadence and extravagance luring ‘innocent’ people into its web, a
progressive influence upon ‘backward’ intellects, and the promise of a
contractual civil society that would undermine the atavism of kin and caste
affiliations, ostensibly typified by the cinematic village. But perhaps, most
importantly, the metropolis is also home to the modern, male, ‘improver’,
the FYP hero.
The Demise of the Five-Year Plan Hero
It has been variously noted that the cinematic success of India’s best known
Bollywood star, Amitabh Bachchan (b. 1942), lies in the anti-state, ‘angryyoung man’ presence of his on-screen persona (Prasad, 1998). This is not
doubt true. However, I would also like to speculate that Bachchan brought
to the screen some other very significant aspects of small-town masculinity,
one’s that have to do with the consuming and expressive capacities of the
previously unrepresented provincial – non-metropolitan – male body.
I suggest that a significant aspect of the Bachchan phenomenon
concerns the representation of provincial masculinity in a metropolitan
milieu. And that, unlike films of the 1950s and 60s, in Bachchan’s films –
his biggest hits were in the 1970s and 80s – the provincial man comes to be
associated with various forms of action, commerce, and individualism.
Hence, the Bachchan hero moves – physically – through a world of
container terminals, five-star hotels, wedding-cakes, fancy-shoes,
international brand alcohol, dance halls, casinos, airports, and other sites
and objects of industrial production and consumption. The Bachchan hero
is the first generation consumer, having recently broken the shackles of the
savings-regime of the FYP political economy. He is both anti-statist in
taking the law into his own hands, as well as harbinger of the age of
consumerism. His significance lies in the iconisation of the loss of faith in
the intentions and capacities of the (Nehruvian) Five Year Plan state, as
well as the positioning of the provincial male as a potential participant in
consumerism. Further, through Bachchan’s body, metropolitan and
provincial spaces become intertwined: provincial masculinity haunts
metropolitan spaces, seeking to share in its fortune, interrogating its lifeways, and taking up residence in its shanty and slum localities.
The FYP hero model of masculinity was located within the Keynesian
model of economic thought, representing both government intervention and
delayed gratification through re-investment of savings for the ‘national
good’. While the FYP Hero was not a-sexual, his sexual self could only be
read as the preoccupation with reproduction, rather than recreational sex: he
was the father of the nation. We might say, then, that the putative Indian
concern with ‘semen anxiety’ (see Alter, 2011, for example) – regarding
‘wastage’ of an essential fluid – is particularly relevant for the personality
and preoccupations of the FYP Hero. For, his manly vigour derived from
his ability to sublimate non-reproductive desire – which may lead to semen
wastage – into the service of the nation; it is the constant risk of nonsublimation (represented by the vamp, for example) that was the source of
anxiety.
The death of the Five Year Plan Hero was marked both by a loss in faith
in the ‘socialist’ state as well as a slow but perceptible move away from the
savings orientation of Nehruvian era and towards the possibilities of
consumerism. It was also marked by transformations in social relations,
including intimacies. The dominant form of Indian masculinity – that which
was publicly expressed at least – increasingly came to be located within
contexts of both consumer cultures as well as cultures of non-reproductive
sexuality. The burden of saving the nation through saving for the nation
and the equally serious task of fathering – and being the father – was giving
way to a different model of man-hood that was entangled in newer political
and cultural economies. I am not, of course, suggesting a causal relationship
between economic liberalization and a change in libidinal economies. This
is both far too simplistic a perspective. Rather, my gesture is towards
contiguous and overlapping contexts. And, as I discuss below, I am not also
arguing for linearity in the making of masculine cultures in India such that
these have progressed from being less socially liberal to more so. However,
I will come to this point – the persistence of the past in the present – later in
my discussion of the discourses of masculinity that surrounded India’s
current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Let me, for moment, stay with the
consumerist juncture mentioned above.
The 1990s mark a significant decade of change in India. Following its
re-election to government in 1980, the Indira Gandhi-led Congress party
issued the New Industrial Policy Statement that is seen to be the key to the
dramatic changes in the economic sphere that characterized subsequent
decades. The Statement focused attention economic ‘liberalisation’ and
‘export-promotion’ as ‘catalysts for faster growth in the coming decades’
(Dutta, 2004; p. 170; see also Sengupta, 2008). Indira Gandhi’s successor,
her son Rajiv, enthusiastically built upon the new economic agenda
whereby ‘The main objective of the industrial policy under the Rajiv
[Gandhi] government was... to encourage economic growth led by the
private sector, with the public sector playing more and more a subordinate
role’ (Dutta, 2004, p. 170). The ferment in the economic sphere found
significant echoes in social and cultural spheres, including the rise of a new
consumer culture.
Beginning from the late 1990s, and related to the ‘opening’ up of the
economy, Indian public culture was the site of a multitude of
representations and discourses that provide glimpses into newer notions of
masculinity. A case in point is the culture of masculinity that characterises
‘footpath pornography’. By ‘footpath pornography’, I mean Hindi language
booklets that are available all over India. Typically, they are cheap to
acquire (with prices ranging from Rs. 10-30) and are poorly printed and
bound. They are, as my naming of the genre indicates, most frequently
available at make-shift book-stalls that crowd the footpaths surrounding
some of the busiest transit areas of the city – such as railways stations and
inter-state bus stands – as well as commercial and small-scale industrial
localities. The booklets are part of a world of ceaseless circulation: for, their
purchasers most frequently acquire them in between, say, catching a bus or
a train, and, as commodities, they circulate among men who are themselves
vulnerable to frequent changes of employment and residence. Another
aspect to their life as circulating commodities is that the publishers
frequently disappear, switch trade, and commonly have their material carted
away by the police.
While the audience for this material can be varied in terms of class, a
very sizable section consists of young men of limited means, quite often
living in slums and shanty towns under conditions of great insecurity of
tenancy and landholding, and working as factory labour and in a variety of
other casual (or ‘informal’) occupations. Theirs is a world of constant and
enforced mobility: changes in market conditions lead to frequent job losses
and changes in government land policies lead to evictions from their
‘unauthorised’ places of residence. Booklet cover photographs often portray
European women or versions of westernised Indian women in poses of
‘rapture’ and ‘seduction’. The authorship of the booklets is mostly male.
And, given their status as goods that are on public display and hence must
be purchased in public, it is men who are also the purchasers.
The booklets address a masculine context that is located within – what
might be called – an erotics of consumerist modernity. A wide variety of
women jostle for male attention both in visual and narrative forms.
Typically, (and as noted above), visual representations consist of European
women, or ‘westernised’ Indian women. There is the relationship here with
Indian cinema and the persona of the ‘vamp’, the most famous of whom
was Helen, the Anglo-Indian actress who was famous for her ‘western’
dance numbers. Helen constituted a displacement of Indian male desire: a
western looking woman who was the focus of transitory desires that could
not be directed at the ‘traditional’ Indian woman. The Indian woman was
the object of a more permanent desire for domesticity whereas the western
woman embodied a desire that was fleeting: she was more suitable as
mistress and girlfriend.
One of the most significant thematic strands within footpath
pornography concerns the male desire for the ‘modern’ woman. In an age
of hyper-consumerism, the desire for the active and consumerist woman is
also a desire to take part more intensively in the cultures of consumerism.
Her deep modernity is the site of an intense erotic charge as well as threat.
It concerned the following question: ‘How to consume modern sexuality
and yet remain in control of one’s masculinity?’
The subaltern masculine cultures of the footpath booklets are embedded
within an erotics of modernity that is both the grounds of aspiration as well
as a context of masculine fear of losing control. The erotics of modernity is
characterised by the scattering of desire across a number of material and
symbolic registers. The thread that connects these is the intense engagement
with worlds that become erotic through their apparent inaccessibility. This,
in turn, conjures the figure of the subaltern male who desires, is chastised
by, and fears the object of his desire (the ‘modern’ woman). Maleness is
made in this crucible of seeking control and encountering rebuff.
Modi-Masculinity
In this final section, I bring together the various strands of my discussion in
order to suggest and foreground a non-linear history of Indian masculinity.
The focus of my discussion is ‘Modi-masculinity’, a term I use to refer to
the swirl of discourses that characterised the election strategy of Narendra
Modi who attained the office of prime minister in the Indian general
elections of 2014. Modi-masculinity, I suggest, is the site of a combination
of both the terriorialised nationalism of the FYP Hero as well as that of his
consumerist antithesis. What is new is the recuperation and braiding of the
past with features of the present and, hence, the collapsing of past time and
present time.
We can analyse the 2014 general elections as a rich and prolix context
for a focussed elaboration of the otherwise dispersed popular discourses on
masculinity. The deployment of what could be identified as ‘traditional’
masculinity politics as a significant electoral strategy was as unprecedented
as the role of the media during the elections. It was, however, the
imbrication of the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ that made the elections
unlike anything in the past.
The elections were significant for the significant investments made by
political parties for campaigning through various media. The dividends of
such investment were recognised slightly earlier during the famous 2011
anti-corruption campaign led by an ex-bureaucrat, Arvind Kejriwal.
Kejriwal and his team successfully utilised traditional electronic as well as
social media to garner massive support. Soon after joining Twitter in
November 2011, Kejriwal gathered a following of 1.5 million. In 2012, he
launched the Aam Admi Party (AAP) which gained unprecedented success
in the state elections in Delhi in 2013, with Kejriwal becoming chief
minister of Delhi till his resignation in February 2014. In the 2014 general
elections, media management played an even greater role, with the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that swept into power by a massive majority
deploying a sophisticated and massively funded campaign that centred upon
its publicly declared prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi. Modi was
quick to set up his own website and establish a twitter account. Of
particular importance was his projected image in mainstream print and
electronic media
A significant aspect of the media discourse that gathered around
Narendra Modi focused on his ‘forceful’ masculinity. Modi’s election
campaign – as well as popular discourse that surrounded his pre-prime
ministerial persona – significantly focused upon his ‘manly’ leadership
style: efficient, dynamic, potent and capable, through sheer force of
personality, of overcoming the ‘policy-paralysis’ that had putatively
afflicted the previous regime. In this, Modi was explicitly counterpoised to
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the , his ‘impotent’ predecessor, and
more generally against an ‘effeminate’ Indian type who is unable to strike
hard at both external enemies (Pakistan and China, say) and internal threats
(‘Muslim terrorists’, most obviously). This aspect was reinforced by the
metonymic invocation by the BJP’s publicity machine of Modi’s ‘56 inch
chest’ – able and willing to bear the harshest burdens in the service of
‘Mother India’ – that gained massive currency through the media.
The following statement by fashion writer Shefalee Vasudev
exemplifies the recognition that Modi’s image has been specifically crafted
for the media:
If we can read nationalism in Modi’s dressing, Obama’s look is about
accessible glamour, just as Kennedy’s was about spirited decadence. If
Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi was the most garishly dressed politician in the
world, former French first lady Carla Bruni was about Parisian
sophistication and nonchalant sexiness. Each made a different statement.
(Vasudev, 2014, n.p.)
The recognition that masculinity was a significant aspect of Narendra
Modi’s media image was recognised in specific ways. A blogger pointed
out that
Modi’s Empire Line is most flattering to himself — of opulent turbans
adorned with pearls and feathers,...chariots of gold and chrome, a
machismo swagger with his self-proclaimed ‘chappan chatti’ (56 inch
chest), giant cut-outs in every street, to 3-D virtual images that walks,
talks and eats; mammoth road shows of pomp and pageantry; flashy
showmanship and stagecraft at public meetings; it’s an intoxicating
cocktail of hyper masculinity, virility and potency. Good Grief,
Narendrabhai [Brother Narendra] does sound like a Mughal Emperor in
Modern India! (Gopinath, 2014, n.p.)
Further, as sociologist and media-commentator Shiv Vishwanathan
noted,
Originally Modi appeared in the drabness of white kurtas, which
conveyed a swadeshi [indigenous] asceticism. Khadi [hand-spun cloth,
championed by Mahatma Gandhi] is the language for a certain
colourlessness. Modi realized that ascetic white was an archaic language.
His PROs forged a more colourful Modi, a Brand Modi more cheerful in
blue and peach, more ethnic in gorgeous red turbans. ...Hair transplants
and Ayurvedic advice served to grow his hair. ...He senses he has to
sustain himself as both icon and image of a different era. (Vishwanathan,
2013, p.54)
The political valence of media discourses of Modi-masculinity was
recognised by his opponents through their efforts to dispute it: little by little
they cast their criticism in terms of his claims to ‘real’ manhood. Hence, in
October 2013, a member of the Congress party (that led the political
coalition then in power) told a Hindi newspaper that Modi could never
become prime-minister as he had not married (though married, Modi has
lived separately from his wife) and hence lacked ‘manhood, and in
February 2014, TV news-reports showed leading Congress politician
Salman Khurshid referring to Modi as ‘napunsak’ (impotent) for not putting
a stop to anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. ‘Masculinity’ came to be
invoked to describe both Modi’s personal and political choices.
What I suggest here is that though couched in the language of
‘traditional’ – and corporeal – manhood, Modi-masculinity is, in fact, a
recension in a time of consumerist modernity and that the media was a
significant site of the re-fashioning. Modi-masculinity stands at the juncture
of new consumerist aspirations, the politics of ‘Indian traditions’ and
gender, and the re-fashioning of non-upper caste identities. Some idea of
the ‘new-ness’ (and peculiarity) Narendra Modi’s mediated image can be
derived from the fact that his masculinity was, in fact, counterpoised to that
of a political opponent (Manmohan Singh) whose ethnic identity as a Sikh
should have positioned him in the ranks of the ‘martial races’ (Omissi,
1991).
Modi-masculinity is a specific effect in the times of consumerist
modernity. While borrowing ideas of the strong father and the traditionalist
male from pre-national and nationalist discourses, its peculiar characteristic
lies in the judicious presentation of Indian manhood as both deeply national
(and hence territorialised) but also global (and de-territorialised). And,
subsequently, it offers a model of ‘choice’ that is based around the notion of
– what could be called – ‘moral consumption’. Within this, there is no
condemnation of consumption as ‘illegitimate’ grounds of identity (cf. van
Wessel, 2004, p.104) or emphases on the ‘morality’ of savings-behaviour
(Srivastava, 2006). Rather, the key concern is with ‘appropriate’
participation in consumerist activities. This has been the most significant
manner in which Modi-masculinity has found articulation in the media.
There are two specific contexts that are important for a fuller engagement
with the meanings of Modi-masculinity. These are ‘post-nationalism’ and,
what I have referred to above as ‘moral consumption’. These concepts (or
contexts) also allow for an understanding of the two (or, at least two)
specific constituencies of Modi-masculinity that consist of territorialised
and de-territorialised Indians. The former consists of older and newer (or, in
Modi’s terms, ‘neo’) middle classes, whereas the latter refers to the Indian
diaspora. Firstly, post-nationalism is the articulation of the nationalist
emotion with the robust desires engendered through new practices of
consumerism and their associated cultures of privatization and
individuation. It indexes a situation where it is no longer considered a
betrayal of the dreams of ‘nation-building’ to either base individual
subjectivity within an ethic of consumption (as opposed to savings), or
think of the state’s statism in a context of ‘co-operation’ with private capital
(as encapsulated by public-private-partnerships, say). The second term,
moral consumption, concerns a civilizational debate that seeks to
accommodate older social identities – wife, mother, husband, son, sister, for
example – within newer individualizing tendencies of consumerism. It does
not constitute a rejection – or critique – of consumption (cf. van Wessel,
2004; Lim Chua, 2014), but rather, an attempt to locate the new forms of
subjectivities (individualism) within existing social structures. Hence, in a
parallel discussion, I have suggested (Srivastava, 2011) that the
commoditization of religious and ritual contexts allows for the situation
where women can be both hyper-consumers (subjects of the world) as well
as ‘good’ wives (able to return home to ‘tradition’).
Modi-masculinity stands at the cross-roads of post-nationalism and
moral consumption and, in this, combines the continuing imperatives of
long-standing power structures and relations of deference with newer
political economies of neo-liberalism. That is to say, it combines the idea of
an Indian essence with the notion of global comity. Modi-masculinity is, in
the most obvious way, the counterpoint to the figure of the ‘Five-Year Plan
Hero’ (Srivastava, 2006) in as much as the former ‘transcends’ both
territorially defined notions of national identity and disavows ‘savings’ in
favour of consuming as an act of citizenship. In as much as Modimasculinity presents the case for a dominant (and domineering) male figure
who can forcefully champions the cause of ‘minimum government,
maximum governance’ (one of Narendra Modi’s favourite election
slogans), he speaks to a middle class constituency that has, in recent times,
sought to disengage from state mechanisms (Jaffrelot 2008) in favour of
private enterprise. Simultaneously, in severing the link between national
identity and national territory – through the emphasis on consumption
rather than savings – Modi-masculinity also addresses a diasporic audience.
What is crucial in both cases is the irreducible nature of masculine power
articulated through ‘Modi-ness’. It gestures at and seeks to overturn
historical ‘emasculation’ – the putative social inability to deal with internal
and external ‘threats’ and the economic inability to be seen as ‘global’
through disenfranchisement from the world of consumption – through
discourses of gendered power.
Modi-masculinity offers both the possibilities of worldliness but also the
promise that men might continue to maintain their hold on both the home
and the world. For, Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist politics is strongly
associated with the defence of ‘Indian values’. Hence, within Modi’s world
view, while both men and women are offered equal chances of becoming
consumers, masculine anxieties over female consumption – the woman as
the sacrificing figure who facilitated male consumption rather than
consumed herself has been a long-standing cultural discourse – are
assuaged through Modi’s ‘strong’ masculinity. He takes part in the world of
consumption while simultaneously gesturing that the world of ‘tradition’
will not be effaced. He is the advocate of moral consumption: consumption
is good as long as it ‘appropriate’ to the Indian cultural context. In this way,
Modi-masculinity, while aligned to an emerging discourse of ‘Enterprise
Culture’ (Gooptu, 2014) is not quite neo-liberalism’s ‘self-regulating,
autonomous’ individual (Gooptu, 2014, p.12) spoken of in analyses of neoliberalism in the West. What we have, instead, is individualised subject who
is encouraged to make (his) own enterprise, though not exactly as he
pleases but through the dictates of structures such as the family and kin
networks. It is entirely proper, then, that recent television advertisements
for personal insurance – a significant index of ‘subjectivity and sociality
and neoliberal financing’ (Patel, 2006, p. 29) – present the high-achieving
(and enterprising) child purchasing a policy not for himself, but for his
ageing parents.
Conclusion
This article has sought to provide an account of Indian masculine cultures
as a history of Indian modernity and its multiple registers. More
specifically, the article has sought to outline this history through an account
of relationships between economic, political and social contexts, thereby
seeking to blur the boundaries between these aspects. The article also seeks
to point out that while there are continuities between the (colonial) past and
the (post-colonial) present, the manner in which the past is utilised for the
purposes of the present relates to the performances and contexts in the
present. The anthropologist Edward Bruner speaks of the manner in which
performances ‘re-fashion’ reality. ‘It is in the performance’, as he puts it,
‘that we re-experience, re-live, re-create, re-tell, re-construct, and re-fashion
our culture ... the performance itself is constitutive’ (1986, p.11). That is to
say, my analysis of Indian masculine cultures has sought to outline the
significance of the present in constituting the present. Finally, the
discussion has sought to present a methodological argument: that accounts
of masculinities are required to stitch together narratives that emerge out of
multiple social and cultural sites. If we are to view the masculine subject as
constituted through discourses that appear at different sites – the law,
cinema, domesticity, religion, science, nationalism, consumerism, neoliberalism, say – then our analytical frameworks must be sufficiently
expansive to incorporate these varying modalities of subject formation.
For, masculinity is no identity in itself and multi-sited analysis is crucial to
the task of locating it as an affect – and an exercise of power – that is
produced through a number of social worlds.
References
Alter, J. (1992). The Wrestler’s Body. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Alter, J. (2011). Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India.
New Delhi: Penguin.
Anandhi, S., & Jeyaranjan, J. (2001). Masculinities and Domestic Violence
in a Tamil Nadu Village. Chennai: Institute for Development
Alternatives.
Bacchetta, P. (2004). Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as
Ideologues. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
Bannerjee, S. (2005). Make Me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism and
Nationalism in India. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bruner, E.M. (1986). Experience and its Expressions. In V. Turner & E.
Bruner (Eds.), The Anthropology of Experience (pp. 3-32). Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Chakraborty, Ch. (2011). Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and
Present Imaginings of India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.
Chakravarty, U. (1998). ‘Inventing Saffron History: A Celibate Hero
Rescues an Emasculated Nation. In M. John & J. Nair (Eds.), A
Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India (pp. 24368). New Delhi: Kali.
Chatterjee, P. (1993a). The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s
Question. In K. Sangari & S. Vaid (Eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in
Colonial History (pp. 233-253). New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Chatterjee, P. (1993b). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and
Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Donner, H. (2011). Gendered Bodies, Domestic Work and Perfect Families:
New Regimes of Gender and Food in Bengali Middle-Class Lifestyles.
In H. Donner (Ed.), Being Middle-Class in India: A Way of Life (pp. 4772). London: Routledge.
Dutta, D. (2004). Effects of Globalisation on Employment and Poverty in
Dualistic Economies: The Case of India. In C.Tisdell & R. Sen (Eds.),
Economic Globalisation: Social Conflicts, Labour and Environmental
Issues (pp.167-186). Cambridge, UK: Edward Elgar.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New
York: Vintage.
Gooptu, N. (2014). Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India: Studies in
Youth, Class, Work and Media. London: Routledge.
Gopinath, V. (2014, December 24). Does Narendra Modi’s Grand Image of
Himself Come from His Roots, Asks Vrinda Gopinath. Retrieved from
http://www.altgaze.com/?p=753
Hansen, K. (2004). Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujarati and
Marathi Theatres (1850–1940). In S. Srivastava (Ed.), Sexual Sites,
Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia
(pp. 99-122). New Delhi: SAGE.
Jaffrelot, C. (2008). ‘Why Should We Vote?’ The Indian Middle Class and
the Functioning of the World’s Largest Democracy. In C. Jaffrelot & P.
van der Veer (Eds.), Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and
China (pp. 35-54). New Delhi: SAGE.
Kopf, D. (1979). The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian
Mind. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Lim Chua, J. (2014). In Pursuit of the Good Life: Aspiration and Suicide in
Globalizing South India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mangan, J. A. (1986). The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of
Diffusion of an Ideal. Harmondsworth: Viking Press.
Mani, L. (1993). Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial
India. In K. Sangari & S. Vaid (Eds.), In Recasting Women: Essays in
Colonial History (pp. 88-126). New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Mankekar, P. (1999). Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography
of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Munshi, S. (2010). Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television. New
Delhi: Routledge.
O’Hanlon, R. (1997). Issues of Masculinity in North India History. Indian
Journal of Gender Studies, 4(1), 1–19.
doi: 10.1177/097152159700400101
Omissi, D. (1991). Martial Race: Ethnicity and Security in Colonial India.
War and Society, 9(1), 1-27. doi:10.1179/072924791791202404
Patel, G. (2006). Risky Subjects: Insurance, Sexuality and Capital. Social
Text, 89(24), 25–65. doi:10.1215/01642472-2006-010
Phadke, N. S. (1927). Sex Problem in India: Being a Plea for a Eugenic
Movement in India and a Study of All Theoretical and Practical
Questions Pertaining to Eugenics. Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons.
Pillay, A. P. (1948). The Art of Love and Sane Sex Living: Based on
Ancient Precepts and Modern Teachings. Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala
Sons.
Prasad, M. (1998). Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Ramaswamy, S. (2010). The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother
India. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rosselli, J. (1980). The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and
Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal. Past & Present, 86,121–48.
Rudra, A. (1996). Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis: A Biography. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Samuelson, P. A. (1992). Economics. Sydney: McGraw Hill.
Sarkar, T., & Butalia, U. (1995). Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection
of Essays. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Seidler, V. (1994). Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory.
London: Routledge.
Sen, S. (2004). Colonial Aversions and Domestic Desires: Blood, Race, Sex
and the Decline of Intimacy in Early British India. In S. Srivastava
(Ed.), Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and
Culture in South Asia (pp49-82). New Delhi: SAGE.
Sengupta, M. (2008). How the State Changed its Mind: Power, Politics and
the Origins of India’s Market Reforms. Economic and Political Weekly,
43(21), 35-42.
Sinha, M. (1997). The ‘Manly’ Englishman and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in
the Late Nineteenth Century. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Srivastava, S. (1996). The Garden of Rational Delights: The Nation as
Experiment, Science as Masculinity. Social Analysis, 39(April), 119148.
Srivastava, S. (1998). Constructing Post-Colonial India: National
Character and the Doon School. London: Routledge.
Srivastava, S. (2004). The Masculinity of Dis-Location: Commodities, the
Metropolis, and the Sex-Clinics of Delhi and Mumbai. In R. C. Chopra,
C. Osella & F. Osella (Eds.), South Asian Masculinities: Change and
Continuity (pp. 175-223). New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Srivastava, S. (2006). The Voice of the Nation and the Five-Year Plan
Hero: Speculations on Gender, Space, and Popular Culture. In V. Lal &
A. Nandy (Eds.), Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the
Iconic in Indian Cinema (pp. 122-155). New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Srivastava, S. (2011). ‘Urban Spaces, Disney-Divinity and the Moral
Middle-Classes in Delhi.’ In A. Baviskar & R. Ray (Eds.), Elite and
Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (pp. 364390). New Delhi: Routledge.
Stoler, L. A. (1995). Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History
of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Sunder Rajan, R. (1993). Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and
Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.
van Wessel, M. (2004). Talking about Consumption: How an Indian
Middle-Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life. Cultural Dynamics,
16(1), 93–116. doi: 10.1177/0921374004042752
Vasudev, S. (2014, June 14). The Wear and Tear of the Modi Kurta. Live
Mint.com. Retrieved from
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/78cC1RJF8eGlUNBqnDPhqJ/EssayThe-wear-and-tear-ofthe-Modi-kurta.html?utm_source=copy
Vishwanathan, S. (2013). The Remaking of Narendra Modi. Seminar,
(641), 52–58.
Sanjay Srivastava is professor in Sociology and Social Anthropology
at the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,
India.
Contact Address: Direct correspondence to Sanjay Srivastava, Room
19, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, 110067, India, email:
[email protected]
Las Masculinidades y los Programas de Intervención para
Maltratadores en casos de Violencia de Género en España
Victoria A. Ferrer1
Esperanza Bosch1
1) Universitat de les Illes Balears, España
Edition period: February 2016 - June 2016
To cite this article: Ferrer, V. A., & Bosch, E. (2016). Las Masculinidades y
los Programas de Intervención para Maltratadores en Casos de Violencia de
Género en España. Masculinities and Social Change 5(1),28-51. doi:
10.17583/MCS.2016.1827
pp. 28-51
Masculinities and Batterer
Intervention Programs in Gender
Violence in Spain
Victoria A. Ferrer & Esperanza Bosch
Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
Abstract
Intimate partner violence against women (called gender violence in the Spanish
legal framework) is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has been
explained from different theoretical viewpoints. In this paper, we take as a starting
point to analyze this violence a multi-causal model, called pyramidal model, which
understands traditional masculinity and their conditionants as an important
explanatory key for violence against women. In this context, data on the low
presence of the notion of masculinity in the intervention programs for the
rehabilitation of perpetrators that have been applied in Spain are presented, and
suggestions on the need to increase the role of this element are provided.
Keywords: intimate partner violence against women, perpetrators, masculinities.
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1827
pp. 28-51
Las Masculinidades y los Programas
de Intervención para Maltratadores en
Casos de Violencia de Género en
España
Victoria A. Ferrer & Esperanza Bosch
Universitat de les Illes Balears, España
Resumen
La violencia contra las mujeres en la pareja (denominada violencia de género en el
marco jurídico español) es un fenómeno complejo y poliédrico que ha sido
explicado desde diferentes puntos de vista teóricos. En este trabajo, se toma como
punto de partida para analizar esta violencia un modelo multicausal, denominado
modelo piramidal, que entiende la masculinidad tradicional y sus condicionantes
como una clave explicativa importante para la violencia contra las mujeres. En este
contexto, se aportan datos sobre la escasa presencia de la noción de masculinidad en
los programas de intervención para la rehabilitación de los maltratadores que se han
venido aplicando en España y se reflexiona sobre la necesidad de incrementar el
protagonismo de este elemento.
Palabras clave: violencia de género, maltratadores, masculinidades
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1827
30 Ferrer & Bosch. – Masculinidades e intervención maltratadores
E
n el intento de desarrollar un marco de investigación europeo
para el estudio de las violencias masculinas, Jeff Hearn y cols.
(2013) desarrollan algunos principios metodológicos clave y,
entre otras cosas, concluyen que entre nuestras prioridades de
investigación debería estar el determinar qué reduce y detiene estas
violencias.
En este contexto, el trabajo desarrollado desde nuestro grupo de
investigación se ha venido centrando en el estudio de las violencias
ejercidas por los varones contra las mujeres y, especialmente, de aquella
que ocurre en la pareja (y que recibe la denominación de violencia de
género en el ordenamiento jurídico español a partir de la Ley Orgánica
1/2004 de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia de Género).
Esta violencia la hemos abordado y estudiado desde diferentes puntos de
vista, incluyendo: los cambios en la percepción social de esta violencia en
España (Ferrer & Bosch, 2014a); los factores que llevan a las mujeres a
permanecer en una relación de maltrato (Bosch, Ferrer & Alzamora, 2006);
el papel de las actitudes sexistas y la misoginia como factores causales en
esta violencia (Ferrer & Bosch, 2014b); o los mitos sobre la violencia
contra las mujeres y de género (Bosch & Ferrer, 2002, 2012a).
Como fruto de estos trabajos y de la reflexión sobre el tema, hemos
generado una propuesta de modelo hermenéutico – heurístico, al que hemos
denominado Modelo Piramidal (MP), que entendemos teóricamente
plausible para explicar las violencias contra las mujeres en general y en el
que, además, encajarían los resultados de las investigaciones sobre la
cuestión que van conociéndose. Este modelo ha sido presentado en algunos
trabajos previos (Bosch & Ferrer, 2013; Bosch, Ferrer, Ferreiro & Navarro,
2013) y lo hemos aplicado hasta ahora, básicamente, al caso de la violencia
contra las mujeres en la pareja (Ferrer & Bosch, 2012, 2014c). En el marco
de este modelo, y como expondremos en la primera parte de este artículo,
las creencias patriarcales y el modelo de masculinidad tradicional
hegemónico dominante serían claves explicativas importantes para la
ocurrencia de estas violencias.
Paralelamente al trabajo descrito, y, especialmente, a partir de la entrada
en vigor de la LO 1/2004, hemos asistido a importantes cambios en el
tratamiento de estas violencias, por ejemplo, en los programas de
intervención para maltratadores en casos de violencia de género que se
habían comenzado a implementar en España a partir de los años 90. En
relación con ellos, y siempre desde una perspectiva de análisis feminista
crítico, se ha realizado una revisión sistemática sobre estos programas y sus
características. El estudio del papel otorgado a las masculinidades en dichos
programas constituye el objetivo principal de este trabajo, que será
presentado en la segunda parte del mismo.
El Papel Modelo Masculino Tradicional en la Génesis de la Violencia de
Género. Análisis desde el Modelo Piramidal (MP)
Como hemos señalado anteriormente, a partir del análisis e integración del
material empírico y teórico que hemos ido revisando y de las conclusiones
de la investigación empírica previa (Bosch & Ferrer, 2002; Bosch et al.,
2008, 2012) desarrollamos un modelo explicativo, que incluye muchos de
los elementos presentes en otros modelos multicausales y aporta, además,
algunas claves de análisis complementarias, y al que denominamos Modelo
Piramidal (MP).
Este modelo tiene una estructura piramidal y consta de cinco etapas o
escalones (cuatro de ellos constituyen los mecanismos explicativos de la
violencia (sustrato patriarcal, procesos de socialización, expectativas de
control y eventos desencadenantes) y el quinto sería, propiamente, el
estallido de la violencia contra las mujeres, en cualquiera de sus diferentes
formas), más un proceso, al que hemos denominado de filtraje. En este
marco, la violencia se gestaría en un proceso de escalada de los agresores a
través de estas etapas o escalones, y el proceso de filtraje, por su parte,
visibilizaría qué ocurre con aquellos varones que, aunque han vivido el
mismo sustrato patriarcal y han estado expuestos a las mismas claves
durante los procesos de socialización, no ejercen esta violencia.
En trabajos anteriores (Bosch & Ferrer, 2013; Bosch et al., 2013) hemos
presentado una descripción de los diferentes elementos que conforman este
modelo. En este trabajo vamos a poner el foco sobre algunos de ellos.
Así, en primer lugar, en el contexto del MP se recoge la idea de que,
mediante los procesos de socialización diferencial, las personas aprendemos
e interiorizamos las normas de comportamiento que se derivan de las
actitudes y creencias que legitiman y mantienen el dominio de los varones
sobre las mujeres (ideología patriarcal) y que, desde un orden social
patriarcal, se entienden como adecuadas y apropiadas para unos y otras (en
qué consiste ser un hombre masculino y una mujer femenina).
Estos modelos normativos hegemónicos y tradicionales de masculinidad
y feminidad, supuestamente universales, dicotómicos y opuestos entre sí,
actuarían como marco de referencia socialmente compartido y transmitido,
convirtiéndose en mandatos de género (Bonino, 2001; Lagarde, 1999,
2005; Pescador, 2010; Rebollo, 2010) para muchas personas, hombres y
mujeres. Estos mandatos se caracterizarían del modo siguiente (Alcántara,
2002; Bonilla, 2008; Martínez-Benlloch, 2008; Pescador, 2010; Rebollo,
2010):
 El mandato de género tradicional masculino se caracterizaría como
“ser-para-sí”, asociando la masculinidad con la heterosexualidad, el
control, el poder, la dominación, la fuerza, el éxito, la racionalidad, la
autoconfianza y la seguridad en uno mismo, y con las tareas
productivas (como el trabajo remunerado o la política, que
responsabilizan a los varones de los bienes materiales). En esencia,
este mandato incluiría no poseer ninguna de las características que se
les suponen a las mujeres, y contrapesar éstas con sus opuestos
(racionalidad por oposición a irracionalidad, fuerza frente a
debilidad, ausencia de emociones frente a emocionalidad, etc). Para
una descripción más detallada al respecto pueden consultarse, entre
otros, trabajos como los de Bonino (2001) o López (2013).
 El mandato de género tradicional femenino se caracterizaría como
“ser-para-otros”, asociando la feminidad con la sumisión, la
pasividad, la dependencia, la obediencia, la abnegación, la renuncia,
y con las tareas reproductivas (como el cuidado de la pareja, los/as
hijos/as, etc., que responsabiliza a las mujeres del bienestar de los
demás y de los bienes emocionales). Vinculado a su rol como
cuidadora y responsable del bienestar de otros/as, este mandato
otorga un lugar central a los roles de esposa y madre (hasta
considerar que una mujer sólo pueden alcanzar su plenitud y
satisfacción ejerciendo estos roles, especialmente, a través de la
maternidad), y un peso importante a la (supuesta) predisposición al
amor (hasta el punto de considerar a las mujeres como completas
sólo cuando “pertenecen” a alguien).
En definitiva, “Desde el imaginario cultural se mantienen modelos de
masculinidad y feminidad que, en forma de ideales, son tomados como
referentes de identificación, pasando a formar parte de los deseos, fantasías
y creencias personales” (Bonilla, 2008, p. 24).
Aunque otros puntos de vista entienden que no hay relación entre la
violencia de género y el amor (Yuste, Serrano, Girbés & Arandia, 2014), de
acuerdo con el Modelo Piramidal (MP) desde el que se desarrolla el análisis
que presentamos en este trabajo, estos mandatos tendrían su corolario en la
denominada ideología de género tradicional, y una fuerte vinculación con
modelo de amor romántico imperante.
La ideología de género es el conjunto de creencias que las personas
poseemos sobre cuáles son los roles, y comportamientos considerados
apropiados para varones y mujeres (por razón de su sexo) y sobre las
relaciones que unos y otras deben mantener entre sí (Ferrer & Bosch, 2010;
Moya, 2004), esto es, las creencias prescriptivas sobre los roles de mujeres
y hombres. Esta ideología se concibe como una dimensión cuyos extremos
pueden etiquetarse como ideología de género tradicional vs. ideología de
género feminista – igualitaria (Moya, Expósito & Padilla, 2006; Moya,
Navas & Gómez, 1991).
La ideología de género tradicional supone, pues, asumir y validar los
modelos normativos hegemónicos y los mandatos de género tradicionales, y
se caracteriza por enfatizar las diferencias sexuales o biológicas entre
varones y mujeres y, consecuentemente, la necesidad de una estricta
diferenciación de roles y ámbitos para unas y otros: como consecuencia de
considerar a las mujeres como seres débiles y necesitados de protección, se
las relega a los roles de esposa, ama de casa y madre (ámbito privado);
como consecuencia de considerar a los varones como seres fuertes con
autoridad y protectores, se les asignan roles de proveedor, vinculados a la
toma de decisiones y la esfera pública (Moya et al., 2006). Un análisis más
detallado sobre lo que supone y sobre las repercusiones de la ideología
masculina tradicional se halla descrito, entre otros, en trabajos como el de
Martínez y Paterna (2013).
En resumen, puede decirse que los mandatos de género tradicionales se
plantean como complementarios en el sentido propuesto por Edgar
Sampson (1993): la identidad masculina se define como autónoma,
independiente y controladora, pero para que ello sea posible, es necesario
que haya quien asuma una identidad dependiente y relacionada con el
cuidado y el servicio (la identidad femenina). Pero, el mandato de género
masculino implica no sólo una hegemonía externa (la dominación de los
varones sobre las mujeres), sino una hegemonía interna, esto es, la
ascendencia social de unos varones sobre otros, la subordinación de otras
formas de masculinidad alternativas a la masculinidad hegemónica
tradicional (Demetriou, 2001; Díez, 2015).
Por su parte, el modelo de amor romántico, también denominado amor
fusional, relación fusionada o vínculo fusional romántico (Bosch & Ferrer,
2012b, 2014; Bosch et al., 2013; Esteban & Tavora, 2008; Herrera, 2011;
Labonté, 2010; Leal & Nieto, 2007; Luengo & Rodríguez-Sumaza, 2009;
Tavora, 2007) hace referencia a qué significa enamorarse, qué sentimientos
se consideran apropiados y cuáles no, cómo debe ser la relación, y qué
papel ha de desempeñar el amor en nuestras vidas. Además, incluye una
serie de mitos y creencias irracionales al respecto, como, por ejemplo, que
el único requisito para alcanzar la felicidad es tener a la otra persona, que
cada miembro de la pareja tiene capacidad para satisfacer completamente
todas las necesidades del/la otro/a, que existe la “media naranja”, etc.
(Barrón, Martínez-Íñigo, De Paul & Yela, 1999; Ferrer, Bosch & Navarro,
2010; Ferrer, Bosch, Navarro & Ferreiro, 2009a, 2009b, 2010; Yela, 2000,
2003). Este modelo lo aprendemos, y, en su caso, lo interiorizamos, durante
el proceso de socialización.
Pero el amor no es una experiencia neutra, sino fuertemente generizada
(Burns, 2000; Denmark, Rabinowitz & Sechzer, 2005; Leal, 2012; Redman,
2002; Schäfer, 2008), de modo que los mandatos de género condicionarían
de forma diferencial tanto la elección del objeto de amor, como la
centralidad del amor y la pareja en nuestras vidas (central, y de sumisión y
renuncia para el mandato de género tradicional femenino; y periférico, y de
dominio para el masculino).
En este contexto, aquellos varones que asumen como propia y no
cuestionan ni la ideología de género tradicional ni las bases en las que se
asienta, asumen pues la superioridad masculina (y, por tanto, la necesaria
subordinación femenina), creen tener unos derechos (expectativas de
control) sobre las mujeres que consideran válidos y legítimos, y se
comportan en consecuencia, es decir, esperan mantener el control sobre
ellas, sobre sus vidas, sus cuerpos, su sexualidad, sus amistades, su
economía, etc. En el caso concreto de la violencia contra las mujeres en la
pareja, el maltratador, que asume la ideología de género y el mandato de
género masculino tradicionales, cree tener unos derechos (expectativas de
control) sobre su pareja que le permitirían controlar su vida. A esto se suma
el hecho de que una relación de pareja basada en los mitos del amor
romántico incrementa aún más si cabe el riesgo de crear falsas expectativas
sobre lo que es o ha de ser la pareja (Bosch & Ferrer, 2012b, 2014; Bosch et
al., 2008, 2012, 2013; Ferrer & Bosch, 2014c; Ferrer et al., 2009a, 2009b,
2010).
Estas expectativas de control pueden dispararse y/o materializarse ante
ciertos eventos desencadenantes (personales, sociales o político-religiosos)
que constituirían el cuarto escalón del MP (Ferrer & Bosch, 2014c).
Así, en el proceso de tránsito a lo largo de los diferentes escalones o
etapas del modelo propuesto, aquellos varones que asumen (de modo rígido
y sin cuestionarlo) el mandato de género masculino tradicional (y la
ideología patriarcal subyacente), ante un evento (desencadenante) que les
lleva a ver frustradas sus expectativas de mantener un control sobre sus
parejas, que ellos consideran plenamente justificado y legítimo, y/o que
refuerza (o ellos creen que refuerza) su posición, considerarían también
legítimo pasar a la acción y dar rienda suelta a una serie de estrategias (que
incluirían desde los celos hasta la violencia en sus formas más extremas)
con objeto de recuperar ese control perdido.
En este contexto, algunos varones (los que ejercen la violencia) tendrían
una actitud de legitimación hacia los mandatos del patriarcado, de modo
que aceptarían tanto los privilegios que se derivan de la ideología patriarcal
y el mandato de género masculino tradicional, como la legitimidad para
ejercer violencia y castigar a aquellas mujeres que quiebran el mandato de
género femenino tradicional (Bosch & Ferrer, 2013).
El Modelo Masculino Tradicional en los Programas de Intervención
para Maltratadores en Casos de Violencia de Género en España
Aunque los primeros programas de intervención para maltratadores en
casos de violencia de género fueron implementados en España a mediados
de la década de 1990 en ámbito comunitario por el profesor Enrique
Echeburúa y su equipo de la Universidad del País Vasco, en colaboración
con el Instituto Vasco de la Mujer (Echeburúa, De Corral, FernándezMontalvo & Amor, 2004), no será, como se ha señalado anteriormente,
hasta la entrada en vigor de la LO 1/2004 cuando se produzca un
importante y rápido incremento de estos programas en España (Lila, 2013).
Esto ha tenido como consecuencia que en todo el país se han
desarrollado y adaptado a las nuevas necesidades (y también a la nueva
legislación nacional, y a las legislaciones autonómicas que han ido
aprobándose en los diferentes territorios) programas de intervención para
maltratadores, tanto de asistencia voluntaria en la comunidad, o en el
interior de las prisiones, como en el ámbito de las medidas penales
alternativas (Carbajosa & Boira, 2013).
Paralelamente a la creación e implementación de estos programas, se fue
también incrementando la necesidad de determinar su eficacia (Lila, 2013).
Para ello se hacía necesario, en primer lugar, determinar los criterios de
calidad y estándares comunes que tales programas deberían de cumplir, y,
posteriormente, revisar en qué medida se daba tal cumplimiento.
En este contexto, y como parte de nuestro interés por este tema,
formulamos un proyecto de investigación denominado “Programas de
intervención con maltratadores en casos de violencia de género aplicados en
España (1995-2010): Análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo de características y
eficacia” (FEM2011-25142), cuyo objetivo general era analizar y evaluar
de modo científico y sistemático, y tanto desde un punto de vista
cuantitativo como cualitativo, las características y la eficacia de los
programas de intervención con maltratadores en casos de violencia de
género aplicados en España entre 1995 y 2010. La revisión sistemática de la
literatura científica sobre el tema mostró que los primeros trabajos sobre el
tema se publicaron en 1994, por lo que se amplió el período de análisis.
Para la recogida de información y el posterior análisis de la calidad de
estos programas, se diseñó un cuestionario cualitativo. En un trabajo previo
(Ferreiro, Ferrer, Bosch, Navarro & Blahopoulou, 2015) se presentaron el
proceso de revisión y selección de los criterios y estándares de calidad,
tanto nacionales como internacionales, que fueron tenidos en consideración
para el diseño de dicho cuestionario, el contenido de dichos criterios, y el
cuestionario final resultante.
A modo de resumen, puede decirse que el citado cuestionario incluye
criterios y subcriterios relativos a las siguientes características de estos
programas: su orientación teórica; sus contenidos; la formación y las
características de los/las terapeutas que los aplican; los procedimientos para
su aplicación y seguimiento; la evaluación de su eficacia; o la relación que
se establece con los sistemas penales y de justicia.
Así, y como parte de este cuestionario se incluyó un criterio relativo a
los componentes de la intervención, y, dentro de él, se incluyeron como
indicios de calidad los subcriterios siguientes:
 Analizar si la intervención incluye un componente cognitivo para
desmontar o desactivar el modelo mental sexista sobre la violencia de
género (esto es, trabajar y deconstruir las ideas sexistas, las
distorsiones y sesgos cognitivos sobre la violencia, sobre el sexismo,
sobre el rol masculino y sobre la identidad masculina tradicional), y
 Analizar si la intervención incluye un componente emocional para
modificar las asociaciones emocionales con la conducta violenta
(esto es, trabajar emociones de ira, frustración, impotencia, celos,
miedo,… ligadas a la identidad masculina tradicional y la violencia).
Por tanto, y recogiendo de modo explícito la recomendación que
realizaron Rothman, Butchard y Cerdá (2003), y que contemplan también la
mayoría de estándares y guías de buenas prácticas desarrolladas en el
ámbito europeo para trabajar con maltratadores (Ginés, Geldschläger, Nax
& Ponce, 2015), se incluyó en el cuestionario diseñado y como parte de los
criterios básicos a considerar para evaluar los programas de intervención
con maltratadores, el análisis de la masculinidad, esto es, el análisis sobre la
forma en que las normas sociales sobre el género afectan al modo en que
los hombres se comportan en las relaciones de pareja.
Por lo que se refiere a los resultados obtenidos, la revisión sistemática de
la literatura sobre el tema mostró la existencia de 148 registros, publicados
entre enero de 1994 y enero de 2013. La mayoría de ellos correspondían a
artículos en revistas científicas (41.89%), que habían sido publicados entre
2008 y 2010 (46.62%), y que describían uno o más programas de
intervención con maltratadores aplicados en España (44.59%). Cabe señalar
que, si bien en estos registros se identificaron hasta un total de 47
programas (21 desarrollados hasta 2004 y 26 a partir de la implementación
de la LO 1/2004), para 25 de ellos sólo se obtuvo una somera descripción
(en algunos casos, sólo una referencia al nombre y poco más) y sólo en los
22 casos restantes se ofrecía una información más completa. Los programas
a los que hacían referencia un mayor número de registros eran aquellos
desarrollados por el profesor Echeburúa y su equipo (17.57%), y los
programas Galicia (9.46%), Contexto y Navarra (6.08%, respectivamente),
y Espacio (5.41%).
Cabe señalar que los diferentes programas identificados fueron
agrupados en tres categorías (Ferrer, Bosch, Navarro & Ferreiro, 2013;
Geldschläger et al., 2009, 2010; Montero, 2009):
a) Programas llevados a cabo en los centros penitenciarios y sus
secciones abiertas (basados en el artículo 42.1 de la LO 1/2004), que
fueron diseñados y son gestionados y aplicados por la Secretaría
General de Instituciones Penitenciarias (2005, 2010) (excepto en
Cataluña, donde dependen del gobierno autonómico) para internos
condenados por delitos relacionados con violencia de género que
participan en ellos voluntariamente. Se caracterizan por su elevado
nivel de estandarización y por ser objeto de seguimiento y evaluación
(Echeburúa & Fernández-Montalvo, 2009; Echeburúa, FernándezMontalvo & Amor, 2006). De hecho, el primer programa piloto de
intervención se realizó en 2001. Este programa inicial fue revisado y
evaluado posteriormente (en 2004 y 2009) hasta alcanzar su formato
actual.
b) Programas como medida penal alternativa (basados en el artículo 35
de la LO 1/2004), que suponen el cumplimiento de penas alternativas
para maltratadores condenados a menos de dos años, que no ingresan
en prisión, pero están obligados judicialmente a seguir uno de estos
programas. Son llevados a cabo por los servicios sociales de
Instituciones Penitenciarias, o conveniados y gestionados por otros
organismos. Inicialmente mostraban un importante grado de
variabilidad, pero, poco a poco (y, especialmente, a partir de 2010
cuando se puso en marcha un programa piloto para su armonización),
han ido tendiendo hacia un mayor estandarización. Ejemplos de ellos
serían los programas Galicia (Arce & Fariña, 2010) o Contexto (Lila,
García & Lorenzo, 2010);
c) Programas de asistencia voluntaria, que trabajan con varones que
acuden voluntariamente y se desarrollan en contextos comunitarios
(por ejemplo, ayuntamientos, colegios profesionales, centros
terapéuticos, asociaciones y organismos autonómicos). No están
estandarizados y se caracterizan, precisamente, por su diversidad
metodológica y conceptual, tanto en lo relativo a sus características,
como a su aplicación y evaluación. Entre ellos estarían, por ejemplo,
el programa Espacio (Boira & Jodrá, 2010) o el programa de carácter
comunitario desarrollado por Echeburúa y cols. (Echeburúa et al.,
2009). Cabe señalar que este tipo de programas ha ido disminuyendo
con el paso del tiempo, especialmente desde la implementación de la
LO 1/2004.
Por lo que se refiere a la efectividad de estos programas, la revisión
realizada nos permitió determinar que, aún a pesar de las discrepancias que
suelen producirse (Arias, Arce & Novo, 2014), para la mayoría de ellos este
análisis se realizó, básicamente, a partir de cuestionarios administrados a
los varones participantes en los programas (sólo en un 38.3% de los casos
se incluyó alguna medida de la opinión de las parejas), y que el criterio de
éxito considerado fue, principalmente, el cambio entre antes y después de la
intervención en las características psicológicas y las distorsiones cognitivas
de los maltratadores sobre las mujeres y sobre el uso de la violencia como
forma aceptable de solucionar conflictos. Sin embargo, apenas se
analizaron los mandatos de género tradicionales o la masculinidad.
Como ya se ha comentado, los programas con maltratadores se realizan
desde diferentes enfoques teóricos y metodológicos, si bien los más
extendidos combinan la terapia cognitivo-conductual con una perspectiva
de género. Por lo que se refiere a sus contenidos, Geldschläger y Ginés
(2013) apuntaban que éstos suelen incluir la asunción de responsabilidad
por la violencia ejercida, el análisis de episodios violentos para comprender
su significado e intencionalidad, el trabajo sobre la masculinidad y el
aprendizaje del uso de la violencia, la creación de maneras alternativas de
relacionarse y el entrenamiento de las habilidades necesarias para ellas, así
como la prevención de recaídas. Sin embargo, y como este mismo autor ya
había detectado en una revisión previa (Geldschläger, 2010), aunque el
análisis y comprensión de la violencia contra las mujeres y sus
fundamentos, y el trabajo con los mitos y creencias erróneas sobre las
mujeres y la violencia como forma de resolver los conflictos sí forman parte
habitual de los programas que se han venido implementando (en más de un
80%-90% de los casos), la noción de masculinidad como contenido
explícito y directo de la intervención es, en cambio, mucho menos
frecuente.
Así, de entre los programas analizados tan sólo aquellos que adoptan de
modo claro una perspectiva de género y feminista para la intervención
mencionan como objetivo explícito la masculinidad. A modo de ejemplo,
cabe citar: el programa de asistencia voluntaria del Servei d’Atenció a
Homes que Maltratan (SAHM), que ha venido gestionando la Fundación
IRES para diferentes ayuntamientos (incluyendo los de ciudades como
Barcelona o Palma de Mallorca) y en los que la masculinidad se incluye
como objetivo que la intervención (Calle, 2010); o el Programa Psicosocial
para Agresores en el Ámbito de la Violencia de Género de la Universidad
de Granada (Expósito, 2010; Expósito & Ruiz, 2010), un programa
diseñado como medida penal alternativa, que se realiza desde una
orientación de género y centra la intervención en los comportamientos
concretos utilizados por los hombres para mantener el control y el poder
dentro de la relación de pareja. Este programa incluye una unidad para
trabajar sobre los privilegios masculinos que se concreta en modificar las
ideas estereotipadas relacionadas con los roles del varón y la mujer y la
justificación del uso de la violencia.
Conclusiones y Propuestas
En definitiva, a lo largo de los párrafos anteriores se ha tratado de poner de
manifiesto una doble realidad: por una parte, que las explicaciones actuales
y multicausales de la violencia contra las mujeres en la pareja muestran que
la noción de masculinidad (específicamente, el mandato masculino
tradicional que conforma la masculinidad hegemónica que ha venido
imperando) es un elemento clave en la génesis de esta violencia y, por
tanto, en los programas de intervención con quienes la cometen (Ginés et
al., 2015; Wojnicka, 2015); y, por otra, que, a pesar de ello, la mayoría de
programas de intervención para maltratadores en casos de violencia de
género abordan esta cuestión tan sólo, y en el mejor de los casos, de forma
colateral.
Obviamente, y como la propia complejidad de la violencia de género
implica, la intervención con los maltratadores debe ser también amplia y
poliédrica. Cuestiones como el concepto de violencia, su definición y sus
causas o los mitos sobre esta violencia no pueden, lógicamente, ser ajenas a
cualquier intervención que pretenda ser adecuada y efectiva. Las creencias
sobre las mujeres y la violencia y, especialmente, las creencias y
estereotipos sexistas han de ser otro de los ejes en torno a los cuales se
articulen este tipo de intervenciones.
Pero, más allá de estas cuestiones, parece evidente que la rehabilitación
de los maltratadores pasa también por confrontarlos con la propia idea de
masculinidad imperante y, alternativamente, por la construcción de un
nuevo modelo de masculinidad.
Explicado en términos del Modelo Piramidal (MP), al que hemos hecho
referencia anteriormente (Bosch & Ferrer, 2013):
Los varones maltratadores tendrían una actitud de legitimación hacia los
mandatos del patriarcado, aceptando tanto los privilegios derivados de la
masculinidad hegemónica tradicional y el mandato de género masculino,
como la legitimidad de ejercer violencia y castigar a aquellas mujeres que
quiebran el mandato de género femenino (Herrera, Expósito & Moya, 2012;
López, 2013).
La mayoría de programas de intervención trabajan en potenciar en los
varones maltratadores una actitud de resistencia, esto es, en alcanzar una
postura de rechazo hacia la violencia masculina, pero sin entrar a cuestionar
sus bases o los privilegios vinculados al mandato de género masculino.
Esto, que en un determinado momento puede ser considerado útil, en tanto
en cuanto puede frenar la ocurrencia de determinadas formas de violencia,
puede no ser suficiente, permitiendo, o bien que se mantengan aquellas
violencias catalogadas como de baja intensidad, o bien que la violencia
vuelva a surgir ante determinados eventos desencadenantes.
La propuesta que surge de todo ello es la necesidad de que los
programas de intervención con maltratadores adopten en su conjunto una
perspectiva feminista o de género que les lleve a trabajar en profundidad la
noción de la masculinidad, generando una actitud de proyección, que
suponga una redefinición de la masculinidad tradicional, aceptando
renunciar a los privilegios que, tanto a nivel social (macro) como individual
(micro), les ha venido ofreciendo la sociedad patriarcal.
Si bien esta tercera alternativa es, sin lugar a dudas, la más costosa de
alcanzar, sería también la que, previsiblemente, daría lugar a cambios de
mayor profundidad y más duraderos y, en definitiva, no sólo a la
desaparición de la violencia actual, sino a la prevención de la violencia
futura por parte de los maltratadores que participaran y completaran con
éxito aquellos los programas de intervención diseñados desde estas
premisas.
Agradecimientos
Este trabajo fue llevado a cabo en el marco de un proyecto de investigación financiado por el
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FEM2011-25142).
Referencias
Alcántara, M. D. (2002). De abnegada a maltratada: la socialización en la
violencia de género. En M. T. López, M. J. Jiménez y E. M. Gil (Eds.),
Violencia y género I (pp. 515-520). Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones
del Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga.
Arce, R., & Fariña, F. (2010). Diseño e implementación del programa
Galicia de reeducación de maltratadores: Una respuesta psicosocial a
una necesidad social y penitenciaria. Intervención Psicosocial: Revista
Sobre Igualdad y Calidad De Vida, 19(2), 153-166. Recuperado de
http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S113205592010000200007
Arias, E., Arce, R., & Novo, M. (2014). Reincidencia como indicador de la
efectividad de las intervenciones con maltratadores. En R. Arce, F.
Fariña, M. Novo y D. Seijo (Eds.), Psicología jurídica: investigación –
acción (pp. 309-316). Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia.
Recuperado de
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267624518_REINCIDENCIA
_COMO_INDICADOR_DE_LA_EFECTIVIDAD_DE_LAS_INTERV
ENCIONES_CON_MALTRATADORES_RECIDIVISM_AS_INDICA
TOR_OF_THE_EFFECTIVENESS_OF_INTERVENTIONS_WITH_B
ATTERERS
Barrón, A., Martínez-Iñigo, D., De Paul, P., & Yela, C. (1999). Romantic
beliefs and myths in Spain. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 2(1),
64-73. doi:10.1017/S1138741600005461
Boira, S., & Jodrá, P. (2010). Psicopatología, características de la violencia
y abandonos en programas para hombres violentos con la pareja.
Psicothema, 22(4), 593-599. Recuperado de
http://www.unioviedo.net/reunido/index.php/PST/article/view/8923
Bonilla, A. (2008). Género, identidades y violencia. En I. MartínezBenlloch (Dir.), Imaginario cultural, construcción de identidades de
género y violencia: formación para la igualdad en adolescentes (pp. 1534). Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Recuperado de
http://www.inmujer.gob.es/areasTematicas/estudios/serieEstudios/docs/i
maginarioCultural.pdf
Bonino, L. (2001). Masculinidad, social y sistema sanitario. El caso de la
violencia masculina. En Seminario sobre mainstreaming de género en
las políticas de salud en Europa (pp. 103-111). Madrid: Instituto de la
Mujer. Recuperado de
http://www.luisbonino.com/pdf/MASCULINIDAD%20y%20sist%20sa
nitario.pdf
Bosch, E., & Ferrer, V. A. (2002). La voz de las invisibles. Las víctimas de
un mal amor que mata. Madrid: Editorial Cátedra. Colección
Feminismos.
Bosch, E., & Ferrer, V. A. (2012a). Nuevo mapa de los mitos sobre la
violencia de género en el siglo XXI. Psicothema, 24(4), 548-554.
Recuperado de
http://www.unioviedo.es/reunido/index.php/PST/article/view/9702
Bosch, E., & Ferrer, V. A. (2012b). La “fuerza del amor” y su papel
determinante en las relaciones violentas según el modelo del laberinto
patriarcal. Comunicación presentada en el Congreso Internacional para
el impulso de políticas de igualdad de mujeres y hombres, organizado
por Emakunde (Instituto Vasco de la Mujer). Septiembre.
Bosch, E., & Ferrer, V. A. (2013). Nuevo modelo explicativo para la
violencia contra las mujeres en la pareja: el modelo piramidal y el
proceso de filtraje. Asparkía, 24, 54-67. Recuperado de
http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Asparkia/article/view/292174
Bosch, E., & Ferrer, V. A. (2014). El 'amor cautivo' como uno de los
eventos desencadenantes de la violencia contra las mujeres según el
modelo piramidal. En D. Serrano, E. Torrado y M. A. Robles (Coords.),
Género y conocimiento en un mundo global (tejiendo redes) (pp. 238247). La Laguna: Instituto Universitario de Estudios de las Mujeres
(IUEM) de la Universidad de La Laguna. Recuperado de
http://docplayer.es/2847841-El-amor-cautivo-como-uno-de-los-eventosdesencadenantes-de-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-segun-el-modelospiramidal.html
Bosch, E., Ferrer, V. A., & Alzamora, A. (2006). El laberinto patriarcal.
Barcelona: Anthropos.
Bosch, E., Ferrer, V. A., Ferreiro, V., & Navarro, C. (2013). Violencia
contra las mujeres. El amor como coartada. Barcelona: Antrophos.
Bosch, E., Ferrer, V. A., García, E., Ramis, M. C., Mas, C., Navarro, C., &
Torrens, G. (2008). Del mito del amor romántico a la violencia contra
las mujeres en la pareja. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Recuperado de
http://centreantigona.uab.cat/izquierda/amor%20romantico%20Esperanz
a%20Bosch.pdf
Bosch, E., Ferrer, V. A., Navarro, C., Ferreiro, V., Escarrer, C., Ramis, M.
C., & García, E. (2012). Profundizando en el análisis del mito del amor
romántico y sus relaciones con la violencia contra las mujeres en la
pareja: análisis cualitativo. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Recuperado
de
http://www.inmujer.gob.es/areasTematicas/estudios/estudioslinea2012/d
ocs/Profundizando_analisis_mito_Web_854.pdf
Burns, A. (2000). Looking for love in intimate heterosexual relationships.
Feminism and Pychology, 10(4), 481-485.
doi:10.1177/0959353500010004008
Calle, L. (2010). Servei municipal d'atenció a persones maltractadores dins
l'àmbit de la relació de parella (SMAPM) Ajuntament de Palma Fundació IReS. Jornada De Prevenció: El Treball Terapeutic Amb
Homes Que Maltracten, Palma. Recuperado de
http://ibdigital.uib.es/greenstone/collect/portal_social/archives/ajpalma0/
058.dir/ajpalma0058.pdf
Carbajosa, P., & Boira, S. (2013). Estado actual y retos futuros de los
programas para hombres condenados por violencia de género en España.
Psychosocial Intervenction, 22, 145-152. doi:10.5093/in2013a17
Demetriou, D. Z. (2001). Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity: A
critique. Theory and Society, 30(3), 337-361.
doi:10.1023/A:1017596718715
Denmark, F. L., Rabinowitz, V. C., & Sechzer, J. A. (2005). Engendered
Psychology. Women and Gender Revisited. Boston: Pearson.
Díez, E. J. (2015). Códigos de masculinidad hegemónica en educación.
Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 68, 79-98. Recuperado de
http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5159873
Echeburúa, E., & Fernández-Montalvo, J. (2009). Evaluación de un
programa de tratamiento en prisión de hombres condenados por
violencia grave en la pareja. International Journal of Clinical and
Health Psychology, 9(1), 5-20. Recuperado de
http://www.aepc.es/ijchp/articulos_pdf/ijchp-306.pdf
Echeburúa, E., de Corral, P., Fernández-Montalvo, J., & Amor, P. J. (2004).
¿Se puede y debe tratar psicológicamente a los hombres violentos contra
la pareja? Papeles Del Psicólogo, 88, 10-18. Recuperado de
http://aapvf.com.ar/archivos/Tratamiento-psicologico-a-hombresviolentos.pdf
Echeburúa, E., Fernández-Montalvo, J., & Amor, P. (2006). Psychological
treatment of men convicted of gender violence. A pilot study in Spanish
prisons. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative
Criminology, 50(1), 57-70. doi:10.1177/0306624X05277662
Echeburúa, E., Sarasúa, B., Zubizarreta, I., & De Corral, P. (2009).
Evaluación de la eficacia de un tratamiento cognitivo-conductual para
hombres violentos contra la pareja en un marco comunitario: una
experiencia de 10 años (1997-2007). International Journal of Clinical
and Health Psychology, 9(2), 199-217. Recuperado de
http://www.aepc.es/ijchp/articulos_pdf/ijchp-317.pdf
Esteban, M. L., & Tavora, A. (2008). El amor romántico y la subordinación
social de las mujeres: revisiones y propuestas. Anuario de Psicología,
39(1), 59-73. Recuperado de
http://www.raco.cat/index.php/anuariopsicologia/article/viewArticle/993
54/0
Expósito, F. (2010). Intervención re-educativa desde la perspectiva de
género con personas condenadas por malos tratos. Jornada
Internacional Sobre Programas Para Intervención Re-Educativa Con
Agresores En Violencia De Género. Bilbao. Recuperado de
http://www.interior.ejgv.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/ponencias_
nov/es_pon_nov/adjuntos/ponencia_4.pdf
Expósito, F., & Ruiz, S. (2010). Reeducación de maltratadores: Una
experiencia de intervención desde la perspectiva de género. Intervención
Psicosocial: Revista Sobre Igualdad y Calidad De Vida, 19(2), 145-151.
Recuperado de http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?pid=S113205592010000200006&script=sci_arttext&tlng=e
Ferrer, V. A., & Bosch, E. (2010). Detección y comprensión de actitudes
sexistas: Importancia de la ideología de género. En S. de Lemus y E.
Ryan (Eds.), Coeducación. Propuestas para alcanzar la igualdad de
género desde las aulas (pp. 41-67). Granada: Universidad de Granada.
Ferrer, V. A., & Bosch, E. (2012). Aplicación y análisis del modelo
piramidal a la violencia contra las mujeres en el ámbito de la pareja.
Comunicación presentada en el Congreso Internacional para el impulso
de políticas de igualdad de mujeres y hombres, organizado por
Emakunde. Septiembre.
Ferrer, V. A., & Bosch. E. (2014a). Gender Violence as a Social Problem in
Spain: Attitudes and Acceptability. Sex Roles, 70(11-12), 506-521.
doi:10.1007/s11199-013-0322-z
Ferrer, V. A. & Bosch, E. (2014b). El papel de la misoginia en la violencia
contra las mujeres: nuevas propuestas explicativas. En M. N. Quiles, J.
F. Morales, S. Fernández y M. D. Morera (Eds.), Psicología de la
maldad. Cómo todos podemos ser Caín (pp. 123-162). Madrid: Grupo 5.
Ferrer, V. A., & Bosch, E. (2014c). Las expectativas de control en el
modelo piramidal de la violencia contra las mujeres y su relación con los
mandatos de género. En II Congreso Internacional Universitario:
Géneros, Feminismos y Diversidades (GEFEDI). Ponencias
presentadas el día lunes 2 de junio de 2014 (pp. 22-45). San José de
Costa Rica.
Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., & Navarro, C. (2010). Los mitos románticos en
España. Boletín de Psicología, 99, 7-31. Recuperado de
Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., Navarro, C., & Ferreiro, V. (2009a). Apuntes
sobre la vigencia de los mitos románticos en la sociedad española. En A.
Gil, G. Escrig y Á. Forcada (Coords.), Poder, poderes y
empoderamiento... ¿Y el amor? ¡Ah, el amor! (pp. 292-303). Castellón:
Fundación Isonomía. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universitat Jaume
I. Recuperado de https://www.uji.es/bin/publ/edicions/iso5c.pdf
Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., Navarro, C., & Ferreiro, V. (2009b). Amor y
violencia: su vigencia en el mito del amor romántico. Ponencia
presentada en el Simposia 'Violencia patriarcal hacia las mujeres y
psicología social' del XI Congreso Nacional de Psicología Social,
celebrado los días 1 a 3 de octubre de 2009 en Tarragona.
Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., Navarro, C., & Ferreiro, V. (2010). El mito
romántico de los celos y su aceptación en la sociedad española actual.
Apuntes de Psicología, 28(3), 345-392. Recuperado de
http://apuntesdepsicologia.es/index.php/revista/article/view/227
Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., Navarro, C., & Ferreiro, V. (2013). Los programas
de intervención para maltratadores en casos de violencia de género:
análisis de situación en España. II Congreso Internacional del IUEM.
Género y conocimiento en un mundo global: tejiendo redes. La Laguna,
25 a 27 de septiembre.
Ferreiro, V., Ferrer, V. A., Bosch, E., Navarro, C., & Blahopoulou, J.
(2015). Instrumentos para el análisis de los programas de intervención
con maltratadores en casos de violencia de género aplicados en España.
Journal of Feminist, Gender, and Women, Studies, 2. Recuperado de
https://revistas.uam.es/revIUEM/article/view/2223
Geldschläger, H. (2010). Els programes estatals d'atenció als homes
agressors. Jornada De Prevenció: El Treball Terapeutic Amb Homes
Que Maltracten. Palma.
Geldschläger, H., & Ginés, O (2013). Abordaje terapéutico de hombres que
ejercen violencia de género. FMC (Formación Médica Continuada en
Atención Primaria), 20, 89-99. Recuperado de
Geldschläger, H., Beckmann, S., Jungnitz, L., Puchert, R., Stabingis, A. J.,
Dully, C., Kraus, H., Logar, R., Dotterud. P. K., Lorentzen, J., &
Schweier, S. (2010). Programas europeos de intervención para hombres
que ejercen violencia de género: panorámica y criterios de calidad.
Intervención Psicosocial, 19(2), 181-190. Recuperado de
http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?pid=S113205592010000200009&script=sci_arttext&tlng=pt
Geldschläger, H., Ginés, D., & Ponce, O. (2009). Informe de evaluación
sobre programas de rehabilitación para hombres que maltratan
desarrollados en el ámbito europeo. Barcelona: Fundación IRES.
Ginés, O., Geldschläger, H., Nax, D., & Ponce, A. (2015). European
perpetrator programmes: a survey on day-to-day outcome measurement.
Studia Humanistyczne AGH, 14(2), 33-52.
doi:10.7494/human.2015.14.2.33-52
Hearn, J, Novikova, I., Pringle, K., Smidova, I., Jyrkinen, M., Iovanni, L.,
Arrnz, F., Kolga, V. Balkmar, D., & Wojtaszek, M. M. (2013). Studying
men’s violences: some key methodological principles in developing a
European Research Framework. Masculinities and Social Change, 2(1),
82-115. doi:10.4471/mcs.2013.22
Herrera, C. (2011). La construcción sociocultural del amor romántico.
Madrid: Fundamentos.
Herrera, M. C., Expósito, F., & Moya, M. C. (2012). Negative reactions of
men to the loss of power in gender relations: Lilith vs. Eve. The
European Journal of Psychology Applied to the Legal Context, 4(1), 1742. Recuperado de
http://crawl.prod.proquest.com.s3.amazonaws.com/fpcache/82b8abec5d
8e5f1d33c3ce7122e99fef.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJF7V7KNV2K
KY2NUQ&Expires=1454528950&Signature=4fFSnrkQM4S5znXxRa9i
1YGimFA%3D
Labonté, M.L. (2010). Hacia el amor verdadero. Barcelona: Luciérnaga
Lagarde, M. (1999). Acerca del amor: las dependencias afectivas.
Valencia: Associació de Dones Joves.
Lagarde, M. (2005). Para mis socias de la vida. Claves feministas.
Barcelona: Horas y Horas.
Leal, A. (2012). Dibujos y textos sobre el amor. Representaciones
adolescentes. Madrid: Editorial Académica Española.
Leal, A., & Nieto, R. A. (2007). Características y paradojas de una relación
de amor deseable. Un estudio con adolescentes. En V. A. Ferrer y E.
Bosch (Comps.), Los feminismos como herramientas de cambio social
(I): De la violencia contra las mujeres a la construcción del
pensamiento feminista (pp. 75-88). Palma: Universidad de las Islas
Baleares.
Ley Orgánica 1/2004 de Medidas de Protección Integral contra la Violencia
de Género. Boletín Oficial del Estado núm. 313, 42166-42197.
Lila, M. (2013). La intervención con hombres condenados por violencia de
pareja contra la mujer en España: investigación y avances en
intervención. Psychosocial Intervention, 22, 81-85.
doi:10.5093/in2013a10
Lila, M., García., A., & Lorenzo, M. V. (2010). Manual de intervención
con maltratadores. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia.
López, M. I. (2013). La construcción de la masculinidad y su relación con
la violencia de género. Comunitania, 5, 61-84.
doi:10.5944/comunitania.5.4
Luengo, T., & Rodríguez-Sumaza, C. (2009). El mito de la “fusión
romántica” y sus efectos en el vínculo de la pareja. Anuario de
Sexología, 11, 19-26. Recuperado de
http://europa.sim.ucm.es/compludoc/AA?articuloId=758753
Martínez, C., & Paterna, C. (2013). Masculinity ideologya and gender
equality: considering neosexismo. Anales de Psicología, 29(2), 558-564.
doi:10.6018/analesps.29.2.141311
Martínez-Benlloch, I. (2008). Introducción. En I. Martínez-Benlloch (Dir.),
Imaginario cultural, construcción de identidades de género y violencia:
formación para la igualdad en adolescentes (pp. 8-14). Madrid: Instituto
de la Mujer. Recuperado de
http://www.inmujer.gob.es/areasTematicas/estudios/serieEstudios/docs/i
maginarioCultural.pdf
Montero, A. (Coord.) (2009). Informe sobre criterios comunes para
programas de intervención reeducativa con hombres agresores en
violencia de género. Madrid: Ministerio de Igualdad. Manuscrito no
publicado.
Moya, M. C. (2004). Actitudes sexistas y nuevas formas de sexismo. En E.
Barberá y M. I. Martínez Benlloch (Coords.), Psicología y género (pp.
271-294). Madrid: Pearson.
Moya, M. C., Expósito, F., & Padilla, J. L. (2006). Revisión de las
propiedades psicométricas de las versiones larga y reducida de la Escala
sobre Ideología de Género. International Journal of Clinical and Health
Psychology, 6(3), 709-727. Recuperado de
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francisca_Exposito2/publication/2
8124229_Revisin_de_las_propiedades_psicomtricas_de_las_versiones_l
arga_y_reducida_de_la_Escala_sobre_Ideologa_de_Gnero/links/02e7e5
2d826760f128000000.pdf
Moya, M. C., Navas, M., & Gómez, C. (1991). Escala sobre la Ideología
del Rol Sexual. Libro de Comunicaciones del III Congreso Nacional de
Psicología Social (Vol. I, pp. 554-566). Santiago de Compostela.
Pescador, E. (2010). Reconstrucción de las masculinidades. En S. de Lemus
y E. Ryan (Eds.), Coeducación. Propuestas para alcanzar la igualdad
de género desde las aulas (pp. 101-126). Granada: Universidad de
Granada.
Rebollo, M. Á. (2010). Perspectivas de género e interculturalidad en la
educación para el desarrollo. En Género en la educación para el
desarrollo. Abriendo la mirada a la interculturalidad, pueblos
indígenas, soberanía alimentaria, educación para la paz (pp. 11-32).
Madrid: ACNUR: Las Segovias. Recuperado de
http://www.beatafilipina.org/G_nero.pdfDEFINITIVO.pdf
Redman, P. (2002). Love is in the air: romance and the everyday. En T.
Bennett y D. Watson (Eds.), Understanding everyday life (pp. 52-91).
Open University. Blackwell Publishing.
Rothman, E., Butchart, A., & Cerdá, M. (2003). Intervening with
perpetrators of intimate partner violence: a global perspective. World
Health Organization. WHO: Geneva. Recuperado de
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/resources/publications/e
n/intervening_full.pdf
Sampson, E. (1993). Celebrating the other. A dialogical account of human
nature. Londres: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Schäfer, G. (2008). Romantic love in heterosexual relationships: women’s
experiences. Journal of Social Sciences, 16(3), 187-197. Recuperado de
http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-16-0-000-000-2008Web/JSS-16-3-000-000-2008-Abst-Text/JSS-16-3-187-08-625-SchaferG/JSS-16-3-187-08-625-Schafer-G-Tt.pdf
Secretaría General de Instituciones Penitenciarias. (2005). Programa de
tratamiento en prisión para agresores en el ámbito familiar. Madrid:
Autor. Recuperado de
http://www.institucionpenitenciaria.es/web/export/sites/default/datos/des
cargables/descargas/Programa_de_tratamiento_en_prision_para_agresor
es_en_el_ambito_familiar_grupo_de_trabajo_sobre_violencia_de_gener
o.pdf
Secretaría General de Instituciones Penitenciarias. (2010). Violencia de
género. Programa de intervención para agresores (PRIA). Madrid:
Autor. Recuperado de
http://www.institucionpenitenciaria.es/web/export/sites/default/datos/des
cargables/publicaciones/Doc_Penitenc_7_Violencia_de_gxnero_Acc.pd
f
Tavora, A. (2007). El amor de pareja en la construcción de la identidad de
las mujeres. En Congreso Estatal “De las cosas de acogida a los
Centros de Atención Integral” (pp. 80-94). Madrid, Instituto de la
Mujer.
Wojnicka, K. (2015). Men, masculinities and physical violence in
contemporary Europe. Studia Humanistyczne AGH, 14(2), 15-32.
doi:10.7494/human.2015.14.2.15-32
Yela, C. (2000). El amor desde la psicología social. Ni tan libres ni tan
racionales. Madrid: Pirámide.
Yela, C. (2003). La otra cara del amor: mitos, paradojas y problemas.
Encuentros en Psicología Social, 1(2), 263-267.
Yuste, M., Serrano, M. A., Girbés, S., & Arandia, M. (2014). Romantic
love and gender violence clarifyinf misunderstandings through
communicative organization of the research. Qualitatye Inquiry, 20(7),
850-855.
Victoria A. Ferrer is Professor of Social Psychology in Department
of Psychology at University of Balearic Islands, Spain.
Esperanza Bosch is Professor of Basic Psychology in Department of
Psychology at University of Balearic Islands, Spain.
Contact Address: Direct correspondence to Victoria A. Ferrer, Edifici
Guillem Cifre, Campus UIB, Cra. de Valldemossa, km 7.5, 07122
Palma de Mallorca, email: [email protected]
[Escriba aquí]
The Role of Hegemonic Masculinity and Hollywood in the New
Korea
Richard Howson1
Brian Yecies1
1) University of Wollongong, Australia
To cite this article: Howson, R., & Yecies, B. (2016). The Role of
Hegemonic Masculinity and Hollywood in the New Korea. Masculinities and
Social Change, 5(1),52-69. doi: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1047
pp. 52-69
The Role of Hegemonic Masculinity
and Hollywood in the New Korea
University of Wollongong, Australia
Abstract
We argue that during the 1940s Hollywood films had an important role to play in the
creation of a postwar South Korean society based on the new global U.S. hegemony.
The connections between political and economic change in South Korea and sociocultural factors have hitherto scarcely been explored and, in this context, we argue
that one of the key socio-cultural mechanisms that supported and even drove social
change in the immediate post-war period was the Korean film industry and its representation of masculinity. The groundbreaking work of Antonio Gramsci on
hegemony is drawn on – in particular, his understanding of the relationship between
“commonsense” and “good sense” – as well as Raewyn Connell’s concept of
hegemonic masculinity. The character of Rick in the 1941 Hollywood classic
Casablanca is used to illustrate the kind of hegemonic masculinity favoured by the
U.S. Occupation authorities in moulding cultural and political attitudes in the new
Korea.
Keywords: South Korea, hegemony, hegemonic masculinity, film, Casablanca,
U.S. occupation of Korea
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1047
pp. 52-69
El Papel de la Masculinidad
Hegemónica en la Nueva Korea
University of Wollongong, Australia
Resumen
Nosotros argumentamos que durante los años 40 las películas de Hollywood tuvieron
un papel importante en la creación de la sociedad de post-guerra de Korea del Sud
cuya base era la recién hegemonía de Estados Unidos. Las conexiones entre el cambio
político y económico en Korea del Sud y los factores socio-culturales han sido hasta
ahora escasamente poco explorados y, en este contexto, nosotros planteamos que uno
de los factores socio-culturales clave que han apoyado y hasta dirigido el cambio
social en la post guerra fue la industria cinematográfica koreana y su representación
de la masculinidad. El revolucionario trabajo de Antonio Gramsci sobre la hegemonía
se apoya, en particular, en su interpretación de la relación entre el “sentido común” y
el “buen juicio”, así como en la concepción de masculinidad hegemónica de Raewyn
Connell. El papel de Rick en el año 1941 Holywood con el clásico Casablanca es
utilizado para ilustrar el tipo de masculinidad hegemónica favorecida por Estados
Unidos. Las instituciones de ocupación se encargan de moldear las actitudes culturales
y políticas en la nueva Korea.
Palabras clave: Corea del Sur, hegemonía, masculinidad hegemonía, película,
Casablanca, U.S. ocupación de Korea
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1047
54 Howson & Yecies – Hegemonic Masculinity and Hollywood
I
n June 1962, a United States Information Service (hereafter
USIS) report from Seoul to Washington, “Study of Korean
Attitudes Towards the United States”, indicated that a majority
of the population of South Korea (hereafter Korea) – over 72%
– displayed a general acceptance and appreciation of the United States
(hereafter U.S.). According to the study, this level of support for the U.S.
decisively outstripped Koreans’ appreciation of any other major nation and
its culture. For example, support for Great Britain and West Germany was
ranked at 24 and 19% respectively, while support for the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) was massively in the red at minus 64%. The
study’s ‘Concluding Note’ asserted that the finding of positive attitudes
toward the U.S. was notably significant because it was based on a “relatively
close relationship between the Koreans and Americans.” The Korean people
were not basing their judgment on stories or experiences relayed at second
or third hand, but rather for the first time “they were reflecting attitudes
formed as a result of actual contact with Americans and with the operation
of US policy in Korea” (Korean Survey Research Center, 1962 [our
emphasis]).
Several years later, a questionnaire run by the International Research
Associates called Project Quartet: An Opinion Survey Among Korean
Students (1966) – held by the United States Information Agency’s Office of
Records, revealed that while the majority of university students interviewed
accepted the cultural changes that had occurred in Korea since liberation
from Japanese occupation – 56% claimed to be very happy or fairly happy
with their own standard of living – the wider majority (83%) saw economic
instability and poverty as either the most important problem (58%) or the
second most important problem (25%) facing the nation. This data suggests
that in the 1960s young upper middle class Koreans were especially focused
on the nation’s economic life that was being moulded by the recent
achievement of capitalism and democracy. Whilst this cohort represented a
privileged group in terms of education level - i.e. around 5% of the population
at the time (National Statistics Office 1995: 80), their perceptions of the U.S.
as the international benchmark for both developments was important because
it showed a complex relationship in the making. Their attitudes confirmed
the findings of the 1962 study insofar as both showed evidence of an
Masculinities and Social Change 55
acceptance of the U.S. and its influence among these future community
leaders. For example, the later survey supported the view that the U.S. was
materialistic (63%) but also democratic (58%), and on a par with Korea itself
as a peace-loving nation (42% compared to 43% for Korea).
While different methodologies were adopted in the two surveys, both
were undertaken by professional bodies. In the 1962 study of Korean
attitudes, three questions devised by the USIS were incorporated into an
opinion survey conducted by the Korean Survey Research Center with the
assistance of the Statistical Advisory Group of the Surveys and Research
Corporation of Washington D.C. The survey was commissioned by a major
daily newspaper, Kyunghyang Shinmun. The three questions fielded by the
USIS sought to elicit Koreans’ attitudes toward nine foreign countries
including the U.S., aspects of America held in high regard by Koreans, and
those liked least. The study sample consisted of 3,150 people selected
randomly from voting lists and resulted in 2,724 complete interviews. On the
other hand, the 1966 survey of university students by International Research
Associates – Far East – also undertaken on behalf of the United States
Information Agency, comprised 1,010 students drawn from all disciplines
across four universities. Taken together, both sets of data offer a
representative sample of the Korean population and the cultural attitudes of
the time. More recent studies such as Ambivalent Allies? A Study of South
Korean Attitudes Toward the US (Larson, Levin, Baik & Savych, 2004) do
little more than reflect and confirm the findings of these studies from the
early to mid-sixties – that attitudes towards the nascent alliance and towards
the American people were overwhelmingly positive, if sometimes complex.
For Koreans, the U.S. had become the exemplar culture – the one that could
meet their aspirations for a steadily improving standard of living.
In this article, we seek to go back some twenty years before this data was
first collected to investigate what might be considered one of the
foundational moments in the creation of a new Western cultural sensibility
in Korea. This development in its turn became part of and helped to sustain
the new U.S. global hegemony. However, rather than exploring and
analyzing Korean politics and in particular its geopolitical history (which has
already been scrutinized in great detail), we argue that during the 1940s
particular hegemonic mechanisms based in civil society were equally
important in the creation of modern Korean society. Hitherto, however, the
connections between political and economic change on the one hand and
socio-cultural factors on the other have been relatively neglected in the
literature. In this context, we propose that one of the key socio-cultural
mechanisms that supported and even drove change in the immediate postwar period was the film industry. Most importantly, through the U.S.
occupation (1945-1948) Koreans were re-introduced to Hollywood films that
embodied a new Western sensibility. (Prior to being banned during the
Pacific War, hundreds of Hollywood films were exhibited across Korea (see
Yecies, 2008). In this respect, the new economic (capitalist) and political
(democratic) institutions introduced by the U.S., which the two surveys
discussed above indicated, had a considerable impact on Koreans but only go
part way to accounting for the transformation of Korean society during this
period. In explaining the socio-cultural mechanisms that helped change the
way Korean people thought about themselves, their practices and their
aspirations, both at the national and transnational level, film and the representation of gender, particularly the masculinity that it embodied was
crucial. In the context of the late authoritarian government era of the 1980s,
Kyung Hyun Kim (2004, p. 9) explains:
Just as Hollywood has used the Vietnam War as a springboard for what
Susan Jeffords describes as the “remasculinization of American
culture”, South Korean cinema renegotiated its traumatic modern
history in ways that reaffirm masculinity and the relations of dominance
... the need for masculine rejuvenation … ironically ended up affirming
the hegemonic political agenda rather than resisting it.
Two important points emerge from this statement. The first is that, in
many ways, the Korean film industry in the post-1980s era was ostensibly
concerned with the “remasculinization” of the Korean male, which in reality
was following in Hollywood’s footsteps (Kyung Hyun Kim, 2004, p. 10).
The second is that the creation of a new Korean national consciousness was
not an independent achievement with indigenous roots, but was contingent
on Korea’s alignment with the growing U.S. global hegemony in which film
had a significant part to play. We note that Kim’s concept can be applied to
an earlier period involving the “remasculinization” of the Korean male
during the U.S. occupation of Korea.
The Basis for a New Hegemony
In exploring the socio-political consequences of the use of film in the
hegemonic processes to which Korea was subject in the mid-twentieth
century, we begin by invoking the work of Antonio Gramsci on hegemony –
in particular, his notes on the relationship between “commonsense” and
“good sense” (see Gramsci, 1971, p. 323-326, p. 423) and, most importantly,
the transformation of the former into the latter. For Gramsci, the concept of
hegemony defines an ethico-political moment when the “commonsense”
ideas and practices of a particular group within a society are transformed and
assume political and then ethical authority as “good sense”. To build and then
retain hegemonic authority, the ideas and practices of the group in question
(in this case the U.S.) must merge the ethical or civil society component with
the coercive or political component to create a new formulation where “State
= political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the
armour of coercion” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 263). It is this extension of the
processes of building authority beyond political society and the state and into
the civil or “private” spheres (Gramsci, 1971, p. 12) so as to incorporate the
average citizen that David Harvey (2005) identified as crucial to the
acceptance of a new hegemonic moment. This explains why it was necessary
for the U.S. in Korea to extend its reach into the private sphere of
communities, families and individuals to cement its influence and control,
and why film became the crucial intellectual hegemonic mechanism in this
process of expansion.
This expansion was not based on a simple or straightforward mechanism.
It required what Gramsci (1971, p. 12) referred to as “intellectuals” whose
function within society is to ensure that the people come into contact with
and acquire the ethical sensibility and authority associated with the given
hegemony. Because for Gramsci intellectuals operate across civil society,
those who controlled the film industry were able to harness a significant
socio-cultural resource capable of not just touching the masses, but also able
to re-present a social model to which the people could now aspire. In this
way, film had the ability to disempower the “commonsense” or traditional
sensibilities of the Korean people and make them subaltern. Simultaneously,
the hegemonic expansion of principles such as democracy and capitalism, in
concert with the promotion of a new masculine identity, endorsed the new
U.S. global sensibility as “good sense”. This transformation is crucially
important to understanding the success or failure of a hegemony to develop.
As a quotidian ideology, commonsense demands conformity and reflects the
everyday life and beliefs of a particular social group that, in turn, expresses
its cherished cultural traditions. Inherent in the concept of commonsense is a
particular ethical (and sometimes political) legitimacy that provides the basis
for the identification of a particular group, and that in turn influences its
relationship to the hegemonic authority. However, for the U.S., the insertion
of their interests into Korean civil and political society required an immediate
engagement with the broader Korean culture in order to legitimate and
progress these interests and to present them as “good sense” rather than raw
domination. The data from the 1962 survey presented above, showing that
over 72% of respondents felt positively about the U.S., supports this
theoretical argument. What the U.S. was constructing in Korea was not a
structure of domination pure and simple, but hegemony, with its integration
of politics and civil society, as the basis for a socio-cultural transformation
from Korean “commonsense” to a new U.S./Korean “good sense” projected
on a global scale.
One consequence to be expected as the result of a hegemonic
transformation of this kind is that the society affected will move from
disunity to unity. However, any such imposition of authority and subsequent
unity is always provisional, and it is this that produces hegemony’s dynamic
character or, as Gramsci (1971, p. 182) called it, its “unstable equilibria”.
Furthermore, this dynamism and conflict always operates at the level of
“good sense” and therefore across both civil and political society. This brings
us to the relationship between politics and gender – the link between the
process of constructing and implementing a new political system and gender
order was important for Korea. Explaining this new gender order in greater
detail is a book-length project. Suffice it to say that as we have seen, these
changes were occurring at a time when Koreans aspired to leave poverty
behind them and create a new socio-political order where the principles of
democracy and capitalism were central. To do this required not only an
affirmation of “hegemonic principles” (see Howson, 2006) such as
democracy and capitalism, but the “remasculinization” of Korean men based
on an acceptance of the hegemonic masculinity of the West.
The Role of Hegemonic Masculinity in a New Hegemony
Raewyn Connell’s (1995, p. 76) conceptualisation of hegemonic masculinity
has proved particularly fruitful in our exploration of Korean gender
constructions. She focuses on two key ideas: first, that the masculinity it represents is the only legitimate way for men to think, aspire and act towards
creating an ideal masculinity; and second, that by thus building complicity
with the hegemonic ideal, men will secure the dominance of their own gender
while continuing the subordination of women. Connell here illustrates how a
particular construct (in this case masculinity) becomes a component part of a
broad culturally based hegemony and thus assumes a parallel authority to
more political and economic ideals such as democracy or capitalism. Connell
thus exposes the two key constitutive components of authority: legitimacy
and power. Power operates through the ability to subordinate a particular
group (or idea/practice) through the operation of particular configurations of
identification and practice that enable men to position themselves in relation
to it [hegemonic masculinity] (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832).
Thus, it may be that it was never crucial for Korean men to practice and
assume an identity based on an ideal Western masculinity. Rather, for a
majority of Korean men (and women as well), either as individuals or groups,
it could have been enough to adopt certain practices that would enable them
to align or position themselves in relation to what they increasingly perceived
as the legitimate form of masculinity – a strategy that would in turn enable
them to gain the social, political and economic advantages they sought.
While this process of alignment acts to modify the behaviour of men and
women, it is also a key contributor to the constitution of power with a given
society and, as a consequence, defines what is legitimate with respect to
issues of identification and identity. It is this ability to confer identity and the
associated advantages that men (and also women) seek to acquire that enables
hegemonic masculinity to assume the authority of an ideal within a particular
cultural situation or system. Describing gender-based behaviour in empirical
terms will only ever tell part of the story. The modernist narrative of rational
men practising a form of masculinity that will benefit them and the social
system of which they are a part must be re-thought in terms of the representation of a culturally authoritative or hegemonic masculinity. In Korea,
film became a key mechanism in perpetuating a gendered hegemony.
The Korean National-Popular Consciousness and American Celluloid
Dreams
After the Pacific War, and after Korea had been liberated from the Japanese,
the nation was separated at the 38th parallel. The southern and northern
halves of the peninsula were to be temporarily governed by the U.S. and the
Soviet Union, respectively, in order to facilitate the establishment of orderly
government. The U.S. interim government aimed to transform the southern
part of the Korean Peninsula into a “self-governing,” “independent,” and
“democratic” nation, while safeguarding the wellbeing of its people and
rebuilding their economic base1.
Within months of Japan’s defeat, and even as Lt. General John R. Hodge
and his U.S. Occupation forces were disarming the Japanese military,
American film distributors hurried their most popular films to the southern
half of the peninsula. Local cinemas were soon overwhelmed by a range of
Hollywood genre films that the United States Army Military Government in
Korea (hereafter USAMGIK, 1945–1948) believed had the allure to help the
country to transpose four decades of Japanese influence. Most of the films
screened during this period were talkies produced between the mid-1930s
and the early 1940s. Action-adventure and historical biopics were the most
common genres, followed by melodramas, screwball comedies, musicals,
Westerns, crime/detective thrillers, science fiction, and animated cartoons.
The graphics used in advertisements for these films, placed in local
newspapers, also attracted non-Korean-speaking U.S. troops—a welcome
secondary audience.
The USAMGIK film project was advanced under the auspices of General
Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
(hereafter SCAP), and with the advice of the Office of War Information’s
(OWI) Central Motion Picture Exchange (hereafter CMPE)2. During this
time, the CMPE – the American film industry’s East Asian outpost that
controlled the distribution rights for Hollywood films – and the USAMGIK’s
Motion Picture Section in the Department of Public Information (hereafter
DPI) contributed to the re-establishment of Hollywood’s dominance in
Korea, reprising the glory days of the early-to-mid 1930s (Yecies, 2005,
2008; Yecies & Shim, 2011)3. Many of the glamorous spectacle films that
the CMPE and DPI eased into the market, and which anchored the
USAMGIK’s propaganda operation in Korea, were used to evoke a sense of
personal, cultural, and political liberty. Instead of thinking and acting like
Japanese, Koreans were now expected to think about what “America” and
democracy in particular had to offer them. Hollywood films became key
vehicles for achieving this task4.
To ensure the unhindered dissemination of an “official” American
popular culture, the USAMGIK began purging the marketplace of
“unwanted” films under Ordinance No. 68, “Regulation of the Motion
Pictures,” enacted in mid-April 1946. Following this date, the requirement
for censorship approval from the USAMGIK became an effective way of
revoking the efforts of a small group of intellectuals who were attempting to
assert their independence by using film to catalyze debate on a range of social
and political issues, including communism. Some of the films exhibited by
this group included Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1936) and the Italian fascist
propaganda film Lo Squadrone Bianco (1936, aka The White Squadron), as
well as Julien Duvivier’s poetic realist gangster film Pépé le Moko (1937),
and a small number of films from China. However, under Ordinance No. 68
these and other foreign (and unauthorised U.S.) films were all rapidly
confiscated by the USAMGIK’s Department of Police – not because they
contained objectionable or obscene content, but because the DPI was
concerned to block films with communist sympathies. Simply put, this type
of intellectual activism interfered with the USAMGIK’s cultural
reorientation program. Although exhibitors promoted programs that mixed
features with shorts and live musical and/or theatrical performances, a surfeit
of Hollywood films left little room for the exhibition of non-American films
(including those from Korea): movies which might have offered alternative
views of “America” and American culture.
In April 1946, the first batch of authorised Hollywood films arrived in
Seoul via CMPE-Japan; it included Queen Christina (1933), Barbary Coast
(1935), The Devil Doll (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Romeo and
Juliet (1936), San Francisco (1936), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The
Buccaneer (1938), The Rains Came (1939), Golden Boy (1939), Honolulu
(1939), The Under Pup (1939), and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). These
films were chosen because they were “prestige pictures” in the sense that
they were “injected with plenty of star power, glamorous and elegant
trappings, and elaborate special effects” (Balio, 1995, p. 180) —attractive
packaging for presenting the core democratic reform values that the U.S.
government wanted for Korea5. As local film critics noted at the time, the
sheer spectacle and extreme “foreignness” of these Hollywood films enabled
audiences to take a holiday from the chaotic social, political, and cultural
change going on around them (Lee, 1946, p. 4). The positive portrayals of
modern Western city life in these films was an important facet of this process.
While the criteria used to select the American films distributed and exhibited
in southern Korea may appear random, many were Academy Award-winning
(or nominated) films such as In Old Chicago (1937), Boys Town (1938), You
Can’t Take It with You (1938), Suspicion (1941), The Sea Wolf (1941),
Random Harvest (1942), Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and Casablanca (1942).
In addition to having achieved popularity in the U.S., these films
represented well-dressed people scurrying along the skyscraper-lined, carfilled streets of Manhattan, Paris, and other modern cities. In these settings,
men took the lead in (exclusively) heterosexual coupling, which for the first
time in Korea depicted lovers embracing openly on larger-than-life studio
sets and natural locations alike. While many films contained strong moral
codas affirming the final victory of justice and the importance of hope, others
affirmed women’s (equal) rights, Christian belief, and patriotism. However,
these themes were often expressed through the depiction of acts of violence,
vigilantism, public disorder, deception, desperation, frailty, suicide, theft,
murder, killings, adultery, and corruption. But equally, men were shown
displaying toughness, competitiveness, and open and dominant
heterosexuality, as husbands and fathers motivated by a strong work ethic
that brought them and their families material success. Despite these
incongruous elements, Hollywood films were used to sway public opinion
toward democratic and capitalist ways of thinking and acting where men took
the leading roles. Such screenings were part of a deliberate campaign to
assimilate the Korean people into the new hegemony through exposure to
opinions, beliefs, attitudes and values that resonated with American
masculine culture. It was the very complexity of this new culture that could
be effectively re-presented through film and, most importantly in this
context, through the actions of male role models.
Towards a New Masculinity in Casablanca
A particularly complex and even controversial film shown during this time
was Casablanca, released in the U.S. a couple of months after the December
1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor and some 5 years later in Korea in May 1947.
The movie starred Humphrey Bogart in the lead male role. As told through
the protagonist Rick, a loner and owner of one of the most popular bars in
Nazi-occupied Casablanca, the story underlines the conflict between Rick’s
personal desires and his sense of a greater (national) good. The film shows
how Rick resolves this conflict through his decision to forego his true love
by helping his lover and her husband escape Morocco and take a stand against
the Nazis. Rick’s decision, revealed at the end of the film, mirrors the shift
in Western society’s basic values during the war and is, of course, expressed
primarily through the actions of men.
Connell (1987, p. 184-185) emphasises that the “winning of hegemony”
– the successful implementation of a new ethical and socio-political order –
relies on “the creation of models of masculinity that are quite specifically
fantasy figures” such as Bogart’s character Rick. In Casablanca, Rick is a
loner in a hostile environment with a complex and unhappy past into which
the viewer is offered only a brief window. However, in the context of his
relationship with the beautiful woman who walks back into his life there is
much pain and anguish that is reprised for the benefit of the audience. As
Rick says in the film, “[o]f all the gin joints, in all the towns in the world, she
had to walk into mine”. Nevertheless, woven through what is essentially a
love story wrapped around the themes of war, corruption and violence,
Bogart’s character shines with all the hegemonic characteristics demanded
by the new post-war cultural and gender order. Notwithstanding a brief
emotional breakdown, which is interlaced with controlled drunkenness and
aggression, Bogart emerges to take control of the situation by manipulating
the bad guys, making decisions for his lover and taking actions that will
ultimately ensure his independence and economic security.
Despite his fictional status, Bogart’s character incorporates the kind of
masculinity that according to Connell is crucial for the winning of hegemony.
In the character of Rick, positive themes of nationalism and patriotism
aligned to masculine toughness, intelligence and independence are
interwoven with cynicism, violence, contested loyalties, and sexual license.
Drawing on the work of David Grazian (2010), film critic Mark Snidero
(2013) argues
that the popularity of mass entertainment, such as the film Casablanca,
“can be explained primarily in terms of their social uses in generating
solidarity among individuals within large and anonymous
communities” (Grazian 2010, p. 25). This leads to the creation of
“shared feelings of identity” among members of a group on the
messages portrayed and espoused through the media and “can bring
people together by generating a sense of social solidarity” on any
particular topic (Grazian, p. 26-27). This is largely accomplished
because of the use of popular culture as a “resource of public reflection”
about various elements of the human condition or experience (Grazian,
p. 28).
In this context, Casablanca is a particularly useful and important example
of a film in which representations of masculinity as well as isolationism are
used to create a sense of solidarity and a shared identity among viewers –
here with the practical aim of defeating Nazi forces in Europe. By the time
Casablanca was shown in Korea, the Nazis had been defeated and the forces
of democracy and capitalism – and the hegemonic masculinity that had
contributed to the victory – were firmly entrenched. It mattered little that
Casablanca presented a complex canvas whose themes and motifs stood in
stark contrast to the traditional values to which Korean audiences were
accustomed6 although this would have limited the ability of Hollywood films
to assimilate Korean audiences in the direction of American values such as
democracy, capitalism and aggressive masculinity. Nevertheless, even
though Bogart’s character re-presented a fantasy masculinity in the Korean
context, Rick contained the qualities that Korean men could aspire to – or, in
the context of hegemonic masculinity theory, the idealised qualities against
which both Korean men and women could measure themselves and, in so
doing, build the kind of solidarity evident in the nascent social attitudes of
the 1960s.
Conclusion
In this article, we have argued for the importance of not only acknowledging
the impact of a national film industry on the creation of a national-popular
consciousness, but also of considering the complex intersections involved in
the construction of gender relations. More specifically, we have begun to
show through an analysis of a key Hollywood film of the 1940s how the
cultural construction of masculinity can be made to serve wider ends – in this
case, as a mechanism through which the U.S. could impose Western values
in order to create a particular kind of national-popular consciousness. In turn,
as our analysis of Casablanca suggests, these values were used in a wider
attempt to expand the U.S.’s own political and cultural hegemony in the
region.
This argument is confirmed through two key sets of data which were
produced almost twenty years after the impact of Casablanca and other
Hollywood films was first felt in Korea and which indicate an overall
acceptance of U.S. influence and its key hegemonic principles in particular.
While the hegemonic strategies behind the screening of these Hollywood
productions were not completely successful in terms of fostering total
assimilation, they made a significant contribution to a complex process of
integration between Korea and the U.S. that began with the USAMGIK’s
utilisation of Hollywood films as a tool to undo whatever ties of loyalty had
persisted following thirty-five years of Japanese occupation and a heavy diet
of colonial propaganda films. That is not to say that after 1945 creativity was
wholly denied to Korean filmmakers, who yearned for the opportunity to
make their own films in their own ways. Indeed, in several cases, Korean
nationals wrote scripts and directed films, such as Hurrah for Freedom (aka
Jayumanse, Choi In-gyu, 1946) and Ttol-ttol's Adventure (aka Ttol-ttol I- ui
moheom, Lee Gyu-hwan, 1946), in a spirit of experimentation and
independence. More attention is needed elsewhere on this dynamic topic and
the potential influence that Casablanca and other Hollywood films had on
such domestic Korean films and their re-presentation of masculinity.
As we can now see more clearly – particularly following the recent
discoveries of previously unknown colonial-era films, and the re-release of
post-liberation films on DVD by the Korean Film Archive – the films made
and exhibited during the U.S. occupation period embodied a wide array of
narrative techniques, aesthetic styles, and genre conventions. Nevertheless,
the policy direction set by the USAMGIK ensured that local audiences would
be exposed to exciting new images that embodied new ideas and ideals in
films such as In Old Chicago, You Can’t Take It with You, and Casablanca.
There is no doubt that these films fitted well with the USAMGIK’s larger
aims for the development of the country during what was anticipated to be a
speedy transition to economic stability and political autonomy.
Finally, this article shows that there is a very real and important
connection between politics and cinema that scholars of history, sociology
and culture would find helpful when examining the nature of national identity
and the development and impacts of the cinema industry. In this relationship,
we showed how politics and cinema are key elements in the creation of a
hegemony that in turn, illuminates the operation of gender and in particular
a hegemonic masculinity. In this way this Korean case study contributes to
an emerging area of research that follows Raewyn Connell’s (see 2007),
argument about the need to give priority, when studying masculinities,
culture and social change, and to the analysis of gender relations beyond the
Western paradigm. Although Asia can be said to exist on the periphery of the
West, through the processes of globalisation and transnationalisation no one
region or country can effectively lay claim to operating autonomously. Thus,
the continuing task of building knowledge about gender, gender relations and
hegemony demands that we open our understanding to these new frontiers of
knowledge.
Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge the support of the Korea Foundation and the Australia-Korea
Foundation, which made it possible to conduct archival and industry research for this project.
Special thanks go to Ae-Gyung Shim for her valuable assistance. This article builds upon some
of the research in: Yecies, B. & Shim, A. (2010). Disarming Japan’s Cannons with
Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S. Occupation, 1945-1948. The AsiaPacific Journal, 44,-3-10. Retrived from http://japanfocus.org/-brian-yecies/3437/article.html
Notes
1
Explicit details of these plans are found in General Headquarters, Commander-in-Chief,
United States Army Forces, Pacific, Summation No. 11: United States Army Military
Government Activities in Korea for the Month of August, 1946: 12–13; and Records of the
United States Department of State relating to the internal affairs of Korea, 1945–1949,
Department of State, Decimal File 895, Reel 5, “US role in Korea,” National Archives at
College Park, Maryland (hereafter cited as NARAII).
2 The OWI had been developed in the U.S. in mid-1942 to coordinate the mass diffusion of
information at home and abroad through multiple government departments and diverse
media formats. Through the publication of its Government Information Manual, the OWI
trained representatives from across the film industry to utilise both educational and
entertainment films as propaganda, that is, for promoting American notions of “freedom” in
both wartime and postwar conditions. In early 1946 the OWI and the Motion Picture Export
Association – Hollywood’s centralized industry trade body – formally coalesced as the
Central Motion Picture Exchange.
3 The chief role of the DPI was to impose film policy and oversee film censorship while
monitoring and moulding public opinion in relation to the U.S. and to democracy in general
in Korea. See “Operational Guidelines for the Distribution of O.W.I. Documentaries and
Industry Films in the Far East,” 22 December 1944, Records of the OWI, Records of the
Historian Relating to the Overseas Branch, 1942–1945, RG 208, Box 2, Entry 6B, NARAII.
4 In Germany, the U.S. launched a similar project aimed at transforming a former enemy into
a democratic country through motion pictures. As noted by Fay (2008, p. xix), Hollywood
films were seen as quintessential vehicles for disseminating “American” ideology as
“democratic products.”
5 In order to connect with local audiences, well-known Korean byeonsa (live narrators) were
recruited to introduce each film. Almost immediately, these first Hollywood films made a
splash in the marketplace as local audiences lapped them up with enthusiasm, whether or
not they understood them or appreciated the cultural values they contained. U.S. Embassy,
Seoul 1950, “Dispatch No. 657,” 2 January, U.S.-DOS, RG59, Decimal File 1945–49, Box
7398, NARAII.
6 The USAMGIK was well aware of the criticism directed at the undesirable elements found
in many of these films. According to one report from mid-1947 submitted to the U.S.
Department of State, a committee of American educators that had conducted a formal survey
of local attitudes in Korea was disappointed at the CMPE’s failure to offer appropriate films
to Korean audiences. Report of the Educational and Informational Survey Mission to Korea,
20 June 1947, pp. 35–36. Dept of State, Decimal File 1945–49, RG59, Box 7398. NARAII.
References
Balio, T. (1995). Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business
Enterprise, 1930–1939. Vol. 5, History of American Cinema Series. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Connell, R. (1987). Gender and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell, R. (1995). Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Connell, R., & Messerschmidt, J. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity:
Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829-859. doi:
10.1177/0891243205278639
Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global
Dynamics of Knowledge. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Fay, J. (2008). Theaters of occupation: Hollywood and the reeducation of
postwar Germany. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
Grazian, D. (2010). Mix It Up: Popular Culture, Mass Media and Society.
New York: W.W. Norton.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Howson, R. (2006). Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London:
Routledge
International Research Associates. (1966). Project Quartet: An Opinion
Survey Among Korean Students, 1966. Records of the United States
Information Agency, Record Group 306, Box 8.
Korean Survey Research Center. (1962). Study of Korean Attitudes
Towards the United States, USIS-Seoul to USIA-Washington, 18 June
1962, Records of the United States Information Agency, Exhibits
Division, Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries, 1955-67,
Record Group 306, Box 20.
Kyung Hyun Kim. (2004). The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Duke
University Press.
Larson, E., Levin, N., Baik, S., Savich, B. (2004). Ambivalent Allies?
A Study of South Korean Attitudes Toward the U.S. Santa Monica, CA:
RAND Corporation. Retrieved from
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2005/RA
ND_TR141.pdf
Lee Tae-woo. (1946, October 31). How Are We Going to Watch U.S. Films
(Miguk Yeonghwa-Reul Eoteoke Bol Geosinga), Kyunghyang Ilbo.
National Statistics Office. 1995. Trace of Korea Looking Through
Statistics. Seoul: National Statistics Office.
Yecies, B. (2005). Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea:
Profiteering from Hollywood’s First Golden Age, 1926–1936. Journal
of Korean Studies, 10(1), 59–84. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41490209
Yecies, B. (2008). Sounds of Celluloid Dreams: Coming of the Talkies to
Cinema in Colonial Korea. Korea Journal, 48(1), 160–197. Retrieved
from https://ekoreajournal.net/issue/index2.htm?Idx=420#
Yecies, B. & Shim, A. (2010). Disarming Japan’s Cannons with
Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S. Occupation, 19451948. The Asia-Pacific Journal, 44,-3-10. Retrived from
http://japanfocus.org/-brian-yecies/3437/article.html
Yecies, B., & Shim, A. (2011). Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948.
New York: Routledge.
Richard Howson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology Program at the
University of Wollongong, Australia.
Brian Yecies is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies Program at the
University of Wollongong, Australia.
Contact Address: Direct correspondence to Richard Howson,
Building 19, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue
Wollongong, NSW 2522, email: [email protected]
Dialogic Leadership and New Alternative Masculinities:
Emerging Synergies for Social Transformation
Gisela Redondo-Sama1
1) University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
To cite this article: Redondo-Sama, G. (2016). Dialogic Leadership and
New Alternative Masculinities: Emerging Synergies for Social
Transformation. Masculinities and Social Change, 5(1), 70-91. doi:
10.17583/MCS.2016.1929
pp. 70-91
Dialogic Leadership and New
Alternative Masculinities: Emerging
Synergies for Social Transformation
Gisela Redondo-Sama
University of Cambrige, United Kingdom
Abstract
Leadership plays a relevant role in the improvement of organisations, and its study
has influenced analysis of the dynamics of social change in current societies. There
is a trend toward studying leadership by considering issues such as its distribution or
transformative dimension. According to recent developments in this field, dialogic
leadership involves the entire community in the process of creation, development
and consolidation of leadership practices. However, less is known about the role of
dialogic leadership in relation to the men´s movement and masculinities, particularly
in the field of the New Alternative Masculinities (NAM). This article presents the
results of a qualitative case study developed in an adult school that is part of the
Learning Communities project and illustrates existing synergies between dialogic
leadership and the NAM movement. The article explores how the school have
influenced transformative processes beyond its organisation and have contributed to
increase the visibility of the NAM movement. Furthermore, evidence is presented
regarding the manner in which dialogic leadership contributes to create an
environment in which emerging leadership practices of the community in relation to
the NAM movement have flourished.
Keywords: dialogic leadership, New Alternative Masculinities, community
participation
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1929
pp. 70-91
Liderazgo Dialógico y Nuevas
Masculinidades Alternativas:
Sinergias Emergentes para la
Transformación Social
Gisela Redondo
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Resumen
El liderazgo tiene un papel importante en la mejora de las organizaciones y su
estudio ha influido los análisis de las dinámicas del cambio social en las sociedades
actuales. Hay una tendencia a estudiar el liderazgo considerando aspectos como su
distribución o su dimensión transformadora. En línea con desarrollos recientes en
este ámbito, el liderazgo dialógico implica a toda la comunidad en el proceso de
creación, desarrollo y consolidación de las prácticas de liderazgo. Sin embargo, se
conoce menos el papel del liderazgo dialógico en relación a los movimientos de
hombres y masculinidades, concretamente en el ámbito de las Nuevas
Masculinidades Alternativas (NAM). Este artículo presenta los resultados de un
estudio de caso cualitativo desarrollado en una escuela de adultos que es parte del
proyecto de Comunidades de Aprendizaje e ilustra sinergias existentes entre el
liderazgo dialógico y el movimiento NAM. El artículo explora cómo la escuela ha
influido en procesos de transformación más allá de su organización y ha contribuido
a incrementar la visibilización del movimiento NAM. Además, se presentan
evidencias sobre cómo el liderazgo dialógico contribuye a crear un contexto en el
que han surgido prácticas de liderazgo de la comunidad vinculadas al movimiento
NAM.
Palabras clave: liderazgo dialógico, Nuevas Masculinidades Alternativas,
participación de la comunidad
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1929
72 Gisela Redondo-Sama – Dialogic Leadership & NAM
O
ver the years, leadership research has increasingly influenced
the study of the dynamics of social change and transformation
in democratic societies (Goethals, Sorenson & MacGregor
Burns, 2004). From different fields of knowledge such as
sociology, political science, education or gender studies, an analysis of the
key elements underpinning leadership practices is at the core of very
diverse contributions in this field. Burns (1978) introduced the concept of
“transformational leadership” and its influence on the fields of political
leadership and organisational psychology among other domains. Ganz
(2011) addressed ways in which the public can mobilise to demand political
change by enhancing “public narratives”. Day (2000) reviewed the different
contexts in which leadership development expands the creation of social
capital in organisations. Furthermore, the concept of distributed leadership
(Gronn, 2002; Spillane, Halverson & Diamond, 2004) revealed patterns of
interdependence and coordination of agents in educational settings. In
addition, leadership research also has included inspiring studies analysing
the role of women and men to lead change and the impact of being
identified as female or male leadership (Johnson, Murphy, Zewdie &
Reichard, 2008).
Across the world, there are emerging forms of leadership linked to the
men’s movement and masculinities that have been analysed in terms of the
cultural problematisation of men and boys, the politics of the men´s
movements and the social construction of masculinities, among other
elements (Conell, 2005). Furthermore, institutions such as the Commission
on the Status of Women highlight the role of men and boys in achieving
gender equality, paying special attention to the relevance of leadership by
political leaders, traditional leaders, business leaders or community and
religious leaders (2004). In fact, the synergies between the men´s
movements and their responses to gender issues and feminism demonstrate
the ways in which this relationship has existed since the late nineteenth
century (Kimmel, 1987). The role of dialogue in such synergies is of
particular interest among scholars and continues to spur discussions in
masculinities studies (Elias & Beasley, 2009) and related fields.
By the end of the twentieth century, the importance of dialogue in
understanding transformative processes in our societies underpins many
theoretical and empirical works in the social sciences. Accordingly, the
dialogic turn in societies and the social sciences (Flecha, Gómez &
Puigvert, 2003) illuminates the ways in which the analysis of dialogue
contributes to a deepening comprehension of social reality. This
contribution includes the role of the human agency and the structures that
either favour or hamper dialogue, which provides an inspiring framework
of analysis to advance leadership research. Consistent with this approach,
the role of dialogue in diverse leadership conceptualisations is linked to the
improvement of organisations (Mazutis & Slawinski, 2008) and its
relevance for social justice (Shields, 2004). The theoretical contribution at
the core of this article is dialogic leadership, which is defined as the process
by which leadership practices of all the members of the community are
created, developed and consolidated (Padrós & Flecha, 2014). In the
process of leading, very diverse members of the community can exercise
their leadership, share knowledge and build capacities in a collaborative
environment. However, less is known about the role of dialogic leadership
in the analysis of the men´s movements and masculinities, particularly in
the New Alternative Masculinities (Flecha, Puigvert & Ríos, 2013).
This article explores the synergies between dialogic leadership and the
New Alternative Masculinities (NAM afterwards) in La Verneda-St. Martí,
an adult school led by two associations and that was the first educational
Spanish experience published in Harvard Educational Review (Sánchez,
1999). By analysing dialogic leadership in relation to the NAM movement
in this context, the aim of the article is to identify ways in which the school
contributes to increase the visibility of the NAM movement, and how
dialogic leadership enhances the dynamics of change beyond the school.
The Case Study: La Verneda-Sant Martí
La Verneda-Sant Martí school is located in Barcelona and is surrounded by
a neighbourhood that, during the 1970's, was particularly well known for its
claims of achieving better living conditions and public services. By
mobilising the community, one of the claims was related to improved
educational opportunities, because the population living in that community
had a high percentage of illiterate people and a lack of academic
backgrounds. In 1978, Ramon Flecha garnered the support of civil
organisations in the neighbourhood to create an adult school, which was
eventually founded (Giner, 2013).
The school is based on an organisational model in which the participants
in the school are the key actors in the decision-making bodies through their
involvement in two associations: Agora, with 466 members, and Heura,
with 369 members. The Agora association is composed of both men and
women, while only women are members of the Heura association because it
addresses primarily gender issues. One of the key elements that
characterised both associations is their involvement in social and cultural
projects in the neighbourhood. In so doing, the school has always extended
its influence beyond its organisational boundaries by promoting social
participation in very diverse civil society organisations. In fact, in 1987 this
relationship was strengthened because of the creation of VERN, an
umbrella of NGOs, which facilitates networking activities among the civil
organisations located in the neighbourhood.
Over the years, the mobilisation and participation of the community in
the school has increased significantly. The school is open daily from
Monday to Sunday. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that all the
courses and activities are free. This is possible because of the more than
200 volunteers involved in the participation of more than 1.800 persons per
year in the school's very diverse activities. On any given Saturday morning,
it is not unusual to find students attending technology courses or preparing
for university entrance examinations.
La Verneda-Sant Martí is the first school of the Learning Communities
project with more than 190 participating schools that is being expanded to
Latin America and other parts of the world. Schools as learning
communities have been recommended by the European Commission as a
successful model in education because of its contribution to the
improvement of school performance and social cohesion through the
development of successful educational actions (Flecha, 2015). Furthermore,
it has been highlighted as an effective measure to address the challenge of
youth employment (Hawley, Hall & Weber, 2012).
Many authors around the world have visited La Verneda-Sant Martí
school to learn about the experience and the reasons for its success.
Courtney Cazden, Emeritus Professor at Harvard University mentioned: “I
am so happy to visit La Verneda, and I am very impressed with all that you
are doing, and the dialogic way you are doing everything”, Carol D. Lee,
from Northwestern University (USA) and vice-president of the AERA
(American Educational Research Association) highlighted: “Your example
is inspiring and uplifting. Your work forms the fundamental basis for
democratic participation and leadership. In our increasingly diverse and
interdependent world, what you do is a model for us all. I have seen much
to show when I return to Chicago”, and Pun Ngai, professor at the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University noted: “I have learned a lot in this centre. It is
a real centre addressing the services to the community and at the same time,
people from the community manage it. It makes sense to come here to
inspire ideas”. These are some of the quotations from renowned authors
about La Verneda-Sant Martí.
The relevance of this school on the international level, the gender
dimension of the school organisation, and its impact in terms of leadership
for social change, community participation and social transformation, has
provided an excellent contextual framework upon which to develop a case
study on dialogic leadership and the NAM movement.
Leadership, Dialogic Leadership and NAM
This article is based in the scientific developments that strengthen the
relationship between leadership and masculinities. Particularly, the most
relevant concepts framing this article are the theoretical contribution of
dialogic leadership and the definition of the New Alternative Masculinities.
In addition, the paper provides supportive evidence. In this section, each of
these three major developments in the field of leadership and masculinities
is reported.
Increasing the understanding of the relationship between leadership
and masculinities
A body of scientific literature has focused on the relationship between
leadership and masculinities. One of the most cited works addressed the
issue of the existing leader stereotypes and to what extent such stereotypes
are masculine (Koeing, Eagly, Mitchell & Ristikari, 2011). In particular, the
authors reported the results of a meta-analysis examining the extent to
which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine, while also
considering female leader stereotypes. The authors demonstrated that
stereotyped leaders are less masculine in educational organisations
compared with other domains. This result provides insights into the
influence of education on reducing stereotypes and the potential capacity to
foster change, regardless of individual preconceived characteristics. In
addition, the authors discussed the implications of prejudice against women
leaders, thereby addressing gender issues in a broad sense.
Masculinity and work has been a key issue in some contributions that
include a leadership dimension. Research evaluating the experiences of men
in female-dominated occupations has reported on the indirect effect of
leadership assumptions (Simpson, 2004). A study conducted by Simpson
was based on interviews with male workers from occupational groups that
included librarians, cabin crews, nurses, and primary school teachers. As in
the previous work, the educational domain was relevant in the analysis of
masculinities and its relationship to leadership. One of the results was that
men benefited as a result of an assumed authority effect of their leadership.
In addition, the author described the dynamics of maintaining and
reproducing masculinities in the framework of non-traditional work
settings.
The occupational work of men in nurseries is at the core of Brown´s
contribution involving the re-evaluation of masculinities and gender (2009).
In this contribution, the author discussed the notion of being a man in
nursing taking into account the socio-political context in which the
profession exists. Critical analysis of this topic revealed that men are
promoted into leadership roles more readily and earn more financially. This
is one way in which leadership research analyse particular topics related to
masculinities.
The situations in Denmark and Indonesia are relevant to the existing
scientific literature regarding masculinities and leadership. Leadership was
linked to literature about men and masculinities to develop an analysis of
the narratives of Danish male leaders (Madsen & Albrechsten, 2008). One
of the main research implications resulting from the analysis in Denmark
was that “while transformational leadership is most often introduced as
being based on feminine and participative values, it should not be forgotten
that male elements of leadership are still inherent in the concept, and
generally in leadership of the 2000s” (p. 343). In the case of Indonesia,
Nilan analysed three types of contemporary young masculinities, evaluating
their profiles and the new forms of cultural leadership (2009). The authors
concluded that cultural leadership is still a configuration of hegemonic
masculinity.
Dialogic Leadership
As previously stated, the role of dialogue tends to underpin many
theoretical and empirical works in social sciences, in line with the dialogic
turn of societies (Flecha, Gómez & Puigvert, 2003). Furthermore, there are
different leadership approaches that highlight dialogue as being crucial to
building and consolidating leadership practices (Bennet, Wise, Woods &
Harvey, 2003; Pont, Nusche & Moorman, 2008). The question of positions
(Frost, 2012) is also linked to the dialogic dynamics underpinning many
leadership conceptualisations. In this sense, these contributions resonate
with dialogic dynamics of change in societies, and they are in line with new
forms of understanding the organisations' systems. In this framework,
recent research on leadership has defined a relationship between leadership
and the surrounding educational communities that overcomes leadership
approaches embedded within the school walls. Consistent with this
framework, dialogic leadership is defined as the process by which
leadership practices of all the members of the educational community are
created, developed and consolidated (Padrós & Flecha, 2014). In this
process, very diverse members of the community exercise their leadership,
including teachers, students, families, nonteaching staff, volunteers and
other members of the community. Sharing knowledge and building
capabilities together, dialogic leaders collaborate to create an environment
in which new forms of leadership may flourish from the grassroots.
New Alternative Masculinities (NAM)
The New Alternative Masculinities are represented by men who combine
attraction and equality and generate sexual desire among women (Flecha,
Puigvert & Rios, 2013). Being inspired by Gomez´s book “Radical Love”
and related research, the authors defined three NAM characteristics: self-
confidence, strength and courage as strategies to confront negative attitudes
from the Dominant Traditional Masculinities (DTM) and explicit rejection
of the double standard. Furthermore, the authors highlighted the role of
NAM in the fight against gender violence together with women, and the use
of language of desire when referring to them. To define the NAM, the
authors emphasised the existence of two other masculinities: Dominant
Traditional Masculinities (DTM) and the Oppressed Traditional
Masculinities (OTM). The authors argued that both of these masculinities
perpetuate violence against women and illustrate how the perpetuation of
the traditional heterosexual model of masculinity upon gender violence can
be overcome.
Within the framework of the NAM theoretical contribution, RodríguezNavarro, Ríos, Racionero & Macías (2014) developed case studies
analysing communicative acts with the aim of identifying those that
enhance NAM and prevent gender violence. The methodological level was
at the core of their contribution, in which they use the communicative
methodology to expand the analysis of the interactions and non-verbal
language in this domain. Furthermore, some research has reported on the
influence of male attractive models in adolescence (Padrós, 2012), also
using a communicative orientation during the entire research process.
Methods
The data for this article was obtained entirely in La Verneda-Sant Marti
school, in which successful educational actions have been implemented for
more than 20 years. These actions were identified, defined and analysed in
the INCLUD-ED project, the only research in social sciences selected by
the European Commission in the list of the 10 most successful
investigations in Europe (European Commission, 2011). According to the
INCLUD-ED research results, the successful educational actions
demonstrate improved academic results and social relationships in the
diverse contexts where they are implemented, from early childhood to adult
education. These actions have achieved scientific, social and political
impact (Flecha, 2015). These are dialogic literary gatherings or interactive
groups (Valls & Kyriakides, 2013).
The communicative methodology was used in the fieldwork. This
methodology is based in the construction of meaning through egalitarianism
between the people at the core of the research and researchers. In a sense, it
provides an effective response to how to develop research “with” rather
than “on”. The communicative methodology has been shown to achieve
scientific, political and social impact. This methodology is recognised by
the European Commission (2010). Furthermore, the journal Qualitative
Inquiry has published two special issues focusing on this methodology
(Gómez, Puigvert & Flecha, 2011; Puigvert, 2014).
Data collection and analysis
For the research purposes of this article, documentary sources were
exploited through a comprehensive bibliographical review before the
development of interviews. The selection of participants was conducted
according to two criteria. First, a priority was to develop interviews of both
men and women to have a better understanding of the visibility of the NAM
movement from different gender perspectives. As a result, four men and
two women were interviewed. Second, to identify the synergies between the
school and the NAM movement, different profiles of men were interviewed
from volunteers to staff members with diverse ages and socioeconomic
levels.
The questions addressed to the interviewees had two main sections
along with an introduction to obtain an overview of the participant’s
profiles. To analyse the dialogic leadership practices occurring in the school
in relation to the NAM movement, some questions were focused on the
process that led men to be involved in the movement. In so doing, it was
possible to look at some of the elements that enabled men to lead change.
To identify how the school enabled the visibility of the NAM movement,
other questions focused on the concrete actions in the school that
contributed to such visibility, raising awareness of the impact of the
movement in the school community and beyond. The ethics dimension of
the research was included in the entire process, specifically ensuring the
anonymity of the participants.
The data resulting from the interviews was reviewed electronically
before proceeding with an inductive analysis. The main insights of the
participants were selected, coded and separated depending on different
categories previously defined. Following the communicative methodology,
the data analysis included the exclusionary and transformative dimensions.
The exclusionary dimension considered the factors that implied barriers to
developing dialogic leadership in a way that supported the participation of
men from La Verneda-Sant Martí school in the NAM movement.
Conversely, the transformative dimension included the factors that
facilitated the development of dialogic leadership to enable participation.
The analysis and findings are organised according to the most relevant
key issues resulting from the interviews. As explained, the data analysis
was conducted in line with the ethical dimension of European research. All
the names are fictitious, ensuring anonymity. The excerpts have been
translated into English.
Leading change, enabling transformation
The main findings examined ways in which the dialogic leadership
underpinning the school enables men to participate not only in the school
but also in the NAM movement. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis
demonstrated an increase in visibility of this movement among men and
women in the school. This occurred as a result of a strong community
participation in the school that allowed diverse agents from the
neighbourhood to play a role in transformative processes. The dialogic
leadership exercised in the school is linked to transformative processes and
demonstrates the capacity of a diverse group of people to lead change.
An overview of the participants´ profiles
The diversity of people involved in La Verneda-Sant Martí school is one of
the most relevant characteristics that has been sustained over years. This
heterogeneity of profiles also existed among the men and women
interviewed, some of whom had been involved with the school for more
than 10 years and others who had less experience. These individuals had
been involved in the school life by leading different activities, such as
language learning including spoken Spanish, given that the migrant
population in the neighbourhood had increased in recent years.
Furthermore, technology lessons were also common activities led by men.
Men had also been involved in more than one activity linked to learning.
A common pattern is the participation of men in school activities that
involve adult students and that are not always directly linked to learning
processes. For example, activities are often conducted outside of the
classrooms. For instance, each month the school organises a meeting that is
open to all the participants, volunteers and other community members,
including the staff members of the school. This meeting is devoted to in
depth discussions of a particular topic and how it should be addressed in
school life. In some cases, an invited speaker introduces the topic to be
further discussed. Víctor describes his experience as follows:
I have always participated in preparing the access to the university or
other kinds of exams. Also I attended concrete sessions and in general,
I have participated in all the annual meetings. I have attended the
monthly meetings and at some point, I led the organisation of some of
them.
Therefore, in the process of defining the participant´s profiles, it was
possible to identify processes that enable dialogic leadership in the context
of the school.
Dialogic leadership in La Verneda-Sant Martí and the NAM movement
The decisions taken in the school are shared among the different members
of the school community. In so doing, the dialogic leadership is exercised
through the involvement of the staff, volunteers or participants in the
learning processes with other community members. It is important to
highlight that, according to the pedagogical principles of the school, the
voices of those who are less listened to in public are prioritised. This
enables dialogic leadership to grow. Thus, several opportunities for
dialogue are created to reach agreements on how to improve the school, its
development and the possibilities offered to the neighbourhood. All the
interviews identified similar ways of ensuring that dialogue is underpinning
the relationship between the people engaged in the school and the decisionmaking process. Joel explains that when leadership does not necessarily
belong to an individual's personal characteristics, any person is capable of
leading. Carolina describes the increase that occurred in leadership over
time.
Joel: All of us can lead equally. It is not usual to find that the same
people lead.
Carolina: A few years ago, some people only participated in meetings
because they thought that they did not belong to them. Now, they
participate a lot in the decision-making processes.
The male interviewees changed their views about the different roles and
responsibilities in the school. Understanding their role in leadership opened
their minds to the possibilities of fostering change by involving very
diverse people and enabling the community to be on board. From their
responses, it is clear that the leadership became non-hierarchical and more
democratic, a view that is coherent with the current developments in the
field of leadership research. In addition, sharing knowledge among the
community also enabled dialogic leadership.
Gabriel: Before my involvement in the school, I had the idea that the
organisations were driven basically with an authority, having a strong
leader that imposed on the others the way to do things. If this did
happen, I thought that the organisation would be chaotic. With regards
to the responsible person, I had the idea that it was someone alone in
her room making decisions. After knowing La Verneda-Sant Martí
school, I have noticed that another model of leadership in
organisations is possible, a more democratic, human and efficient one.
Also, it is a model in which people with responsibilities can be very
friendly without losing their leadership role.
The impact of participating in the school reaches other social networks,
including the involvement in the NAM movement. Beyond their individual
commitments to the school, the men develop and share amongst themselves
a capacity to lead change in other social domains. Thus, the school allows
networks to be created among participants, thereby supporting
transformative processes. The interviews provided evidence that
participation in the school is linked to an exercise of democracy and the
meaning behind the term. Furthermore, it addresses the creation of
meaning, one of the seven principals of dialogic learning (Flecha, 2000),
which underpins the school life.
Gabriel: This is a unique project that favours the creation of meaning.
When you start to do things on the basis of their meaning, you can be
involved in other areas.
Víctor: I have learned that it is possible to participate and it is good to
contribute, and it is possible to contribute in different areas. I have
learned what democracy means and how to put it into practice.
One of the crucial findings was the extent of knowledge that the men
who were interviewed possessed about the NAM movement and their
implementation of this knowledge at different times. Because they
collaborated at various time points (2014, 2013, 2008 and 2007), their
overall ability to lead change in this field has varied although they shared
common concerns, beliefs and insights. Furthermore, they recognise that
the NAM movement is not just a movement of men to claim their rights, it
also enables the creation and development of further changed.
Since participating in the school, the men are more supportive of each
other's ability to make decisions, to lead change and to know more about
what is going in relation to the school and the surrounding neighbourhood.
By sharing areas of dialogue, it is very common among the people who
were interviewed to know and be in touch with other men participating in
the NAM movement. An important observation is that the diversity among
the men is another characteristic in this school. Héctor reports that the
school clearly was a key factor that influenced his involvement in the NAM
movement, and he knew many other men who had the same experience.
Héctor: I know many volunteers in the school who are active in the
NAM movement. In fact, my participation in the school was the
reason why I started to know friends who were volunteers and enabled
me to be linked to this movement.
Making visible the NAM movement in the school
Dialogic leadership in the school supports the NAM movement.
Additionally, the participation of men in the NAM movement increases the
visibility of their actions and initiatives in the school. Therefore, the
relationship works in both directions and is equally reinforced: from the
school to the NAM movement and from the NAM movement to the school.
When we inquired about the influence of the NAM movement in the
school, one of the interviewees responded in a very clear and meaningful
way.
Joel: I think that both things have been mutually reinforcing one
another.
There are several examples that illustrate this synergy in different ways,
all of which demonstrate that the dialogic leadership helped to raise issues
of masculinities and gender in public discussions. Moreover, in some cases,
the impact of participating in both arenas is felt on both a social and
personal level.
Joel: I have had the change to deepen into the school values from a
masculinities perspective, in many cases dealing with issues related to
prevent gender violence.
Héctor: It has allowed me to be more confident in general and also to
be able to manage conflicts and take action to address them. In a
sense, also to be more happy by collaborating!
The school is a place to meet. As previously mentioned, the learning
activities are at the core of the school's aim, but to support learning, there
are very diverse meetings with the people composing the different groups
of the school (access to the university, literary courses, language…).
Additionally, because the school embraces the dialogic leadership, it
enables and supports other social agents to be part of school life. This is
favoured by the fact that the building in which the school is located is a
civic centre, with social services, a nursery and other associations. In one of
the interviews, it is highlighted that the NAM movement asked for
permission to meet at the school because it is opened daily.
Carolina: Some people involved in an association of new
masculinities are participants or volunteers in the school. Therefore,
because they know that the school is open to the neighbourhood, those
guys asked for a room in the school to have meetings on Saturdays.
As a result, I have noticed that the meetings are held there and I have
seen people from the school or outside the school attend.
The topic of the new masculinities is quite recent but of great interest in
the school, because it is a response to increasing debates in society about
gender, masculinities and related issues. The public discussion around these
topics has changed over time. This was one of the questions addressed with
the interviewees. The aim was to compare the current debates around the
issue of new masculinities with previous experience at secondary school
and at work. In all the cases, there was agreement that the masculinities
were not a topic of discussion in previous areas of socialisation. However,
the school became the starting point for discussion of this topic.
Gabriel: Neither in my secondary school nor in my current work did
people talk about the new masculinities. I started to know and discuss
this in La Verneda-Sant Martí school.
There are several examples illustrating that men involved in the school
have led or contributed to the leadership behind changes that promoted
visibility of the NAM movement. This leadership flourished because of the
role of the community in La Verneda-Sant Martí school and its dialogic
leadership approach. The people who were interviewed explained the
organisation of annual events, the participation in the platform against
violence against women or video forums to discuss concrete topics. In a
sense, the movement addressed a diversity of issues and concerns in
relation to masculinities and gender issues. Two of the people interviewed
told us about these different activities.
Víctor: For example, we supported and participated in the platform
against gender violence. Also, when there is a demonstration against
gender violence in the neighbourhood, we have participated not only
as a school members but also as members of the NAM movement.
Héctor: We have led video forums about the NAM movement, some
talks and a workshop with brief clips from films to discuss and reflect
on the topic. Also, we led change when some volunteers were aware
of the potential participants in their classrooms that could be
interested in joining the NAM movement.
The NAM movement has the support of diverse women also involved in
La Verneda-Sant Martí school. In the interviews, they highlighted the
relationship between gender issues and the NAM movement. In particular,
they were aware of the relevance of the NAM movement in supporting the
fight against gender violence. In fact, this was one of the initial insights
shared. In relation to the video forums organised by the NAM movement,
one of the women interviewed discussed the impact of the men leading this
initiative.
Carolina: The school has always been linked to the commitment
against gender violence, with zero tolerance for violence. For this
reason, we deal with the preventive socialisation. The first time I
heard about the NAM movement was in a video forum in La VernedaSant Martí school (…). It was maybe seven years ago.
These interviews have provided evidence supporting the existing
synergies between the dialogic leadership and the NAM. In addition,
emerging insights will be obtained in further investigations.
Conclusions
The evidence shared in this article identifies and analyses the ways in which
the synergies between dialogic leadership and NAM exist. The relationship
between these two dimensions is linked with some of the most recent
scientific advancements in leadership and masculinities research.
First, dialogic leadership engages people in other social networks and
movements, particularly in an organisation such as La Verneda-Sant Martí,
which has a strong community approach. The people interviewed have led
specific practices to enable other colleagues to lead changes in the field of
NAM. Moreover, diversity is one of the characteristics identified as a result
of the fieldwork. Accordingly, leadership roles are diverse and are
developed by different members of the organisation. Within this
framework, the capacity to mobilise the community is demonstrated.
Second, the NAM movement in the school is making visible a new form of
understanding of masculinity. As a result, the school is promoting the
development of activities involving discussions on masculinities and
gender, especially its role in the prevention of gender violence and related
topics. By allowing and enhancing these transformations, there are more
open opportunities to develop dialogic leadership practices by different
members of the community.
The existing synergies between dialogic leadership and the NAM
movement reported in this article illuminates how transformation linking
these domains is possible. In a sense, it addresses the question of how
dialogic leadership emerges in different environments to reach wider
networks, and how NAM movement is making social transformation
possible.
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme
(Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union´s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/20072013) under the REA grant agreement nº 628982.
References
Bennett, N., Wise, C., Woods, P., & Harvey, J. (2003). Distributed
Leadership: A Review of Literature. National College for School
Leadership. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/8534/1/
Brown, B. (2009). Men in nursing: Re-evaluating masculinities, reevaluating gender. Contemporary Nurse, 33(2), 120-129.
doi:10.5172/conu.2009.33.2.120
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Conell, R. W. (2005). Change among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities,
and Gender Equality in the Global Arena. Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society, 30(3), 1801-1825. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/427525
Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context.
Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 581-613. doi:10.1016/S10489843(00)00061-8
Elias, J., & Beasley, C. (2009). Hegemonic Masculinity and Globalization:
'Transnational Business Masculinities' and Beyond. Globalizations, 6(2),
281-296. doi:10.1080/14747730902854232
European Commission. (2011). Added Value of Research, Innovation and
Science portfolio. MEMO/11/520. Brussels. Retrieved from
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-520_en.htm
European Commission. (2010). Conclusions "Science against Poverty"
Conference. Segovia Conference, La Granja, 8 - 9 April.
Flecha, R. (2000). Sharing words. Theory and Practice of Dialogic
Learning. Boston: Rowman & Littlefield.
Flecha, R. (Ed.) (2015). Successful Educational Actions for Inclusion and
Social Cohesion in Europe. Cham: Springer.
Flecha, R., Gómez, J., & Puigvert, L. (2003). Contemporary sociological
theory. New York: Peter Lang.
Flecha, R., Puigvert, L., & Ríos, O. (2013). The New Alternative
Masculinities and the Overcoming of Gender Violence. International
and Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences, 2(1), 88-113.
doi:10.4471/rimcis.2013.14
Frost, D. (2012). From professional development to system change: teacher
leadership and innovation. Professional Development in Education, 38
(2), 205-227.
Ganz, M. (2011). Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power. In S.
Odugbemi & T. Lee (Eds.), Accountability through Public Opinion:
From Inertia to Public Action (pp. 273-289). World Bank Group
Publications: Washington, DC.
Giner, E. (2013). Amistad Deseada. Aportaciones de Jesús Gómez y Ramón
Flecha que están acercando la realidad a nuestros sueños. Barcelona:
Hipatia.
Goethals, G. R., Sorenson, G. J., & Burns, J. M. (2004). Encyclopedia of
Leadership. Sage: London.
Gómez, J. (2014). Radical Love. A Revolution for the 21st Century. New
York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Gómez, A., Puigvert, L., & Flecha, R. (2011). Critical Communicative
Methodology: Informing Real Social Transformation Through Research.
Qualitative Inquiry, 17(3), 235-245. doi:10.1177/1077800410397802
Gronn, P. (2002). Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. Leadership
Quarterly, 13(4), 423-451. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00120-0
Hawley, J., Hall, A., & Weber, T. (2012). Effectiveness of policy measures
to increase the employment participation of young people. Dublin:
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions. Retrieved from
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2012/60/en/1/EF1260EN.pdf
Johnson, SK., Murphy, S. E., Zewdie, S., & Reichard, R. J. (2008). The
strong, sensitive type: Effects of gender stereotypes and leadership
prototypes on the evaluation of male and female leaders. Organisational
behavior and human decision processes, 106(1), 39-60.
doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.12.002
Kimmel, M. S. (1987). Men´s responses to feminism at the turn of the
century. Gender & Society, 1(3), 261-283.
doi:10.1177/089124387001003003
Koeing, A. M., Eagly, A. H., Mitchell, A. A., & Ristikari, T. (2011). Are
Leader Stereotypes Masculine? A Meta-Analysis of Three Research
Paradigms. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 616-642.
doi:10.1037/a0023557
Madsen, M. T., & Albrechsten, C. (2008). Competing discourses of
leadership Transformational Leadership as blurring mechanism for
masculinities in Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 24(4),
343-353. doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2008.08.002
Mazutis, D., & Slawinski, N. (2008). Leading organizational learning
through authentic dialogue. Management Learning, 39(4), 437-456.
doi:10.1177/1350507608093713
Nilan, P. (2009). Contemporary masculinities and young men in Indonesia.
Indonesia and the Malay World, 37(109), 327-344.
doi:10.1080/13639810903269318
Padrós, M. (2012). Modelos de Atractivo Masculinos en la Adolescencia.
Masculinities & Social Change, 1(2), 165. doi:10.17583/msc.2012.288
Padrós, M., & Flecha, R. (2014). Towards a Conceptualization of Dialogic
Leadership. International Journal of Educational Leadership and
Management, 2(2), 207-226. doi:10.4471/ijelm.2014.17
Pont, B., Nusche, D., & Moorman, H. (2008). Improving School
Leadership. Brussels: OECD.
Puigvert, L. (2014). Preventive Socialization of Gender Violence: Moving
Forward Using the Communicative Methodology of Research.
Qualitative Inquiry, 20, 839-843. doi:10.1177/1077800414537221
Rodríguez-Navarro, H., Ríos, O., Racionero, S., & Macías, F. (2014). New
methodological Insights into Communicative Acts that Promote New
Alternative Masculinities. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(7), 870- 875.
doi:10.1177/1077800414537209
Sánchez, M. (1999). La Verneda-Sant Martí: A school where people dare to
dream. Harvard Educational Review, 3(69): 320-357. Retrieved from
http://hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-69issue-3/herarticle/_157
Shields, C. M. (2004). Dialogic leadership for social justice: Overcoming
pathologies of silence. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1),
111-134. doi:10.1177/0013161X03258963
Simpson, R. (2004). Masculinity at work: the experiences of men in female
dominated occupations. Work Eemployment and Society, 18(2), 349368. doi:10.1177/09500172004042773
Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a theory
of leadership practice: a distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum
Studies, 36(1), 3-34. doi:10.1080/0022027032000106726
United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. (2004). The Role of
Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality: Agreed Conclusions.
Retrieved from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw48/acmen-auv.pdf
Valls, R., & Kyriakides, L. (2013). The power of Interactive Groups: how
diversity of adults volunteering in classroom groups can promote
inclusion and success for children of vulnerable minority ethnic
populations. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(1), 17-33.
doi:10.1080/0305764X.2012.749213
Gisela Redondo-Sama is Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow
at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Contact Address: Direct correspondence to Gisela Redondo-Sama,
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road,
Cambridge CB2 8PQ, email: [email protected]
Las Masculinidades en la Transición
Guiomar Merodio1
1) Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Date of publication: February 21th, 2016
To cite this article: Merodio, G. (2016). Las Masculinidades en la
Transición [Review of the book]. Masculinities and Social Change 5(1), 9294. doi: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1930
To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/MCS.2016.1930
pp. 92-94
Reviews (I)
Mérida Jiménez, R.M., & Peralta, J.L. (eds.) (2015). Las masculinidades en
la Transición. Barcelona: Editorial EGALES. ISBN: 974-84-16491-02-5
E
n la obra Las masculinidades en la transición, los
investigadores Rafael M. Mérida Jiménez y Jorge Luis Peralta
compilan doce artículos que forman parte del proyecto de
investigación I+D+i Representaciones culturales de las
sexualidades marginadas en España (1970-1995) (FEM2011-24064),
financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Mediante la
colaboración de diferentes autores y autoras, el libro se aproxima al estudio
de las masculinidades, en plural, en la época de la transición española. No
solo como un periodo histórico, sino también como una alegoría de la
transición permanente en la que se encuentran las masculinidades y las
nociones sociales de género.
El primer artículo, de Kerman Calvo nos acerca a la lucha por los
derechos de las minorías sexuales en España desde la época de la transición,
lideradas inicialmente por movimientos liberacionistas gais que estaban a su
vez comprometidos política y socialmente con otras causas. El debate y el
movimiento se centró desde el inicio en la superación de las situaciones de
discriminación sexual y de las desigualdades políticas y legislativas que
padecían, con un discurso revolucionario que cuestionaba las estructuras
patriarcales y los valores burgueses tras décadas de represión,
criminalización y estigma bajo la dictadura franquista. Así, a diferencia de
países como EEUU o Reino Unido, en España el movimiento liberacionista
apartó de la agenda política, hasta casi la actualidad, otras cuestiones
importantes como la identidad de género, el deseo, el cuerpo, en definitiva,
la sexualidad.
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1930
En el segundo artículo, Gracia Trujillo analiza los motivos por los que las
representaciones de masculinidades femeninas han estado tan ausentes y
silenciadas en el contexto español desde 1970 hasta 1995. Fruto de un
extenso análisis documental, histórico y sociológico, la investigadora explica
que esta invisibilización, que también se produjo dentro del movimiento
feminista, se debió en parte a que las masculinidades femeninas desafiaban
lo sistemas binarios de sexo/género y los códigos de masculinidad
tradicional. En el tercer artículo, Óscar Guasch y Jordi Mas se aproximan
críticamente a la evolución que se produjo desde la figura del travestí hasta
el transexual en España, junto las implicaciones sociales, cultuales y
políticas que ha conllevado hasta el momento actual. Los autores detallan el
camino que tuvieron que recorrer las personas transexuales desde el
tardofranquismo hasta finales de los años 80, en el que pasaron de la
construcción de sus cuerpos e identidades de forma autónoma y subversiva
hasta la regulación institucional del proceso mediante la creación de
unidades específicas de atención a transexuales en hospitales y las cirugías
de reasignación sexual.
Más allá, del contexto español, Jorge Luis Peralta en el cuarto artículo
trata las diferencias en torno a las masculinidades entre el activismo
homosexual argentino y el español, poniendo en diálogo por una parte a los
articulistas y activistas argentinos Héctor Anabiarte Rivas y Ricardo
Lorenzo Sanz, y por otra, a los novelistas Manuel Puig y Alberto Cardín. En
esta línea de análisis literario, Elena Madrigal Rodríguez en el quinto
artículo se acerca a cuatro personajes femeninos y lésbicos de la literatura
hispanoamericana, poniendo el foco en la vestimenta y accesorios
masculinos que emplean estos personajes para desafiar la normatividad de
género. Posteriormente, Jaume Pont y José Luis Ramos, en el décimo
artículo, abordan los antihéroes novelescos en dos novelas de Terenci Moix
y Lourdes Ortiz.
En el sexto artículo, Rafael M. Mérida contrasta la masculinidad y el
abordaje que se realiza sobre la transexualidad y los roles de género entre la
obra teatral de Rodríguez Méndez, “Flor de Otoño: una historia del Barrio
Chino” y su posterior versión cinematográfica, “Un hombre llamado Flor de
Otoño” de Pedro Olea, como un reflejo de las transformaciones que se
produjeron entre el final de la dictadura y el nacimiento de la democracia.
Adicionalmente, las representaciones de género y de la homosexualidad en
94 Merodio – Masculinidades en la Transición [Book Review]
las producciones cinematográficas españolas desde la transición y durante
los primeros años de democracia, son analizadas en los artículos séptimo y
octavo de Alberto Mira y Alfredo Martínez-Expósito respectivamente. En el
noveno artículo, Juan Vicente Aliaga analiza otras manifestaciones artísticas
como la música, la fotografía y la pintura de los años 70 y 80, y la
trasgresión que supuso en las representaciones culturales de las
masculinidades heteronormativas y dominantes de la época.
Geoffroy Huard navega en el undécimo artículo entre los archivos
judiciales del franquismo, sorprendiendo con el descubrimiento de que a
pesar de la hipocresía y el clasismo en la persecución, detención y condena a
homosexuales durante la dictadura, en Barcelona, antes de la transición, la
homosexualidad se llegó a tolerar y visibilizar relativamente. Finalmente, en
el duodécimo artículo, Estrella Díaz Fernández compila una selección de
fuentes secundarias que abordan las sexualidades marginadas en España
desde 1970 hasta 1995.
Definitivamente, esta obra constituye una contribución relevante para la
consolidación de los estudios LGTB en el campo de las Humanidades y
Ciencias Sociales españolas.
Guiomar Merodio, Universitat de Barcelona
[email protected]
Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking
the Bush Dynasty and its War against Iraq
Ana Burgués1
1) Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
To cite this article: Burgués, A. (2016). Hegemonic Masculinities and
Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and its War against Iraq
[Review of the book]. Masculinities and Social Change 5(1), 95-96-. doi:
10.17583/MCS.2016.1951
pp. 95-96
Reviews (II)
Messerschmidt, J. W. (2015). Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged
Politics: Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and its War against Iraq. New
York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-59451-817-1
J
ames W. Messerschmidt es un reputado investigador en el
campo de las masculinidades en cuya trayectoria académica
sobresale un artículo publicado en el año 2005 en la revista
Gender and Society sobre la redefinición del concepto de
Masculinidad Hegemónica elaborado por Raewyn Connell. Esta publicación
significó poner nuevos cimientos a la idea de masculinidad dominante que
Connell había lanzado en los años 80. En esta línea també se sitúa el libro
Hegemonic Masculinities and camouflaged politics publicado en el año 2015
y que tiene como principal propósito desgranar las figuras de George Bush
Senior y George Bush Junior y su relación con la definición de masculinidad
hegemónica. Para ello el autor divide el libro en tres partes diferenciadas. En
la primera parte el autor hace una revisión teórica profunda en la que se hace
un análisis crítico al concepto de masculinidad hegemónica. En las
siguientes partes Messerschmidt lleva a cabo un análisis del discurso de las
declaraciones de Bush Senior y Bush Junior y los efectos que ello ha tenido
en la historia de Estados Unidos de América.
Algunas ideas que se nos introduce en el libro nos enseñan datos poco
conocidos de la historia de la saga de los Bush. Por ejemplo, se nos explica
la incredulidad de Bush padre ante el hecho que su hijo menor pudiera
convertirse en el estandarte masculino de su estirpe. Messerschmidt también
introduce la encrucijada que significa para los Bush definir su identidad de
género en un momento social e histórico en los que los cimientos del
patriarcado se están cuestionando con la llegada del feminismo, la teoría
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.17583/MCS.2016.1951
96 Burgués – Hegemonic Masculinities [Book Review]
queer, los movimientos LGBTI, etc. De todas formas, y a pesar de este
contexto específico, se ponen de manifiesto en el libro como ambos Bush, y
con especial hincapié Bush Junior, han contribuido a difundir y desarrollar
una masculinidad hegemónica a nivel global a partir de sus liderazgos en la
Guerra de Iraq y en la Guerra contra el terrorismo islámico.
Como se ha mencionado anteriormente, la guerra de Iraq del año 91 y la
guerra contra el terror, iniciada por Bush hijo después de los ataques de AlQaeda, son utilizados por el autor del libro como pretextos para analizar
como las actuaciones y discursos de ambos presidentes de los Estados
Unidos reforzaron la masculinidad hegemónica en occidente. En el caso de
Bush padre se explica una de las principales operaciones militares que se
llevaron a cabo durante la Guerra del Golfo: Operation Desert Storm que
significaron más de 100 horas de crueles intervenciones militares. Por otro
lado, se recogen también algunas declaraciones de Bush hijo donde se pone
de manifiesto su afán de poder a toda y costa y su visión de Iraq como un
territorio propenso para conseguir dicho objetivo: Iraq remains relatively
unexplored, offering big companies a potentially easy-to-tap source of
growth (p.143).
Ana Burgués, Universitat de Barcelona
[email protected]
List of Reviewers
To cite this article: MCS Editor (2016). List of Reviewers. Masculinities and
Social Change, 5(1),97. doi: 10.4471/MCS.2016.1959
MSC– Masculinities and Social Change Vol. 5 No. 1 February 2016
pp.97
List of Reviewers
I would like to thank all the scholars who served as reviewers in 2015. As
the editor of the journal Masculinities and Social Change I am very grateful
for the evaluations realized which have contributed to the quality of this
journal.
Oriol Ríos
Editor
Mara, Liviu
Rodríguez, Alfonso
Merodio, Guiomar
Íñiguez, Tatiana
Álvarez Cifuentes, Pilar
Martínez, Alejandro
Castro, Marcos
Cabré, Joan
Santos, Tatiana
Armengol, Josep Maria
Pulido, Miguel Ángel
Burgués, Ana
Schubert, Tinka
2016 Hipatia Press
ISSN: 2014-3605
DOI: 10.4471/MCS.2016.1959
Duque, Elena
Martín, Noemi
Serrano, Maria Ángeles
López, Laura
Macías, Fernando

Reviews - Hipatia Press

Transcripción

Documentos relacionados