Patriarchy in Practice: Ethnographies of Everyday Masculinities

This collection covers a diverse and multi-disciplinary range of topics on how masculinities might be re-imagined outside of patriarchal power structures. Crucially, the book highlights the lived complexity of both patriarchies and masculinities as plural and situated, exploring questions of how they are constructed, negotiated and re-negotiated in daily practice; of how performative regimes interact, contradict and overlap with each other across a range of contexts.

Contributors engage with theoretical frameworks engaging with feminist theory, contemporary politics of gender, bodies and marginalised experiences of masculinites. Global case studies are wide-ranging and include analysis of masculinity among communities such as drag artists, InCels and e-sports enthusiasts, as well as in the context of the body, for instance in relation to alcoholism and physical disability.

In an era of resurgence of typically hegemonic patriarchal figures in the form of ’strong men’ leadership, this book seeks to uncover what an alternative vision of masculinity could look like - one that is firmly rooted in a gender equality and feminist discourse.

Nikki van der Gaag is former Director of Gender Justice and Women’s Rights at Oxfam GB (2016 - 2019). She is now once again an independent consultant and writer who works primarily on gender, with a particular focus on girls and on masculinities. Her previous books include Feminism and Men (Zed, 2014) and the No-Nonsense Guide to Women’s Rights (2008).

Dan Nightingale is a Digital Anthropology PhD student at University College London, UK.

Amir Massoumian is a Social Anthropology PhD student at SOAS University of London, UK.