IngentaConnect Other boys: negotiating non-hegemonic masculinities in the primar...

Author: Renold E.¹

Source: Gender and Education, Volume 16, Number 2, June 2004 , pp. 247-265(19)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

Focusing on the experiences of boys who choose not to cultivate their masculinities through hegemonic discourses and practices, this paper seeks to empirically explore and theorize the extent to which it is possible to live out the category 'boy' in non-hegemonic ways in the primary school setting. Drawing upon a year-long ethnography of children's constructions of their gender and sexual identities in two primary schools, it examines how a minority of 10- and 11-year-old white working and middle-class boys create and seek out spaces from which they can resist, subvert and actively challenge prevailing hegemonic (heterosexual) masculinities within a peer group pupil culture which thrives on the daily policing and shaming of Other masculinities. The paper attempts to theorize more fully the inter-relationship of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities and argues that the ways in which boys inhabit and construct non-hegemonic masculinities both subverts and reinforces hegemonic gender/sexual relations.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/09540250310001690609

Affiliations: 1: Cardiff University UK

'Other' boys: negotiating non-hegemonic masculinities in the primary school