karen Harvey - history of masculinity Flashcards
How does she say Gender history is related to the cultural turn?
- It’s ‘certainly closely related to the cultural turn’
- Gender is deployed in images, texts and practices to shape meanings, these meanings then mould people’s understanding and experiences
- The history of masculinity intersects with this exploration of meaning in representation (Scott)
- Gender and masculinity can and does speak about power - doing so makes them indebted to poststructuralism and women historians
What does Tosh and Roper say about culture snd masculinity?
- ‘that masculinity underpins social life and cultural representations
What was move of masculinity between 1650-1800 according to Harvey?
- Move from rough and ready mid-17 to s redefined 18century man
- Rise of modern man and modern body
- Underpinning changing masculinities are claims for a change in distinctions between male and female bodies: boundaries between the two became more clear
- An alleged shift from one-sex to a two-sex model of sexual difference and redefinition of women as domesticated and sexually passive
What has the shift of one sex to two sex model been used to explain?
- The reorientation of ideal manhood away from honour based on the control of wives sexuality and towards those things lay outside of marriage and the home
What came from men who had stepped outside of hegemonic masculinity?
- Masturbation, pornography, sex with prostitutes and sex with other men
What did the shift to two sex model allow for?
- Patriarchy to appear more secure
- As women were redefined as passive etc
What did changes in ideas about the body do in the long-term?
- It was shirt-lived and insubstantial rather than long-term and transformative
What does Harvey suggest gave the prominence of politeness in historiography about the 18th century?
- May have a great deal to with the centrality of cultural history to the study of the 18th century
Why does Harvey say politics of politeness is a problem for the long-term history of masculinity?
- It differentiates the 18-19-20th centuries, periods about which historians of masculinity are posing similar questions
- Klein has insisted that polite culture was used by specific people in specific places - this Harvey argues can help in the analysis of history by rolling back politeness in the history or masculinity
- Helps think about who and where polite culture was and who and what were not polite
What places were known for being more polite?
- Urban areas
- Rural men representations suggests a self-conscious resistance to politeness
Carter argues that the idea of a gentleman was not limited to the social elite that politeness had cross-class influence.
What does Harvey say about masculinity and War?
An example of it’s impact
- Little has been written about the two together but there is evidence that military and naval had ‘considerable’ impact on discussions of masculinity and politeness
- Rarely explored by gender historians the naval and military contexts in which some men’s masculinity was forged suggest limits to the hegemony of politeness
- Following England’s declaration of war on Spain 1739 and the wars Austrian succession, which began the following year. Writers of erotic skits complained that ‘dainty hands of our present pretty men’ were unfit for the ‘barbarous rude rough work’ - in this context certain men could become attractive war heroes e.g. Admiral Vernon celebrated as ‘heart commander and set apart from ‘those fine gentleman who were afraid of letting the wind blow upon them’
What does Peter Clark’s account of British-clubs and societies before 1899 tell us?
- Alerts us to the continuing presence of traditional forms of male sociability, holding out as politeness and sensibility came and went.
How does Harvey say we can compare 18th &17th century men with the problem of politeness dividing them?
- Bringing 18th century men back into the home
- Post-17th century history often places men in social places rather than in the home
- David Turner goes some way toward it
- Tosh mentions 19th century men in home but not 18th
How to get men involved in the home in history?
- Would involve holistic gender history - historians of masculinity joining women history
