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Reviews
Pettegrew... casts a challenge against conventionally accepted Darwinian notions of brutishness as an essential and natural male trait. He argues that male dominance and aggression are not predestined by instinct, but culturally and ideologically constructed, desired, and performed through time... This book contributes to intellectual and cultural history on gender and manhood.
Pettegrew's book remains rigorous and passionate in its narration of the historic appeal as well as the immediate dangers of de-evolutionary masculinity.
Ambitious study... valuable in exploring the vast cultural production of masculine instinct as a fact of life.
To Pettegrew's great credit, his study looks both forward and back: at the way masculinity was naturalized as aggressive in turn-of-the-century society; and, perhaps more importantly, at the extent to which modern-day historians, scientists, and ordinary citizens deploy discourses of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and psychology in a misplaced effort to read gender as the offspring of biology and society.
Will be of interest to scholars of cultures of violence and middle-American masculinity. He offers a solid history of the naturalizing revelry of men in the violence they do.
It will spark debate within the field for its bold explanation of why modern men feel as though violence is both their burden and right.
[A] vivid, massively researched history of 'hyper-masculine' sensibility at the turn of the twentieth century... An instructive and provocative view of men’s dark side.
This fascinating and ambitious study explores how an aggressive 'de-evolutionary' model of masculinity was woven into a broad range of American institutions... Pettegrew brings together feminist theory, 'an anthropological ironist perspective' and a wealth of gender studies scholarship to investigate the development of a pervasive mindset of brutish masculinity within a rich selection of archival and popular cultural materials... This well-researched and engaging volume will certainly enrich the ever-growing field of men's studies.
This lively, well-written exploration of the 'de-evolutionary' turn in the dominant model of masculinity in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century is smart, compelling, and often tartly funny.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x 9.25
Pages
424
ISBN
9781421407647
Illustration Description
24 halftones
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: The De-Evolutionary Turn in U.S. Masculinity
Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology, Then and Now
John Dewey, Pierre Bourdieu, and Masculinity as a Habit of Mind
"The Caveman within Us"
Preface
Introduction: The De-Evolutionary Turn in U.S. Masculinity
Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology, Then and Now
John Dewey, Pierre Bourdieu, and Masculinity as a Habit of Mind
"The Caveman within Us" and the Masculinist Culture of Mimicry
1. Rugged Individualism
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis: Origins, Composition, and Meanings
Turner's Influence on the Social Psychology of the City
Radical Individualism: Masculinist Art, Angst, and Alienation in the City
Dudism, Cowgirl Feminism, and the Search for Authenticity in the "Old West"
2. Brute Fictions
The American Literary Genre of Hunting and Killing
Reading for Plot: Call of the Wild, The Virginian, and the New Male Readership
Irony, Atavism, and Other Variations on the De-Evolutionary Theme
3. College Football
Thorstein Veblen and the Rise of "Exotic Ferocity" in American College Football
Victor Turner, Stanford Football, and Hypermasculine Liminal Subjects
Clifford Geertz at the Big Game: "Thick Description" of Football as the Cultural Equivalent of War
4. War in the Head
Civil War Memory, Blood Sacrifice, and Modern American Fighting Spirit
Of Rough Riders, Blood Brothers, and Roosevelt the Berserker
War as Sport for Doughboys, Golden Boys, and Slackers
Postscript: Marine Corps Spirit and the U.S. Warrior Class, 1941–2003
5. Laws of Sexual Selection
Race, Lynch Law, and the Manly Provocation
Marriage, Cultural Defense in The People v. Chen, and the Heat-of-Passion Defense in Texas
Compulsory Heterosexuality, the Charles Atlas Muscle-Beach Fable, and Sexual Dimorphism Unbound
Epilogue: Irony, Instinct, and War
Irony, Sam Fussell's Muscle, and Masculinity as a "Parodic Tableau Vivant"
Instinct, Deep Masculinity, and the Decline of Males
The Iraq War, Hypermasculinity, and the Metaphor of Disease
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
