Anthropology of Men

Interconnections between Men's and Women's Identities

The notion that gender is something that is created and negotiated within specific social spaces is widespread within anthropological studies of men. Some of men's most influential social situations arise through their interactions with women, and anthropologists now argue that gender is best understood as a relational construct, meaning that cultural understandings of what it means to be a male or female cannot be reached without taking the connections between men and women into account.

Anthropologists studying masculinity—Matthew Gutmann's research on men in Mexico City, Anne Allison's work on corporate masculinity in Japan, and Stanley Brandes's study of folklore and gendered relations in Spain, for example—all provide evidence that shows that men use women as points of reference as they develop and maintain masculine identities. Work that takes a relational view of gender, therefore, strives to show that the idea of completely separate men's and women's worlds is an idealized one.

Anthropologists have broadened their research to move beyond focusing on these connections between men and women and argue that one's social environment and interactions also impact the creation of gendered identities. This research emphasizes that there are ongoing negotiations present in men's lives as masculinity is constructed and transformed through everyday interactions, and it is clear that there are multiple meanings of masculinity from which men can choose based on the social situations, relationships, or contexts in which they find themselves.

Focusing on the Particulars

Across cultures, all men live and interact within contexts such as the family, household, and workplace, though the particular characteristics of these spaces vary in different cultural contexts. By focusing on these locations, the anthropology of men has also examined ideas such as men's and women's roles and the division of labor and resources within the family, the effects of work outside of the home on men's lives, and ideas about fatherhood and parenting.

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