masculinity from a religious perspective. In what follows, I explore the contours of a social constructionist approach as a theoretical perspective in studies of gender and masculinity.
shows that masculinities are constantly in active construction. Rob Gilbert and Pam Gilbert (1998 in Attwell 2002:15) support Connell, stating that “... being a man is a matter of constructing oneself in and being constructed by the available ways of being male in a particular society.” Social constructivist24 theorists therefore argue that gender (and masculinity in particular) is influenced by historical, social and cultural factors in various contexts and specific settings (Connell 1995:3-36, 68; Moynihan 1998:1073;
Morrell 2001b:7; Attwell 2002). Moynihan (1998) suggests that social constructivist theorists do not ascribe a single meaning to maleness but attribute many different theories of what it means to be a man. This is widely informative to this current research mainly because my approach in investigating how faith discourses influence constructions of masculinities within Evangelical Christianity has adopted a social constructionist approach that seeks to explore particular patterns (and representations) of masculinities that arise in South Africa.
The social constructionist approach has made two major contributions in theorising masculinities. First, it has highlighted that men are not just men with a fixed masculinity, rather, masculinity is fluid, changing and historically constructed (see Connell 1987; 1995;
2000 and Morrell 2001b), stressing that masculinities come into existence as people act.
Along this contour of a social constructionist approach to masculinities, it is also argued that masculinities are not inherited nor are they automatically acquired in a one-off way (Morrell 2001b). These are constructed in the context of class, race, ethnicity, and other factors which are interpreted through the prism of age.
Second, while various masculinities are produced within a particular social setting, there is a need to understand the nature of the relationship between “multiplicities of masculinities.” Hence, Connell (1987) introduced the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” as one of the results of the social constructionist approaches to masculinity.
The central thesis in Connell’s argument shows that while men oppressed women, some men also dominated and subordinated other men (see Morrell 2001b:7). This concept has enabled theorising “multiple masculinities” that take different forms, and will be invaluable to my work on the MMC as I theorise the relationship between Angus Buchan and the men who frequent the MMC meetings. Connell (1995) also shows the
24 Roberta Garner (2001) has argued that the major lasting impact of feminism on social theory has been the rise of social constructionist theories to a position of dominance in the last decades of the twentieth century. These theorists argue that all aspects of the social order are products of culture.
relationship between these different forms of masculinities as hierarchical in nature putting the various forms into different categories such as subordinate, complicit and marginalised. These she terms as non-hegemonic categories of masculinities (see also Morrell 2001b). In defining the concept of hegemony, Connell states:
The concept of ‘hegemony,’ deriving from Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of class relations, refers to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life. At any given time, one form of masculinity rather than others is culturally exalted. Hegemonic masculinity is the configuration of gender practices which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordinate position of women (1995:77).
What seems central in this definition is how cultural ideals intersect with institutional power either collective or individual, from which hegemony is established (Connell 1995:68). Morrell (2001b:7) observes hegemonic masculinity as that which dominates other masculinities and creates prescriptions of cultural images of what it means to be a
‘real man.’ Hegemonic masculinity is, then, not a description of a real man but is rather an ideal or a set of prescriptive social norms (Attwell 2002:17), or “... the most honoured or desired” (Connell 2000:10).
The intersection of cultural ideals and institutional power that results in the formation of dominant hegemonic masculinity requires interrogation in this study which focuses on representations and constructions of masculinities within Charismatic Evangelical Christianity. Two issues are worth exploring, resulting from Connell and Morrell’s observations on multiplicity of masculinities within the complexities of social interaction.
First, for Connell (1995), even in speaking of masculinity at all, we are ‘doing gender’ in a culturally specific way. Hence, in understanding religion as part of a cultural system, the question that arises is to what extent does Charismatic Evangelical Christianity suit a definition of a ‘subculture?’ This is important for this current study to enable an examination of the impact of institutionalised religious gender cultures and ideologies in influencing representations and constructions of masculinities. Julie Ingersoll (2003) —a historian, has applied a perspective of evangelical historiography and cultural production theory that has enabled her to frame evangelicalism as a subculture. Using gender as a category of culture, Ingersoll (2003:2) shows that religious traditions are cultural systems,
always in the process of change and always in search of a coherent narrative. Hence, conservative Evangelical attitudes on gender are characterised by fluidity rather than a fixed norm.
Second, what emerges from the above theorisation is that Evangelical Christianity is a religious ‘cultural system.’ It is therefore important to interrogate whether “hegemony”
exists in the emerging forms of masculinities within this form of Christianity and what
‘religious images’ are prescribed as ideals for a ‘real man’ (godly men) in this case. Also, and central to such an inquiry is the need to investigate what happens in situations where male privilege that comes with religious institutional power bestowed on men is challenged within this ‘cultural system.’ What happens if men can no longer live up to the expectations of an ideal Christian man? Pointing to such dangers, Partab (2012:68) argues that such men might be constrained by the many demands of desired ideal manhood because of the constant state of ‘fluidity’ as they negotiate around the many layers of what it means to be a man.
Thus far my intention in this chapter has been to give a detailed overview of the major sociological theoretical approaches to the study of masculinities. These have focused on the psychoanalytic, sex-role, sexual anatomy/biological, and social constructionist framework as categories of theorising masculinity. I have engaged in critical analysis of these theories examining their implications for construction of masculinities. So far, my analyses indicate the difficulties that exist in theorising masculinity from a psychoanalytic, sex-role, sexual anatomy/biological perspectives. The interdisciplinary nature of this study therefore necessitates the need for a social constructionist approach to theorising masculinity from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the next section, I turn my attention to the ways in which I will negotiate the interdisciplinary nature of my thesis. One way in which I do this is to employ the concept of intersectionality.