Masculinity Consumerismand The Post National Indian City

Masculine cultures define urban cultures and are defined by them. A multidisciplinary analysis that explores urbanism, masculine anxieties and gender relations.

Imagining the city as a series of interconnected spaces, the book explores how several such connections – between the home and the street, family and public spaces, religious and non-religious contexts, for example – relate to the topic of masculinity. How do men – elite, subaltern, consumers, 'heads' of the family, members of 'Hindu fundamentalist' organisations, readers of pulp fiction and 'footpath pornography', those who admire the 'strong' political leader – move between these spaces, define them and are defined by them? Urbanisation in India is a vibrant site of an extraordinary cultural, social and economic churn, a context of both the consolidation of masculine identities as well as anxieties regarding their place in the city. The book suggests that sustained and in-depth engagements with specific historical and social contexts avoids tendencies to imagine cities as nodes of comparison that frequently generates universal models of urbanism.

Becoming Young Men in a New India tells the gendered story of a changing India through the lives of its young middle class men. Through time spent ethnographically 'hanging-out' with young men in gyms, bars, clubs, trains and gay cruising grounds in India, this book critically reveals Indian men's violence towards women in various city spaces and also shows the many classed and masculine entitlements and challenges that they experience. The book lays bare the often secretive and hidden social worlds of young Indian men and critically analyses the impact young men's actions and identities have not just for themselves, but for the many women they encounter. In this way, it puts forward a critical queer-feminist perspective of men and masculinities in postcolonial India where the politics of class, gender, sexuality, violence and urban spaces come together.

An anthropological examination of masculinity within South Asian societies.

Gender persists as a key site of social inequality globally, and within contemporary south Asian contexts, the cultural practices which make up ¿masculinities¿ remain vital for understanding everyday life and social relations. Yet masculinities, and their discontents, are an understudied and often misrepresented facet of gender relations and cultural dynamics. Gender and Masculinities offers a collection of chapters that seek to unravel the complex ideas, practices and concepts revolving around gender structures and masculinities in India and Sri Lanka. The contributions to this volume draw on a range of disciplines, including history, comparative literatures, religion, anthropology, and development studies to illuminate the key issues that have shaped our understanding of gender relations and masculinities over time and across a range of geographical areas. By carefully attending to historical and contemporary gender ideologies and practices in South Asia, this book provides a critical exploration of masculinities in their plurality, as shifting, culturally located and embedded in religious ideologies, power relations, the politics of nationalism, globalisation and economic struggles. The volume will attract scholars interested in history, anthropology, sociology, nationalism, colonialism, religion and kinship, and popular culture. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

India is undergoing a great transition, as the post-reform generation strikes out into the world. The thinking, attitudes, culture, political preferences, consumption patterns and ambitions of the post-reform generations differ greatly from that of the earlier generations. As a consequence, the country is also witnessing rapid changes not only on the socio-political and economic fronts but also on the humanities front. This book seeks to explore great transition in India through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences. In doing so, it lays foundation not only for understanding India but also in initiating a new chapter for Indian and South Asian studies. With contributions by leading scholars, the book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and for anyone wishing to explore India in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences.

This book is a unique intersectional analysis combining culture, gender struggles and structural including economic transformations, both in the formation of gendered class society, patriarchy and capitalism.

* What is 'masculinity'? Is 'masculinities' a more appropriate term? * How are masculinities socially, culturally and historically shaped? * How are particular masculinities created, enacted and represented in specific settings? * How can masculinities best be researched and theorized? Masculinities and Culture explores how 'masculinities', or ways of 'being a man', are anchored in time and place; the products of socio-historical and cultural circumstances. It examines the emergence of a masculinity fit for Empire in the mid to late nineteenth century and, by way of contrast, the more recent media-driven, commercial New Man and New Lad masculinity. The author considers some of the media discourses shaping masculinities today, and the formation of specific masculinities in specific settings (such as prisons, hospitals and schools) which both define, and in turn are defined by, strongly held conceptions of acceptable masculine behaviour. He concludes by reviewing a range of ways in which masculinities might be researched, from fieldwork and auto/biographical and life history approaches through to semiotics and the use of both film and literary texts. This lively text provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary debates concerning masculinities as gendered constructions, along with the means of researching and theorizing them.