Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism: Working-Class Men in International Perspective(Global Masculinities)

This book explores the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has reshaped the lives of working-class men around the world. It focuses on the effects of employment change and of new forms of governmentality on men’s experiences of both public and private life. The book presents a range of international studies—from the US, UK, and Australia to Western and Northern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria—that move beyond discourses positing a ‘masculinity crisis’ or pathologizing working-class men. Instead, the authors look at the active ways men have dealt with forms of economic and symbolic marginalization and the barriers they have faced in doing so. While the focus of the volume is employment change, it covers a range of topics from consumption and leisure to education and family. 

Table of Contents:
1. Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism: Reviewing the Field.- 2. Men, Masculinity, and Labour-force Participation in Kaduna, Nigeria: Are there Positive Alternatives to the Provider Role?.- 3. Yearning to Labour? Working-Class Men in Post- Industrial Britain.- 4. Formulating the Post-Industrial Self: The Role of Petty Crime among Unemployed, Working-Class Men in Stoke-on-Trent.- 5. Young Working-Class Men without Jobs – Re-imagining Work and Masculinity in a Postindustrial Society.- 6. Becoming a Working-Class Male Adult Learner: Formations of Class and Gender in the Finnish Learning Society.- 7. “I am going to Uni!” Working-Class Academic Success, Opportunity, and Conflict.- 8. Automobile Masculinities and Neoliberal Production Regimes among Russian Blue-Collar Men.- 9. Masculinities, Bodies and Subjectivities: Working-Class Men Negotiating Russia’s Post-Soviet Gender Order.- 10. The Inertia of Masculinity: Narratives of Creative Aspiration among Arab-Australian Youth.- 11. Gender, Neoliberalism, and Embodiment: A Social Geography of Rural, Working-Class Masculinity in Southeast Kansas.- 12. Working-Class Masculinities at the Nexus of Work, Family and Intimacy in the Age of Neoliberalism: Or, Are the Times Really a’ Changin’?.- 13. Driving through Neoliberalism – Finnish Truck Drivers Constructing Respectable Male Worker Subjectivities.- 14. Masculinities and Health Inequalities within Neoliberal Economies.

About the Author :
Charlie Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Learning to Labour in Post-Soviet Russia: Vocational Youth in Transition and the co-editor of Innovations in Youth Research and Youth and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  Steven Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University, Australia. His sole and co-published works include Youth and Social Class: Enduring Inequality in the UK, Australia and New Zealand; Debating Modern Masculinities; Class Inequality in Austerity Britain; Young People and Social Policy in Europe; and Digital Methods for Social Science.