Stephen Meyer - Manhood on the Line: Working-Class Masculinities in the American Heartland
2016 | ISBN: 0252081544 | English | 273 pages | PDF | 2.8 MB
2016 | ISBN: 0252081544 | English | 273 pages | PDF | 2.8 MB
Stephen Meyer charts the complex vagaries of men reinventing manhood in twentieth century America. Their ideas of masculinity destroyed by principles of mass production, workers created a white-dominated culture that defended its turf against other racial groups and revived a crude, hypersexualized treatment of women that went far beyond the shop floor. At the same time, they recast unionization battles as manly struggles against a system killing their very selves. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Meyer recreates a social milieu in stunning detail–the mean labor and stolen pleasures, the battles on the street and in the soul, and a masculinity that expressed itself in violence and sexism but also as a wellspring of the fortitude necessary to maintain one's dignity while doing hard work in hard world.