Ben Griffin (Lecturer, University of Cambridge )

"Hegemonic Masculinity as a Historical Problem"

This paper reaffirms the importance of gender history as a way of understanding the history of power, and specifically power relations between men and masculinities. The historical literature dealing with this theme has been profoundly shaped by R. W. Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. Despite detailed criticism by historians, Connell’s work remains enormously influential on historical scholarship because no alternative model has delineated so clearly the significance of power relations between masculinities. This paper offers a critical reading of Connell’s work and develops a new analytical framework for understanding the history of masculinity. It argues that histories of normative models of masculinity need to be accompanied by a focus on the historically specific opportunities, mechanisms or techniques that enabled individuals to identify themselves with particular normative models. It argues that power can be apprehended as a four-fold operation: cultural contestation of normative ideals; individual attempts to identify with those cultural ideals; the processes by which those attempts were accorded recognition by others; and the processes by which individuals were positioned in relation to institutional practices, rewards and sanctions. This approach would offer new periodisations of the history of masculinity with the history of power at their core.

Ben Griffin is a Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Cambridge. His research is focused on the ways in which gender has shaped political processes in Britain since the late eighteenth century. I particularly studies the history of masculinity, and the ways in which changing ideas about masculinity have shaped the behaviour and expectations of political elites. His first book, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain, argued that changes to women’s rights were not simply the result of changing ideas about women but also changing beliefs about masculinity, religion and the nature of the constitution and, in doing so, it demonstrates how gender inequality can be created and reproduced by the state. His current research project is a book called The Gender Order and the Judicial Imagination, which examines how changing ideas about masculinity interacted with new forms of legal knowledge to reshape the gender order in Britain between 1780 and 1940.

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Christina Research Seminar is an open advanced seminar focused around interdisciplinary gender studies chaired by Professor Tuija Pulkkinen. The seminar is organized by Gender Studies (University of Helsinki) and is currently a part of the doctoral programme of Gender, Culture and Society (SKY). For the future programme and more information, please see: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/research/doctoral-education/doctoral-schools-and-programmes/doctoral-school-in-humanities-and-social-sciences/doctoral-programme-in-gender-culture-and-society/courses-and-events