ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1970s the combined disciplines of philosophy, anthropology and cultural theory have set about deconstructing the ‘crisis of masculinity’. Masculinity was revealed as a complex ideological construction whose intellectual power resulted from its historically validated claims to reason and whose physical power is destined by anatomy. Masculinity is a performance covering an emptiness, a cultural bribe, and a prime victim of the ‘disturbing fragmentation of the social and cultural era’. 1 But men do not constitute one homogeneous group experiencing the same type of masculinity. They are all negotiating their own masculinities via systems of identification. For example, professional men are subject to entrepreneurial definitions of manhood which are quite different from those promoted in blue-collar culture. In view of this, it might perhaps be more accurate to say that masculinities are going through crises.
