ABSTRACT
Boys’ experiences of ‘doing boy’ and achieving ‘masculinity’ in this chapter resonate with many other ethnographic accounts of primary boys, masculinities and schooling (Davies 1993;Thorne 1993; Connolly 1998, 2003; Gilbert and Gilbert 1998; Francis 1998; Swain 2000, 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Martino and Beyenn 2001; Skelton 2001). Hierarchical masculinities and feminine disassociations (see Connell 1995) are recurring themes in boys’ narratives. Sport (e.g. football) and violence (e.g. fighting) also persist as key discourses and embodied practices through which many primary-aged boys define and construct what Carrigan et al. (1987) conceptualised over 15 years ago as ‘hegemonic masculinity’. Developing Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony’, Bob Connell (1995: 76), has defined and explored hegemonic masculinity as a contested and elusive ideal that generally fails to empower specific individuals but nevertheless operates to produce ‘culturally exalted’ forms of (heterosexual) masculinity via the domination of other men and the subordination of women, femininity and Other (non-hetero)sexualities. Since the late 1980s ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has become one of the key analytic concepts through which masculinities in school-based research have been theorised (see Mac an Ghaill 1994; Parry 1996; Dixon 1997; Kenway and Fitzclarence 1997; Connolly 1998; Skelton 2001; Frosh et al. 2002; Swain 2003).
