ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the book’s findings and key messages, and offers some reflections on the data’s implications for theory and practice. It re-emphasises the importance of building social theory that accommodates more than negative practices, if we are to do more than reduce masculinity to the pursuit and enactment of power. Further, such theory might be crucial for creating the possibilities for alternative or inclusive masculinities to become more widespread. While it is important to accept and recall how working-class masculinity has been implicated in particular forms of subordination and domination, it has not remained static in the last 30 years, and researchers should avoid reifying these caricatures if we are to have any hope of ameliorating them. This might be best achieved through detailed accounts that highlight that a wider set of practices have become normative.
