ABSTRACT
Central to ‘masculinity’ is the equation between maleness and dominating or filling up space. In this chapter, the authors begin with the problem of how they can make sense of the kind of masculine violence and solidarity. Jon Stratton's work clearly situates the ‘bodgie and widgie’ culture in a widely admired tradition of research about ‘youth cultures’. The authors take exception to this tradition on two grounds. First there are reasons, adduced in the post-structuralist critique of neo-Marxist cultural studies, to reject much of the fundamental framework of that theory. Secondly there are good grounds for pressing for a more ethnographically sensitive reading of the activities of bodgies and widgies which bypass the more functionalist and essentialist ‘cultural studies’ analysis Stratton offers. While ‘bodgie culture’ had distinctive and novel features, it was also superimposed on ongoing sets of localised masculine attitudes, practices, and preferences which had their own history and appeal.
