ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the utility of a geographic imagination for the topic of men's health, using a case study of men's drug and alcohol treatment, and focuses on how treatment settings are staged and what implications such places hold for the enactment of masculinity. It also explores how drug and alcohol treatment programs encourage men in treatment to adopt different relationships towards themselves and others in the name of health, and the implications of the changes for masculinity. Work here has pointed to the contradictory impacts of alcohol and drug use, both allowing for an enactment of a locally valued gender identity while at the same time potentially undermining the health of individual men. The performances proved problematic when it came to one key anchor point of hegemonic masculinity: independence. From the point of view of hegemonic masculinity and the value placed on self-reliance and autonomy, the treatment process requires men to acknowledge a double failure.
