ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the function of male rites of initiation in Europe has been replaced by adjustments to lifecourse events, largely located within the enlarged sphere of entertainment, and how these adjustments foster new forms of attachment and separation, which in turn index changes in European masculinity. Miniscule numbers of European men participate in the traditional male rituals of warfare, and the latter domain is now open to women. The elimination of the elaborate and violent male initiation rituals — warfare being the most central — that have been important in the European past and for anthropological theorizing of the social and the production of men. From the 1960s through the 1990s, most European countries began to offer alternatives to compulsory military service, and most men have chosen some form of national civilian service. In short, the register of entertainment for men functions as a simulacrum of ritual, rites devoid of the powerful coercive threat of social exclusion.
