ABSTRACT
Gender is a way in which social practice is ordered. In gender processes, the everyday conduct of life is organized in relation to a reproductive arena, defined by the bodily structures and processes of human reproduction. Social practice is creative and inventive, but not inchoate. It responds to particular situations and is generated within definite structures of social relations. With growing recognition of the interplay between gender, race and class it has become common to recognize multiple masculinities: black as well as white, working-class as well as middle-class. The concept of 'hegemony', deriving from Antonio Gramsci's analysis of class relations, refers to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life. Accounts of masculinity have generally concerned themselves with syndromes and types, not with numbers. Hegemony, subordination and complicity, as just defined, are relations internal to the gender order.
