ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the guiding intellectual framework for understanding of men and masculinity: a social-scientific approach. It focuses on how sociology, and culture, should be applied to understanding boys and men, and masculinity. The chapter outlines how masculinity is historically situated and frequently changes over time – sometimes drastically and sometimes more subtly. Masculinities are always located within society. At one level, masculinity is the social expectation for the gendered behaviors of boys and men. There are numerous social, political, religious, economic, and technological factors that influence what type of masculinity any cohort of youth embody. The chapter examines how theory is conceptualized, what it means, and why the idea of “theory” need not be as confusing as it may first seem. It discusses three levels of theory: micro-level theories, mid-level theories and grand theories of society. Mid-level sociological theories explain why a society values a certain thing or why a group of people behaves in certain ways.
