SURCLA / Anthropology Seminar:

Remarking the Unmarked: An Anthropology of Masculinity Redux

Speaker: Matthew Gutmann – Brown University

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Host: Dr Ryan Schram

This paper critically discusses studies of men and masculinities in anthropology and ethnography from other disciplines, as well as theoretical frameworks and debates among anthropologists and other relevant scholars in the field.  By considering the ethnographic boom in men and masculinities studies across the globe since 2000, increasingly authored by anthropologists from the Global South, this essay considers anthropology’s singular contributions topically and conceptually—for example, masculinity and militarism, men and public health, gender inequalities, and trans* social movements—including through innovative research in biological and linguistic anthropology and archaeology.  Throughout I try to reflect on the extent to which anthropologists have moved (and if they should have moved) beyond the study of women or men to instead explore gender, sex, and sexuality of humans and nonhuman animals in less binary frameworks.  I draw in particular on my own 30 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico as well as the United States and China.

Matthew Gutmann is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Brown University.  His books  include The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (1996/2006); Mainstreaming Men into Gender and Development: Debates, Reflections, and Experiences (with Sylvia Chant; 2000); The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Mexico City (2002); Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (ed.; 2003); Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control and AIDS in Mexico (2007); Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak out against the War (with Catherine Lutz; 2010); Global Latin America: Into the 21st Century (ed. with Jeffrey Lesser; 2016), and Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (2019).  He has conducted ethnographic research in Mexico, the U.S., and China, and been a visiting professor in China, France, Mexico, Spain, and Thailand.

More information: Vek Lewis – vek.lewis@sydney.edu.au