ARTICLE REVIEW

Article Review

Article Review

Introduction

This paper is a critical review of the article Working-Class Masculinity, Emotional Labour and Service Work in the 'New Economy' written by Darren Nixon.

Review

In this article the authors says that working-class men are positioned as iconic and deeply problematic. Condemned by politicians and banned from shopping centres for wearing 'threatening' hoodies (hooded tops), they stalk across the public imagination as packs of 'feral youths'. Their supposed educational failings form part of this picture: they are perceived to follow a trail of underachievement from school onwards into employment and adulthood in our post-industrial society. This aura of disaster extends to university, where they are the least likely to enter and the most likely to 'drop out', especially if they are white men living in disadvantaged provincial areas (Nixon, 2009, 300- 322).

Discussion

The UK Government denotes widening participation in higher education as a pillar of a learning society. Entering university means signing up as a lifelong learner and constructive citizen (Department for Education and Skills [DfES], 2003). Many working-class men seem to reject this by 'dropping out', becoming stigmatised as anti-social losers who threaten the survival of civil society. This paper want to lift the hood and see what really lies beneath this story of lifelong learning and provincial working-class masculinities. This article uses qualitative data from a UK-wide study, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It charts how working-class men are both a threat to lifelong learning policy and its prime object of concern. Debates on male underachievement are considered, suggesting they reflect the ambiguity and polarisation inherent within masculinity.

This article reproduces traditional gendered norms, but also represents a troubling moment of loss of privilege for working-class men. They struggle to fit the paradigm of 'new', flexible, lifelong learner, because of limits constructed by others. They perform masculinity, using it positively as an explanation for their behaviour, but this is consumed negatively by others, with concrete effects on their learning opportunities. This article explores how universities themselves celebrate laddishness and make it difficult to break out of this mould. The article concludes that 'drop-out' is heavily influenced by working-class masculinities but is also a frustrated search for more flexible lifelong learning opportunities(Nixon, 2009, 300- 322).

This article engages with educational policy, literature and research data, but also employs cultural theory on masculinity. Firstly, 'there is no such thing as masculinity, only masculinities … masculine identities are full of cracks and fissures as they shift across history and different cultures' (Salisbury & Jackson, 1996, p. 7). Hence this article explores the situated nature of masculinities within provincial, postindustrial UK landscapes. Secondly, although these men are commonly presented as 'alien', masculinity as a discourse interpellates us all and is a constituent part of what makes us subjects in our society (Althusser, 2001).

This article cannot push masculinity away: 'as a woman I am a consumer of masculinity … I as a woman am also a producer of masculinities and a performer of them' (Nixon, 2009, 300- ...