The Rolling Stones: Sociological Perspectives, edited by Helmut Staubmann, draws from a broad spectrum of sociological perspectives to contribute both to the understanding of the phenomenon of the Rolling Stones and to an in-depth analysis of contemporary society and culture that takes The Stones a starting point. Contributors approach The Rolling Stones from a range of social science perspectives including cultural studies, communication and film studies, gender studies, and the sociology of popular music. The essays in this volume focus on the question of how the worldwide success of The Rolling Stones over the course of more than half a century reflects society and the transformation of popular culture.

Updated and expanded-with a new foreword by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne-Malestrom provides a redemptive vision of biblical manhood and a way through the treacherous seas of patriarchy. Like the danger of a maelstrom in the open seas, a relentless force threatens our culture, swirling with hidden currents that distorts God's image of personhood. This book reveals how the malestrom is one of the Enemy's single most successful strategies. Its victories are flashed before us every day in the headlines as men lose sight of who God created them to be. It has consumed the evangelical church that stoops to offering toxic "manly" solutions to the wrongs it perceives in society and distracts from the rich potential God has entrusted to his sons. Digging deeply into the stories of men in the Bible who subverted cultural hierarchies, Carolyn Custis James shows us how countercultural God's design for men really is. Through personal story, biblical commentary, and cultural analysis, Custis James: Makes a strong case for the unbiblical nature of patriarchy. Illuminates the sociology of marginalization and cultural gender roles. Takes a close biblical look at Jesus and what his character and humanity means to the men of the church today. Malestrom offers what we so desperately need-a biblical, global, timeless vision of godly personhood that is big enough to encompass the diversity of men's lives and strong enough to withstand the crises they face. "It is one thing to critique the abuses of a domineering masculinity and lament the religious and societal consequences, but Carolyn Custis James takes the next crucial step and offers us a better path forward. For those asking, "What now?" Malestrom serves as a sure-footed guide." -Kristin Kobes Du Mez

What did it mean to be a Frankish nobleman in an age of reform? How could Carolingian lay nobles maintain their masculinity and their social position, while adhering to new and stricter moral demands by reformers concerning behaviour in war, sexual conduct and the correct use of power? This book explores the complex interaction between Christian moral ideals and social realities, and between religious reformers and the lay political elite they addressed. It uses the numerous texts addressed to a lay audience (including lay mirrors, secular poetry, political polemic, historical writings and legislation) to examine how Biblical and patristic moral ideas were reshaped to become compatible with the realities of noble life in the Carolingian empire. This innovative analysis of Carolingian moral norms demonstrates how gender interacted with political and religious thought to create a distinctive Frankish elite culture, presenting a new picture of early medieval masculinity.

Extra-Ordinary Men analyzes popular cinematic representations of white heterosexual masculinity as the "ordinary" form of male identity, one that enjoys considerable economic, social, political, and representational strength. Nicola Rehling argues that while this normative position affords white heterosexual masculinity ideological and political dominance, such "ordinariness" also engenders the anxiety that it is a depthless, vacuous, and unstable identity. At a time when the neutrality of white heterosexual masculinity has been challenged by identity politics, this insightful volume offers lucid accounts of contemporary theoretical debates on masculinity in popular cinema, and explores the strategies deployed in popular films to reassert white heterosexual male hegemony through detailed readings of films as diverse as Fight Club, Boys Don't Cry, and The Matrix. Accessible to undergraduates, but also of interest to film scholars, the book makes a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the ways in which popular film helps construct and maintain many unexamined assumptions about masculinity, gender, race, and sexuality.

In early-twentieth-century motion picture houses, offensive stereotypes of African Americans were as predictable as they were prevalent. Watermelon eating, chicken thievery, savages with uncontrollable appetites, Sambo and Zip Coon were all representations associated with African American people. Most of these caricatures were rendered by whites in blackface.

Few people realize that from 1915 through 1929 a number of African American film directors worked diligently to counter such racist definitions of black manhood found in films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 epic that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. In the wake of the film's phenomenal success, African American filmmakers sought to defend and redefine black manhood through motion pictures.

Gerald Butters's comprehensive study of the African American cinematic vision in silent film concentrates on works largely ignored by most contemporary film scholars: African American-produced and -directed films and white independent productions of all-black features. Using these "race movies" to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race in popular culture, he separates cinematic myth from historical reality: the myth of the Euro American-controlled cinematic portrayal of black men versus the actual black male experience.

Through intense archival research, Butters reconstructs many lost films, expanding the discussion of race and representation beyond the debate about "good" and "bad" imagery to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race as device in the context of Western popular culture. He particularly examines the filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific and controversial of all African American silent film directors and creator of the recently rediscovered Within Our Gates-the legendary film that exposed a virtual litany of white abuses toward blacks.

"Black Manhood on the Silent Screen" is unique in that it takes contemporary and original film theory, applies it to the distinctive body of African American independent films in the silent era, and relates the meaning of these films to larger political, social, and intellectual events in American society. By showing how both white and black men have defined their own sense of manhood through cinema, it examines the intersection of race and gender in the movies and offers a deft interweaving of film theory, American history, and film history.

Winner of the Leisure Studies Association's Outstanding Book Prize This book examines the tensions and ambivalences which men encounter as they negotiate contemporary expectations of fatherhood and fulfill their own expectations of what it means to be a 'good' father. There is little doubt that today's fathers are responding to new expectations about fatherhood and fathering practices. The remote, detached, breadwinning father of the past, once lauded as a masculine ideal, has faded, and men are now expected to be 'involved', 'intimate', 'caring' and 'domesticated' fathers. Using a family practices lens and a case study of sport, Fletcher elucidates the changes and continuities in family and fathering practices in different historical periods and contexts. Negotiating Fatherhood will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in family and fathering practices, sport, leisure, and gender.

Increasing numbers of people in our culture, particularly middle-aged men, are finding that the things they worked for over the past two decades are simply not providing the fulfillment they originally expected from them. We are coming to realize that our homes, vehicles, jobs and possessions are not sufficient to stave off the crisis of meaning many of us find when life does not meet our expectations. Sojourn reminds us that life is often messy--complex and full of fear--just as it should be. Learning from the few wild places still available to us in our culture can provide us with the realization that a weighty life is a life on its way to an important integration of body, soul, heart, and spirit.

This book explores ideas of masculinity in the maritime world in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. During this time commerce, politics and technology supported male privilege, while simultaneously creating the polite, consumerist and sedentary lifestyles that were perceived as damaging the minds and bodies of men. This volume explores this paradox through the figure of the sailor, a working-class man whose representation fulfilled numerous political and social ends in this period. It begins with the enduring image of romantic, heroic veterans of the Napeolonic wars, takes the reader through the challenges to masculinities created by encounters with other races and ethnicities, and with technological change, shifting geopolitical and cultural contexts, and ends with the fragile portrayal of masculinity in the imagined Nelson. In doing so, this edited collection shows that maritime masculinities (ideals, representations and the seamen themselves) were highly visible and volatile sites for negotiating the tensions of masculinities with civilisation, race, technology, patriotism, citizenship, and respectability during the long nineteenth century.

This book provides a much-needed evaluation of the history of men's fashion advertising in the first half of the twentieth century. Arguably, modernism provided the most visually arresting and playful poster and press advertising campaigns ever launched. Undoubtedly one of the most fecund and complex periods in the history of menswear promotion, the period saw vast sums of money spent on advertising men's clothing by the likes of Austin Reed, the Fifty Shilling Tailors, Simpson and Barratt shoes. Replete with confident head-turners, many posters of the period featured dandies knowingly offering up their bodies for the delectation of women - an irony made doubly rich by the fact that these images were consumed almost exclusively by men. As Jobling expertly shows, the erotic charge in evidence in the representation of the buff gymnos in Calvin Klein's 80's campaigns had much earlier antecedents. There was, surprisingly, a pronounced fetishistic aspect coupled with sexual ambiguity in publicity for underwear in the interwar period. Looking well beyond issues of representation to broader socio-economic contexts in this deeply researched and original study, Jobling addresses an exciting range of discourses relating to professionalization, modernity, mass-communication and marketing, display and consumer psychology.

An examination of the meanings and experiences of six young African-American men. The study seeks to expand our understanding of the complexities of the lives of African-American men and simultaneously challenge seemingly unidimensional images of black men.

The profile of prisoners across many Western countries is strikingly similar - 95% male, predominantly undereducated and underemployed, from the most deprived neighbourhoods. This book reflects on how similarly positioned men configure masculinities against global economic shifts that have seen the decimation of traditional, manual-heavy industry and with it the disruption of long-established relations of labour. Drawing on life history interviews and classical ethnography, the book charts a group of men's experiences pre, during and post prison. Tracking the development of masculinities from childhood to adulthood, across impoverished streets, 'failing' schools and inadequate state 'care', the book questions whether this proved better preparation for serving prison time than working in their local, service-dominated, labour markets. It integrates theories of crime, geography, economics and masculinity to take into account structural and global economic shifts as well as individual long-term perspectives in order to provide a broad examination on pathways to prison and post prison.

With limited resources to contextualize masculinity in colonial Mexico, film, literature, and social history perpetuate the stereotype associating Mexican men with machismo--defined as excessive virility that is accompanied by bravado and explosions of violence. While scholars studying men's gender identities in the colonial period have used Inquisition documents to explore their subject, these documents are inherently limiting given that the men described in them were considered to be criminals or otherwise marginal. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century resources, too, provide a limited perspective on machismo in the colonial period. The Origins of Macho addresses this deficiency by basing its study of colonial Mexican masculinity on the experiences of mainstream men. Lipsett-Rivera traces the genesis of the Mexican macho by looking at daily interactions between Mexican men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In doing so she establishes an important foundation for gender studies in Mexico and Latin America and makes a significant contribution to the larger field of masculinity studies.

The Brother Code: What is the role of manhood and masculinity in the lives of African American males in college? How do manhood norms influence decisions within and beyond college? How might mothers and fathers differentially affect manhood and masculinity in their sons? What are African American's men unique ways of knowing themselves and their surroundings? The Brother Code: Manhood and Masculinity among African American Men in College situates itself at the intersection of higher education and cultural studies to address these questions and more. Primarily, this book offers colleges and universities a penetrative gaze into a complex web of identities-the manhood of African American males in college. Yet the book also seizes a rare opportunity in higher education research to review six historical eras of African American manhood as well as the troublesome relationship between African American males and education in general. This knowledge is important for understanding all aspects of African American male participation in college, including enrolment, retention, curricular, and co-curricular involvement. Based on an empirical study, the data in this book emerged from one-on-one interviews in which 24 African American males enrolled in 12 colleges discussed how manhood matters in their social and college lives. The aim is to help unearth the marginalised topics of manhood, gender, and masculinity in males generally but, more specifically among African American males, a marginalised student group in education. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book draws upon literature in history, African American studies, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and anthropology.

While dance has always been as demanding as contact sports, intuitive boundaries distinguish the two forms of performance for men. Dance is often regarded as a feminine activity, and men who dance are frequently stereotyped as suspect, gay, or somehow unnatural. But what really happens when men dance?
When Men Dance offers a progressive vision that boldly articulates double-standards in gender construction within dance and brings hidden histories to light in a globalized debate. A first of its kind, this trenchant look at the stereotypes and realities of male dancing brings together contributions from leading and rising scholars of dance from around the world to explore what happens when men dance. The dancing male body emerges in its many contexts, from the ballet, modern, and popular dance worlds to stages in Georgian and Victorian England, Weimar Germany, India and the Middle East. The men who dance and those who analyze them tell stories that will be both familiar and surprising for insiders and outsiders alike.

Good men--husbands, fathers, church leaders, pastors--sometimes make bad choices. And for far too many men, bad choices have led to the crumbling of marriages and ministries. Tom Eisenman knows it doesn't have to be this way. He also knows that in order for men to develop authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, trust--the character traits of spiritual maturity--they must cultivate healthy relationships with their brothers on the journey. In The Accountable Man Eisenman shows men how to build friendships of camaraderie and relational depth. He casts a compelling vision of interdependence and spiritual vitality--a vision in which no man stands alone against the temptations of our twenty-first century. Perfect for use in men's groups, small groups or one-on-one accountability reationships, this helpful, hopeful book includes lists of straight-to-the-point questions that will help men challenge one another to spiritual maturity and integrity.