Neoliberalism,Mobility and Cook Islands Men in Transit

From the 1990s, neoliberalism has been vigorously promoted by aid agencies operating in the Cook Islands. The solution to the country's economic problems has been sought in the privatisation of government assets and services and the development of free‐market principles. Social Impact Assessment reports of these reforms have included information on their effect on women and children under the heading of ‘gender’; men, however, are notably absent as a category of analysis. Building on recent work about men, masculinities and development, this paper begins to address this imbalance by examining how Cook Islands men have been effected by, and how they react to, neoliberalism in a series of gender specific ways. In particular, it explores the relationship between masculinity, class, status, and migration.     

Police and Thieves,Gunmen and Drunks: Problems with Men and Problems with Society in Papua New Guinea

The image of the ‘man with a gun’ is pervasive in Papua New Guinea and connotes not only the state's capacity to use force, but that of men to resist and subvert state control. At the same time, the association of beer and marijuana with both modernity and violent masculine behaviours provides the context, the justification and the forms of homosocial activities involving violence. In this paper, I explore the ambiguities surrounding guns as instruments of state force and as symbols of masculine autonomy in so‐called ‘weak states’ by examining some stories about the ways that guns are acquired for illegal activities. In particular, I shall discuss the ways that guns and beer are instruments of violence and potency for police, tribal warriors and criminals as well as some of the means whereby men gain access to new forms of power. Drawing on ethnographic research with young men in New Ireland Province, the paper will deal specifically with the ways that adolescent boys construe ‘modern masculinity’.     

Grief as social experience: Death and bereavement in Lihir,Papua New Guinea1

This paper explores the nature of grief in Lihir, Papua New Guinea, in light of psychological theories of bereavement and grief. Anthropologists have demonstrated that culture has an impact on both the expression and experience of grief and can offer both a challenge to established theories and new perspectives on the conceptualisations and experiences of the bereaved. Until recently, ‘grief work’ was the foremost model for understanding bereavement as a psychological process and was also used by anthropologists in cross‐cultural work. However, since the 1990s, a number of alternative models of normal grief have emerged, including the dual process coping model and the model that proposes resilience as a central concept. These newer models, particularly the one which incorporates resilience, offer more for understanding grief in Lihir. The article argues that grief in Lihir has a phase of sorrow and worry that is dealt with through the sociality and activity of the mourning period, and then a longer phase of active remembering and forgetting of the deceased. The social and cultural context of bereavement is not adequately captured in current psychological conceptualisations of social support, which need to be broadened to encompass cross‐cultural material.     

Sung Adornment: Changing Masculinities at Lake Kopiago,Papua New Guinea

In the space of 50 years, ideals of masculinity in the western end of the Southern Highlands have been radically transformed. Gone, for instance, is the bachelor cult where young boys were grown into men. Drawing upon ethnographic research undertaken over the past decade, in the Lake Kopiago sub‐district in the far north‐western corner of Southern Highlands Province, this paper seeks to document these changing masculinities and explore their portrayal by juxtaposing ‘traditional’ and contemporary growth enhancing spells and courting songs—particularly those composed and sung by men. In doing so, this paper also seeks to explore how guns, marijuana, discos and pornographic movies have come to figure centrally in contemporary notions of masculinity. It will also document how the proliferation of marijuana and small arms has transformed young men with otherwise very little standing in the community into self‐promoted leaders who have taken it upon themselves to publicly police the sexuality of women in increasingly violent ways.     

Emplacement and resistance: Social and political complexities in development‐induced displacement in Papua New Guinea

This paper argues that attending to social and political factors in development‐induced displacement is critical even for projects that involve resettlement of small populations. Taking the resettlement of two villages by the Lihir Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea as a unique case study, I analyse why one village was relatively successfully resettled, while the other has been very complicated, leading to hostility and conflict. In these cases the initial focus of all concerned in reaching a resettlement agreement was on the adequacy of compensation and housing, which mimicked the focus in the literature during the 1990s on impoverishment and compensation. From the late 1990s there have been calls for greater attention to social and political aspects of displacement and resettlement. Early attention to these factors in the Lihir case, particularly the key concepts of emplacement and disemplacement, would have highlighted flaws in the resettlement agreement and would have made it easier to avert the conflict and resistance that arose.     

Disrupting ‘a man's world’: gender,technology, and class in Vietnam's global heavy industry

Only rarely is Vietnam's global heavy industry studied from an anthropological perspective in either its gender or its class dimensions. This article contributes new insights into the ways in which the interagential dynamics of gender and technology from shopfloor to engineer offices coproduce social orders in contesting and perpetuating essentializing notions of femininity and masculinity. Blue-collar and white-collar women working in heavy industrial workplaces represent a minority in ‘a man's world’, ambiguously both disidentifying and identifying with notions of a typical ‘female character’ vis-à-vis ‘male character’. Women working in heavy industry, the article shows, generate ‘disruption’ by reconfiguring conventions regarding gendered occupation, redefining gendered engagement with technology, and recalibrating images of femininity and masculinity. Doing so means carving out new opportunities and/or provoking crisis in a patrilineal universe. The article analyses the intricate ways in which women's engagement with technology is empowering while simultaneously reinforcing gender- and class-specific inequalities in socialist Vietnam's global market economy.     

“If One Does Not Fulfil His Duties,He Must Not Be a Man”: Masculinity,Mental Health and Resilience Amongst Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee Men in Canada

Refugee men face unique mental health stressors in the pre- and post-migratory periods. However, there has been little in-depth research on the mental health of refugee men in Canada. Given this situation, the overall aim of this study is to explore the psycho-social experience of Sri Lankan Tamil refugee men in Canada. Particular objectives include better understanding any inter-relationship between war-trauma, migration, concepts of masculinity and mental health. The study employed a two-phase participatory action research design based on the grounded theory approach. Phase 1 involved an 8-month ethnography conducted in Sri Lanka. Phase 2 consisted of qualitative interviews with 33 Sri Lankan Tamil refugee men living in Canada. Consistent with grounded theory, analysis was conducted inductively and iteratively. Four specific themes emerged from the data (i) gendered helplessness of war: participants commonly reported ongoing negative rumination regarding experiences where they were unable to adequately protect loved ones from physical suffering or death; (ii) reduced capacity: participants frequently felt unable to fulfill culturally sanctioned duties, such as supporting their family, due to ongoing pre- and post-migratory stress; (iii) redundancy: many participants felt that they were useless in Canada, as they could not fulfill typical masculine social roles (e.g. provider) due to factors such as unemployment and underemployment; (iv) intimate criticism: some participants reported that their spouses would often attempt to ‘shame’ them into greater achievement by constantly reminding them of their ‘failures’. Many found this distressing. These various failures culminated in a state that we label “depleted masculinity”, which participants linked to emotional and behavioural problems. Participants reported that they actively tried to rebuild their masculine identity, for example by adopting leadership roles in community organizations, which fostered resiliency. Results suggest a need to review and rebuild masculine identity to support the mental health of refugee men.     

Do Men Underreport and Mask Their Emotional Attachment to Animal Companions? The Influence of Precarious Masculinity on Men’s Bonds with Their Dogs

Males’ underreporting of psychological issues, physical symptoms, and personal information is commonplace both in medical and psychological settings in North America. One explanation for this occurrence is men that endorse traditional forms of masculine gender roles underreport or mask their symptoms to avoid being perceived as less masculine. In a similar way, the thesis of the current study was males may also mask and underreport the strength of attachment to their animal companions due to masculinity concerns. These males may also have more difficulty explaining why the bond is of importance. To address these notions, we developed the Human–Animal Interaction Conflicts scale (HAIC) consisting of two psychometrically sound subscales that measure conflicts male owners may have related to their pets. The first subscale involves limiting affection conflict (LAC), which measures underreporting or masking affectionate behavior around animal companions. The second entails conflict explaining the importance of the bond (EBC), which results in males not providing clear or accurate remarks when attempting to describe the bond’s significance. The results from linear regressions analyses support the hypothesis that males endorsing traditional forms of masculine gender (as measured by the Precarious Masculinity Scale) underreport or mask their affectionate behaviors toward animal companions. Similarly, these same men also report more difficulty placing into words the bond they have with their dogs. The current study not only has implications for mental health and medical providers but may also help explain past research where males self-report lower levels of attachment to dogs.     

Urban Low-Income African American Men, HIV/AIDS, and Gender Identity

In a 1993 Human Organization article, Jerome Wright called for more research on African American male sexual behavior and the risk for HIV infection. The present article is a response to that call. Wright pointed out a well-known fact of HIV/AIDS prevention programs: such programs have not been very successful in reaching low-income African American males. The present article suggests that perhaps the key to better understanding sex-related health-risk behavior is to conduct more systematic research on gender identity, and the historical and sociocultural origins of such identities. I argue that if we are truly interested in developing effective HIV/AIDS programs targeting low-income African American males, then the sociocultural "meanings" that this population attaches to AIDS-related phenomena must be understood in the broader contexts of American constructs of masculinity, and in the real and perceived experiences of black men in America. Data from several ethnographic and qualitative research projects carried out among low-income African American male and female residents of Baltimore, other parts of Maryland, and Washington, D.C. are used in support of my primary arguments. [HIV/AIDS, African American Males, Gender Constructs, Sociocultural Meaning, Plantation America]     

Men, prostitution and the provider role: understanding the intersections of economic exchange, sex, crime and violence in South Africa

Background

South African policy makers are reviewing legislation of prostitution, concerned that criminalisation hampers HIV prevention. They seek to understand the relationship between transactional sex, prostitution, and the nature of the involved men.

Methods

1645 randomly-selected adult South African men participated in a household study, disclosing whether they had sex with a woman in prostitution or had had a provider relationship (or sex), participation in crime and violence and completing psychological measures. These became outcomes in multivariable regression models, where the former were exposure variables.

Results

51% of men had had a provider relationship and expected sex in return, 3% had had sex with a woman in prostitution, 15% men had done both of these and 31% neither. Provider role men, and those who had just had sex with a woman in prostitution, were socially conservative and quite violent. Yet the men who had done both (75% of those having sex with a woman in prostitution) were significantly more misogynist, highly scoring on dimensions of psychopathy, more sexually and physically violent to women, and extensively engaged in crime. They had often bullied at school, suggesting that this instrumental, self-seeking masculinity was manifest in childhood. The men who had not engaged in sex for economic exchange expressed a much less violent, more law abiding and gender equitable masculinity; challenging assumptions about the inevitability of intersections of age, poverty, crime and misogyny.

Conclusions

Provider role relationships (or sex) are normative for low income men, but not having sex with a woman in prostitution. Men who do the latter operate extensively outside the law and their violence poses a substantial threat to women. Those drafting legislation and policy on the sex industry in South Africa need to distinguish between these two groups to avoid criminalising the normal, and consider measures to protect women.     

The End of the Beginning? Mining,sacred geographies,memory and performance in Lihir

This article explores the critical ways in which the relationship between landscape and memory is mediated by performance—through song, dance, ritual and the movements of the living and the dead. In the Lihir group of islands, in Papua New Guinea, these acts of memorialisation are rehearsed on a remarkable stage, an involuted cosmography or sacred geography in which the cosmological point of origin, the sacred rock of Ailaya, is also the ultimate destination for all human and spirit forms. Spirit beings are held to have emerged from the Ailaya, spreading across the island group, their tracks charting the links amongst distant clan members and the networks of alliance between trading partners. It is to the Ailaya that the spirits of deceased Lihirians must return, following preparatory mortuary rites and sung along a route that recalls the spirit connections. This teleological process is mapped through an account of the performance of relationships between people and land, to which an additional layer of complexity is added by the presence of a giant gold mine, in which the Ailaya is again the central feature.     

Menstrual cycle, trait estrogen level, and masculinity preferences in the human voice

Men with low testosterone (feminine men) invest in relationships and offspring more than men with high testosterone (masculine men). Women's attraction to testosterone dependent traits (e.g. masculine face shape) is enhanced during the late-follicular, fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Attractive, feminine women have stronger preferences for masculine men as possible long-term partners than less attractive, masculine women. We manipulated 2 testosterone related vocal traits (voice pitch and apparent vocal-tract length) in voices to test if women prefer masculinized men's voices to feminized men's voices; masculinity preferences are enhanced at the fertile (late-follicular) menstrual cycle phase; the amount that masculinity preferences shift cyclically relates to average estrone-3-glucuronide concentration (the primary urinary metabolite of estrone, E3G). We found women displayed general masculinity preferences for men's voices; masculinity preferences were greater in the fertile (late-follicular) phase of the cycle than the non-fertile (early-follicular and luteal) phase; and this effect was most pronounced for women with low average E3G concentration. As feminine women (i.e. those with high average E3G levels) are most able to obtain investment even from masculine men, these women may not need to change their mating preference or strategy during the menstrual cycle as much as masculine women.     

‘Tell your own story’: manhood,masculinity and racial socialization among black fathers and their sons

This study examines how black fathers and sons in the USA conceptualize manhood and masculinity and the racial socializing practices of black men. Drawing upon data from an ethnography on black male schooling, this paper uses the interviews with fathers and sons to explore how race and gender intersect in how black males make meaning of their gendered performances. Common notions of manhood are articulated, including independence, responsibility and providership. However, race and gender intersect in particular ways for black men. The fathers engaged in particular racial socializing practices preparing their sons for encounters with racism. Both fathers and sons adopted black existentialist perspectives, emphasizing self-determination and resilience as racially and politically motivated acts of resistance. Finally, the paper describes how the fathers modelled to their sons how to navigate racialized spaces as black men.     

Correlated preferences for facial masculinity and ideal or actual partner's masculinity

Studies of women's preferences for male faces have variously reported preferences for masculine faces, preferences for feminine faces and no effect of masculinity-femininity on male facial attractiveness. It has been suggested that these apparently inconsistent findings are, at least partly, due to differences in the methods used to manipulate the masculinity of face images or individual differences in attraction to facial cues associated with youth. Here, however, we show that women's preferences for masculinity manipulated in male faces using techniques similar to the three most widely used methods are positively inter-related. We also show that women's preferences for masculine male faces are positively related to ratings of the masculinity of their actual partner and their ideal partner. Correlations with partner masculinity were independent of real and ideal partner age, which were not associated with facial masculinity preference. Collectively, these findings suggest that variability among studies in their findings for women's masculinity preferences reflects individual differences in attraction to masculinity rather than differences in the methods used to manufacture stimuli, and are important for the interpretation of previous and future studies of facial masculinity.     

Methods to Measure the Impact of Home,Social, and Sexual Neighborhoods of Urban Gay,Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men

Men who have sex with men (MSM) accounted for 61% of new HIV diagnoses in the United States in 2010. Recent analyses indicate that socio-structural factors are important correlates of HIV infection. NYCM2M was a cross-sectional study designed to identify neighborhood-level characteristics within the urban environment that influence sexual risk behaviors, substance use and depression among MSM living in New York City. The sample was recruited using a modified venue-based time-space sampling methodology and through select websites and mobile applications. This paper describes novel methodological approaches used to improve the quality of data collected for analysis of the impact of neighborhoods on MSM health. Previous research has focused predominately on residential neighborhoods and used pre-determined administrative boundaries (e.g., census tracts) that often do not reflect authentic and meaningful neighborhoods. This study included the definition and assessment of multiple neighborhoods of influence including where men live (home neighborhood), socialize (social neighborhood) and have sex (sexual neighborhood). Furthermore, making use of technological advances in mapping, we collected geo-points of reference for each type of neighborhood and identified and constructed self-identified neighborhood boundary definitions. Finally, this study collected both perceived neighborhood characteristics and objective neighborhood conditions to create a comprehensive, flexible and rich neighborhood-level set of covariates. This research revealed that men perceived their home, social and sexual neighborhoods in different ways. Few men (15%) had the same home, social and sexual neighborhoods; for 31%, none of the neighborhoods was the same. Of the three types of neighborhoods, the number of unique social neighborhoods was the lowest; the size of sexual neighborhoods was the smallest. The resultant dataset offers the opportunity to conduct analyses that will yield context-specific and nuanced understandings of the relations among neighborhood space, and the well-being and health of urban MSM.     

Facial sexual dimorphism,developmental stability,and susceptibility to disease in men and women

We investigated aspects of self-reported health history–the number and duration of respiratory and stomach or intestinal infections and the number of uses of antibiotics over the last 3 years–in relation to measured facial masculinity, developmental instability [facial asymmetry and body fluctuating asymmetry (FA)] and facial attractiveness in a sample of 203 men and 203 women. As predicted from the hypothesis that the degree of facial masculinity is an honest signal of individual quality, men's facial masculinity correlated negatively and women's positively with respiratory disease number and duration. Stomach illness, however, was not associated significantly with facial masculinity and antibiotic use correlated significantly (negatively) only with men's facial masculinity. For both facial asymmetry and body FA, significant, positive associations were seen with the number of respiratory infections. In addition, facial asymmetry was associated positively with the number of days infected and marginally, in the same direction, with antibiotic use. Facial attractiveness showed no significant relationships with any of our health-history measures. This study provides some evidence that facial masculinity in both sexes may signal disease resistance and that developmental stability covaries positively with disease resistance. The validity of our health measures is discussed.     

Facial Masculinity: How the Choice of Measurement Method Enables to Detect Its Influence on Behaviour

Recent research has explored the relationship between facial masculinity, human male behaviour and males'' perceived features (i.e. attractiveness). The methods of measurement of facial masculinity employed in the literature are quite diverse. In the present paper, we use several methods of measuring facial masculinity to study the effect of this feature on risk attitudes and trustworthiness. We employ two strategic interactions to measure these two traits, a first-price auction and a trust game. We find that facial width-to-height ratio is the best predictor of trustworthiness, and that measures of masculinity which use Geometric Morphometrics are the best suited to link masculinity and bidding behaviour. However, we observe that the link between masculinity and bidding in the first-price auction might be driven by competitiveness and not by risk aversion only. Finally, we test the relationship between facial measures of masculinity and perceived masculinity. As a conclusion, we suggest that researchers in the field should measure masculinity using one of these methods in order to obtain comparable results. We also encourage researchers to revise the existing literature on this topic following these measurement methods.     

Second to fourth digit ratio, testosterone and perceived male dominance

Previous studies have shown that male faces with extreme features associated with testosterone are perceived as dominant and masculine. Women have been reported to prefer more masculinized male faces as they may consider testosterone markers to be an 'honest' indication of good health, and such considerations may underlie their aesthetic preferences. However, pronounced testosterone facial markers are also associated with dominance, and several negative personality traits. This suggests that female aesthetic preferences may be an adaptive compromise between positive attributes associated with higher than average testosterone, and negative attributes associated with more extreme masculinization. This current study attempts to clarify the role of hormone markers in female perceptions of dominance, masculinity and attractiveness, in male facial images. Recent evidence suggests that the relative length of the 2nd to 4th finger (2D : 4D ratio) is a pointer to prenatal testosterone levels and may thus serve as a window to the prenatal hormonal environment. We measured 2D : 4D in a sample of male college students and took salivary samples to analyse circulating levels of testosterone. Women rated facial images of these males for dominance, masculinity and attractiveness. Our results show that male 2D : 4D was significantly negatively related to perceived dominance and masculinity but not attractiveness. Circulating testosterone levels were not related to dominance, masculinity or attractiveness. These findings suggest that: (i) high prenatal levels of testosterone serve to 'organize' male facial features to subsequently reflect dominance and masculine characteristics presumably activated during puberty; and (ii) attractiveness is not directly related to testosterone levels. We conclude that facial dominance and masculinity reflect a male's perceived status rather than his physical attraction to women.     

Men's masculinity and attractiveness predict their female partners' reported orgasm frequency and timing

It has been hypothesized that female orgasm evolved to facilitate recruitment of high-quality genes for offspring. Supporting evidence indicates that female orgasm promotes conception, although this may be mediated by the timing of female orgasm in relation to male ejaculation. This hypothesis also predicts that women will achieve orgasm more frequently when copulating with high-quality males, but limited data exist to support this prediction. We therefore explored relationships between the timing and frequency of women's orgasms and putative markers of the genetic quality of their mates, including measures of attractiveness, facial symmetry, dominance, and masculinity. We found that women reported more frequent and earlier-timed orgasms when mated to masculine and dominant men—those with high scores on a principal component characterized by high objectively-measured facial masculinity, observer-rated facial masculinity, partner-rated masculinity, and partner-rated dominance. Women reported more frequent orgasm during or after male ejaculation when mated to attractive men—those with high scores on a principal component characterized by high observer-rated and self-rated attractiveness. Putative measures of men's genetic quality did not predict their mates' orgasms from self-masturbation or from non-coital partnered sexual behavior. Overall, these results appear to support a role for female orgasm in sire choice.     

Men's facial masculinity predicts changes in their female partners' sexual interests across the ovulatory cycle,whereas men's intelligence does not

A substantial body of work demonstrates that women's mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle. When fertile in their cycles, women are especially attracted to masculine features (e.g., faces, voices, bodies), socially dominant behavior, and male scents associated with body symmetry and social dominance. Women may also find intelligent men particularly attractive when fertile, though findings are mixed. Related research shows that, on average, romantically-involved women report stronger sexual attraction to men other than their pair-bond partners, but not partners, when fertile, and especially when their partners lack features fertile women prefer (e.g., symmetry). In the current study, we examined whether women's patterns of sexual interests across the cycle are similarly moderated by partners' facial masculinity, facial attractiveness, and intelligence. Results revealed predicted effects of male partners’ facial masculinity but none for partners’ intelligence. Facial attractiveness may have effects, but we find no evidence that it does so independently of facial masculinity.