Live Fast and Die Young: The Construction of Masculinity among Young Working-class Men on the Margin of the Labour Market

Abstract

Life-history method offers a way to explore the politics of change in contemporary masculinity. The life histories of five unemployed young men are studied, and compared with three men from similar backgrounds but different positions in class and sexual politics. The labour market (rather than labour process) and the state play a major part in framing the development of a 'protest' masculinity, a stressed version of hegemonic masculinity, sustained as a collective practice in milieux such as bike clubs. But dramatic rejections of masculinity, as well as a low-keyed 'complicit' masculinity, emerge from the same social context by different class/gender praxes. Contrasting political prospects are raised by these differing trajectories.