| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 409 pages) : illustrations |
| Series |
Gender relations in the American experience |
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Gender relations in the American experience.
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| Contents |
Preface -- Introduction : The de-evolutionary turn in U.S. masculinity -- Darwin and evolutionary psychology, then and now -- John Dewey, Pierre Bourdieu, and masculinity as a habit of mind -- "The caveman within us" and the masculinist culture of mimicry -- 1. Rugged individualism -- Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis : origins, composition, and meanings -- Turner's influence on the social psychology of the city -- Radical individualism : masculinist art, angst, and alienation in the city -- Dudism, cowgirl feminism, and the search for authenticity in the "Old West" -- 2. Brute fictions -- The American literary genre of hunting and killing -- Reading for plot : Call of the Wild, the Virginian, and the new male readership -- Irony, atavism, and other variations on the de-evolutionary theme |
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3. College football -- Thorstein Veblen and the rise of "exotic ferocity" in American college football -- Victor Turner, Standford football, and hypermasculine liminal subjects -- Clifford Geertz at the big game : "Thick description of football as the cultural equivalent of war -- 4. War in the head -- Civil war memory, blood sacrifice, and modern American fighting spirit -- Of Rough Riders, blood brothers, and Roosevelt the Berserker -- War as sport for Doughboys, golden boys, and slackers -- Postscript : Marine Corps spirit and the U.S. warrior class, 1941-2003 -- 5. Laws of sexual selection -- Race, lynch law, and the manly provocation -- Marriage, cultural defense in The People v. Chen, and the heart-of-passion defense in Texas -- Compulsory heterosexuality, the Charles Atlas Muscle-Beach fable, and sexual dimorphism unbound -- Epilogue : Irony, instinct, and war -- Irony, Sam Fussell's Muscle, and masculinity as a "parodic tableau vivant" -- Instinct, deep masculinity, and the decline of males -- The Iraq War, hypermasculinity, and the metaphor of disease -- Notes -- Essay on sources -- Index |
| Summary |
"In Brutes in Suits, John Pettegrew examines theoretical writings and cultural traditions in the United States to find that, Darwinian arguments to the contrary, masculine aggression can be interpreted as a modern strategy for taking power. Drawing ideas from varied and at times seemingly contradictory sources, Pettegrew argues that traditionally held beliefs about masculinity developed largely through language and cultural habit - and that these same tools can be employed to break through the myth that brutishness is an inherently male trait." "A major re-synthesis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manhood, Brutes in Suits develops ambitious lines of research into the social science of sexual difference and professional history's celebration of rugged individualism; the hunting-and-killing genre of popular men's literature; that master text of hypermasculinity: college football; military culture, war making, and finding pleasure in killing; and patriarchy, sexual jealousy, and the law. This assessment of the evolution of masculine culture will be welcomed and debated by social and intellectual historians."--Jacket |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-398) and index |
| Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
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English |
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Print version record |
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| Subject |
Sex role -- United States -- History
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Masculinity -- United States -- History
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Gender Studies.
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Masculinity
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Sex role
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Geschlechterrolle
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Mann
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Mansrollen -- historia -- Förenta staterna.
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United States
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USA
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781435692664 |
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1435692667 |
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9780801891724 |
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0801891728 |
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