ABSTRACT

Research on geographies of care identifies care work as a low-paid, menial and ultimately feminized activity. Much of the work in the field, unsurprisingly, has focused upon the plight of women and how the division of labour produces and sustains gender inequalities. We are interested in how new generations understand gender, work and care and the possibilities for generating heterogeneous, caring masculinities. Using creative methods, we engage young people in a series of critical masculinities workshops through which participants are asked to reflect upon what it means to be a man and materialize these ideas through arts and craft. Our school-based discussions with young people and their artworks reveal how participants place an acute emphasis on the felt, affective and emotional register of caring masculinities. We explore their creative endeavours to critically interrogate care as a gendered concept, interpret its ‘troubled’ relationship to masculinity, and analyse possibilities for future change. Our findings suggest masculine care practices have the potential to challenge and redistribute power across the gender order. However, we further found that hegemonic forms of masculinity could become consolidated and recuperated through caring acts, meaning gender power relations are not easily disrupted simply by men becoming caring.

摘要

对护理地理的研究将护理工作确定为一种低薪、卑微且最终女性化的活动。毫不奇怪，该领域的大部分工作都集中在女性的困境以及劳动分工如何产生和维持性别不平等上。我们对新一代如何理解性别、工作和关怀以及产生异质、关怀男性气质的可能性感兴趣。我们使用创造性的方法，让年轻人参与一系列批判性的阳刚之气研讨会，通过这些研讨会，参与者被要求反思作为一个男人意味着什么，并通过艺术和工艺将这些想法具体化。我们在学校与年轻人及其艺术作品的讨论揭示了参与者如何高度重视关爱男性气质的感受、情感和情感记录。我们探索他们创造性的努力，将护理作为一个性别概念进行批判性审问，解释其与男性气质的“麻烦”关系，并分析未来变化的可能性。我们的研究结果表明，男性护理实践有可能挑战和重新分配跨性别秩序的权力。然而，我们进一步发现，霸权形式的男子气概可以通过关怀行为得到巩固和恢复，这意味着性别权力关系不会因为男性变得关怀而轻易中断。