Consecuencias del ambiente o atmósfera del punto de venta en el comportamiento del

In view of the above caveats and contestations, why, then, opt for IMT as the preferred theoretical framework? Obviously, exploring the research questions

through the gender lens of ‘masculinities’ was immediately appealing since I could,

for example, examine the ways in which boys who dance transgress the concept of

‘hegemonic masculinity’ as theorized by Connell. However, further reading (beyond

Connell and often poststructuralist in orientation) led me to believe that hegemonic masculinity was now rather limited in its utility to reflect on the more nuanced state of contemporary gender and power relations - especially so when, for example, one considers the improved social landscape for gay men and women in the UK in social, political and legal spheres (Weeks, 2007). What was required then

was a contemporary theory of masculinity, less reliant on typologies (although in practice these are hard to avoid) and one in sympathy with my social

constructionist orientation.

Described as the “most prolific paradigm of theorizing the increasingly liberal nature

of contemporary masculinities” (Magrath & Scoats, 2017, p.9), inclusive masculinity theory (Anderson, 2009), is a paradigm that offers a neat and complementary ‘fit’

between poststructuralist notions of identity and power and social constructionist accounts of gender and sexual identity formation. A further and compelling appeal of IMT is its regard for the materiality of the body (which is, after all, the essence of dance), but which in some post-structuralist theorising is an “absent presence”

according to Leder, (1995, p.1). Writing about such approaches to the body, Pickard notes, “[t]he body becomes a vehicle of expression of the self but in most cases what

is explored are the kinds of talk or accounts that subjects give in particular social

contexts” (Pickard, 2015, p.47). This need to move beyond the confines of discourse

and to embrace the corporeality of the body is enabled by ‘inclusive masculinity theory’ (Anderson, 2009), since it pays attention to both discursive elements and embodied experiences, vital constituents in capturing the complexity of young male

dancers’ lives.

Epistemologically speaking, as noted above, IMT is drawn from poststructuralist notions of identity and power together with social constructionist accounts of gender and sexual identity formation. As such, it accords with my own view that,

orthodox masculinities or multiple inclusive masculinities” (Anderson, 2009, p.31)

– a pleasing recognition of multiplicities within the seemingly binary constraints of inclusive and orthodox masculinities.

Furthermore, IMT is flexible and capable of explaining the social dynamics in

contexts with both high and low levels of homohysteria, whereas Connell’s

hegemonic masculinity is “unable to capture the complexity of what occurs as cultural homophobia diminishes” (Anderson, 2009, p.7) since it was first conceptualised in the mid-1980s when Western culture was not low in

homohysteria, but since then, “significant changes” have occurred which make Connell`s theory “redundant in today`s culture” according to Anderson (2009, p.32).

However, as previously explained, IMT has not been accepted uncritically. Anderson,

for example, appears too quick to relegate Connell’s work to the annals of history.

Unlike hegemonic masculinity, IMT is not sustained by homophobia and an associated fear of the feminine, and despite the indisputable changes that have occurred in gender relations since the 1980s, the extent and effects of these changes is still open to debate. While the paradigm of IMT is suitable for exploring

contemporary masculinities, Anderson’s conclusion, that we are now living in a culture of ‘inclusive masculinity’, is nonetheless bold and controversial. For example,

as a (supposedly) universalising discourse, I argue that, as yet, IMT has been under- researched and not theorised fully in relation to men across the life course.

Furthermore, as I find and discuss in Chapters Five, Six & Seven, probably fuelled by

homophobia and a fear of the ‘feminine’, a minority of boys’ fathers (educated and

middle-class) were uneasy with, or even hostile to, their sons’ dancing – a problematic masculinity at odds with IMT, while boys themselves were acutely aware of the necessity for ongoing gender boundary maintenance and masculine and/or heterosexual recuperation. It is, therefore, at least in part, this

contentiousness that makes IMT a fascinating choice of lens to explore how young male dancers make sense of their masculine identities, and to understand why

‘inclusive masculinity’, practised by young male dancers themselves, is not enacted

by all of their male peers.

In common with many other interpretative frameworks, I believe the study of masculinities is best regarded as an interdisciplinary field broadly concerned with the social construction of what it means to be a man, their behaviours, social roles and relations within a given society, alongside the meanings attributed to them.

Importantly then, the term ‘masculinity’ stresses gender, unlike ‘male’, which

stresses biological sex. This is significant and worth reiteration because the study of masculinities need not be confined to biological males; instead the field can deal with a diversity of identities, behaviours and meanings that occupy the label

‘masculine’ but, importantly too, it does not assume that they are universal.

Although referring to ‘inclusive masculinity theory’ as a singular noun, we should, as Anderson acknowledges above, refer to ‘masculinities’ in the plural to accommodate

this diversity, while acknowledging the cautions of several scholars (e.g. Hood- Williams & Harrison, 1998; Francis, 2000, 2002; Warin, 2006) to resist wherever possible the diminution of gender analysis to typologies or essentialism.

Speaking of essentialism, we know that male dancers engage in an activity which is culturally coded as ‘feminine’ often rendering them ‘unmasculine’ and liable to a

homosexual presumption. As the preferred critical lens for analysing the experiences of these male dancers, IMT focuses directly on this fear of being thought gay,

conceptualized as homohysteria (Anderson, 2009), alongside a related concept, homophobia, which was found to be of ‘declining significance’ (McCormack, 2012, p. xxiv). Employing IMT would, therefore, enable me to ascertain if its claims could be validated by the lived experiences of young male dancers, but as I explicate over Chapters Five, Six & Seven, I was unable to endorse this.

Mine was an original and novel task; only Anderson’s study of college male

cheerleading in the USA (Anderson, 2005b), could be regarded as analogous since,

like dance, it is culturally ascribed as ‘feminine’ (Davis, 1990; Adams & Bettis, 2003).

Anderson found that males who cheerlead are “self-promoted as real men, daring,

heterosexual, and strong enough to hold a girl (or two) above their heads, yet agile

enough to perform complex gymnastic routines” (Anderson, 2009, p.116).

Conceptualizing cheerleading this way assisted heterosexual men to “raise their

masculine capital and ward off homosexual suspicion” but without the need to invoke homophobia, while living in a culture of “gay suspicion” (i.e. a homohysteric culture) these men were “over-the-top about how heterosexual they were”, argued Anderson (ibid., p.118).

This point took my theorising in a new, but closely related direction, exploring the

work of McCormack (2012) whose conceptualisation of ‘heterosexual recuperation’

I subsequently utilised to explain how young male dancers re-inscribe their heterosexual orientation by deploying a range of heteronormative techniques, such as professing attraction to females. Chapter Three, which focusses on dance

and masculinity, contains more discussion of this, such as the ‘make it macho’

strategy, identified by Fisher (2007) designed to broaden the appeal of ballet to males by constructing it as physically tough, competitive and solidly heterosexual.

And so, while recuperating heterosexuality was judged an effective means of contesting the discourse that posits male dancers as subject to a homosexual presumption, it was also necessary to address the other discourse that codes dance

as ‘feminine’ and so I operationalised a further recuperative concept, that of ‘masculine recuperation’ (Hansen, 1996) to explain how boys, irrespective of their sexuality, sought to re-inscribe their identity as ‘masculine’ not ‘feminine’. This was

first used in anthropology to describe a common theme in Hindu nationalist

discourses in India, described as “the metaphorical condensation of a myth of loss, or

theft, of masculinity” on the part of Hindu males who were “driven by an urge to

overcome this perceived effeminization by expunging the Muslim ‘Other’” (Hansen, 1996, p.138). The concept was later adopted by scholars in education to critique the

‘failing boys’ debate in Australia, North America and the UK and its siren call - for

more male teachers. Such calls were driven by a “recuperative masculinity politics”

(Martino & Kehler, 2006, p.1), predicated on the perceived feminisation of schooling

and its detrimental effects on boys’ education. These debates endure, and as I explicate in Chapter Seven, the call for more male dance teachers as ‘role models’ is

recruiting initiative predicated on the aforementioned ‘make it macho’ approach

(Fisher, 2007).