C. Conciliación Post procesal
2.5. La Conciliación Extrajudicial
As a theoretical concept, hegemonic masculinity was lifted from its Marxian origins by the Italian sociologist Antonio Gramsci, who studied labour force relations (Gramsci, 1971).
His ‘cultural hegemony’ notion was predicated on the recognition of co-existent consent and force, manifest in dialectics of dominance and subordination (Lears, 1985). Gramsci struggled to find a precise definition, settling on:
“the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population
to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant
fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige
(and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” (1971:12)
Cultural hegemony provided a nuanced understanding of the underpinning influence of
“values, norms, perceptions, beliefs, sentiments, and prejudices” in the machinations of
structurally-ordered social power and control (Lears, 1985: 569). Gramsci’s notion is not a static state, but a process of continuous (re)creation in which the constitution of counter-
69 hegemonies was a constant, live option (ibid), and where polemics of subordination and consent, and subsequent ambiguities related to inner conflict are oiled by individuals’
deeply-held conviction that the ruling classes are legitimate. Hence, subordinates need not actively commit to the hegemony in which they are situated and may resist, openly or covertly, despite the difficulties of adopting a world view at odds with the most ordinary
people’s hegemonic culture (ibid). The Gramscian approach integrates parts of symbolic interactionism and cultural anthropology into a relations-based analytic framework for
“systemic features of a society characterised by power, without reducing that society to a
system.” (ibid, p572). Some contend that we are now “post-hegemonic” concerning the
language of power (Lash, 2007:55).
Both women and men conflate sex with gender on grounds of biological sex (Coltrane, 1994). However, not all gender is that clear-cut. Connell takes recourse to Robert Stoller (1924 to 1991) to discuss the influence of emotional (not only social) interaction in the gendering of social identity. Stoller grounded his writing in the study of transsexuals, and dynamics of sexual excitement (eg Stoller, 1968, 1971). Stoller’s perspective suggests that acquiring a gendered identity may at times require one to override physical facts. While observing the binary nature of the two main standpoints, based on its ability to “add a social script to a biological dichotomy”, Connell also asks whether sex role theory offered a “common-sense compromise, asserting both biology and culture in a composite model of gender?” (Connell, 2005:51). In present sociology, hegemony’s principles are a means by which to study and understand masculinities. The concept works in the theorising of gendered power relations between men, and the role of masculinities in the legitimation of gender orders and regimes (eg Connell, 2005; Howson, 2008; Messerschmidt 2008, 2012). Nevertheless, gender is manifest in more than the symbolic. Patterns of masculine
70 hegemony and domination extend beyond the often-closeted spheres of localised cultural identities into a globalised environment. It is argued that selected dominant masculinities shape and are shaped by global political and market forces. Especially prevalent in North Atlantic countries, their influences are established and maintained in distinct hierarchic institutional structures eg the State, healthcare, business, the materialities of domestic life (cf. Connell, 1998; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Connell and Wood, 2005).
Theoretical application of hegemony to the sociology of gender was first undertaken by Connell, in the classic Gender and Power (1987). The concept has since embraced the existence of plural masculinities rather than one, universal masculinity (eg Connell, 2005). Connell sees masculinity as framed by structural gender relations, related gender orders and institutional gender regimes in his discussion of gender, health and theory (2012a). Echoing Gramsci’s original version, his hegemony is not a fixed, stable state but liable to disruption by external or internal influences. So, masculinities fall into one of four relational categories: hegemony (representing socially cultural dominance), complicity, subordination or marginalisation. Connell’s framework was summarised in Williams and Robertson’s (2006) examination of “how men’s preventive health needs can be effectively
met in primary care” (ibid, p26), and is reproduced in Table 1, below.
Table 1. From R. Williams and S. Robertson: ‘Masculinities, men and promoting health through primary care’. Health. 2016. 16(8): 25-27
71 Williams and Robertson’s model decodes men’s often contradictory experiences of
stereotypical masculinity/so-called masculine traits. These often limit men’s engagement with “health work” from both sides: men seeking healthcare and health practitioners who treat them (ibid, p26). Williams and Robertson’s call for health practitioners to optimise socially-activated uncertainties in men’s self-concepts, using them as engagement portals through which to introduce health-relevant dialogue is echoed by Griffith and colleagues (2016). Those authors emphasise healthcare providers’ responsibilityto elicit men’s own
health-relevant sense-making and approach healthcare as a shared endeavour. But, there are cautions: increasingly abstract post-structural theoretical foci on masculinities as socially performed, embodied aspects of men’s gendered selves may have resulted in perceptions that, in sociological studies of masculinity “the male body is omnipresent, yet relatively invisible” despite a focus on the embodied category of ‘men’ (Whitehead, 2002: 181).
72 Since 1987, the hegemonic masculinities concept has been progressively established in the diverse disciplines that theorise men, moreover its language53 is embedded in the
sociological lexicon (Yancey Martin, 1998). Hegemony is a socially desirable state among gendered cultures and groups, due to its power to sustain and reproduce the norms and values on which it was built (Bauman, 1990). But, masculine characters are not assumed: the task of being a man involves taking on and negotiating complicit or resistant positions in relation to prescribed dominant expressions of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987). An American study of interactional differences between friendship and comradeship among men found complicit positions predicted comradeship,54 while resistant positions
predicted friendship55 (Levy, 2005). Preparatory to his analyses Levy screened-out the 6%
of respondents self-classifying ethnically as non-white leaving a heterogeneous group of self-classified “white, middle-class, middle-aged men” (ibid, p221). The remaining 94%
were ‘middlers’ who (Levy citing Erving Goffman’s 1963 thesis), were “normative, or at least analytically centred” (ibid, p200). Notably, 74% were also married (ibid, p208).
Connell’s drawing of hegemonic masculinity in Masculinities was described as, “critical realist” by Yancey Martin (1998:473), whereas critics suggest it offers an insufficient explanation of processes involved in men’s positioning as gendered beings (Wetherell and Edley, 1999). Thus, hegemonic masculinity was evaluated and revised in a process that led to its inclusion of multiple masculinities to take account of evolving gender practices and
53 For example, “complicit masculinity, the patriarchal dividend … the notion of masculinity and femininity
as “gender projects”… ” (Yancey Martin, 1998:472)
54 Referred to by author Donald Levy as, “more superficial, indicative of group membership and marked by
intensity but not intimacy” (2005: 206).
55Referred to by Levy as “consist[ing] of mutual significance between individuals and the willingness to express themselves spontaneously and emotionally” (2005: 206).
73 the varied social environments in which maleness occurs. Goals for adopting masculinity as an organising concept when studying the psychology of men should be emancipatory, ideally, in that such goals help promote human wellbeing and achieve social progress by enabling the eradication of gender inequality (Addis et al, 2010). This is important, given the problematisation of masculinity by some theorists.
The two decades from 1980 saw exponential shifts in academic masculinities theorising. As we know, by the late ‘80s masculinity was no longer fixed but fluid, and ‘being a man’
was being reconceived as performative, with men adopting and negotiating complicit or resistant stances related to dominant (hegemonic) masculinity (Connell, 1987). Through
the ‘80s and ‘90s, drives to reform men according to profeminist ideals were exacerbated
by neoliberalism’s economic effects on a (mostly male) blue collar workforce (Messner, 2016). These ideologies still ratify economically-driven inequalities in men’s access to
health, with obvious ramifications for their health promotion opportunities (Robertson and Baker, 2017). Then, in 1998, responding to Patricia Yancey Martin’s opinion piece
reflecting on his Masculinities, Connell posed the rhetorical question: “Have I stretched the term too far?” (1998: 475). Yet, today we find that scholarship on “the theoretical
politics of men” has gone on stretching the term. Some contend that it now embraces the influences of eg globalisation, sexuality and body studies, queer and transgender studies
– of which all are reflected in “the theoretical object called men’s health” (Hearn, 2015:5).
Masculinity is “implicated in all aspects of sociality” (Beasley, 2008: 86), including men’s
74 dominate, to the detriment of exploring other standpoints (Matthews, 2016).56 Whatever
one’s position on HMT, men have enjoyed centuries of privilege gleaned via their socially ordered primacy. So, perhaps men’s motivations for preserving the social status quo are axiomatic? Whilst acknowledging the unquestionable importance of Connell’s work, there are ongoing debates on its theoretical utility. These are largely grounded in the concept’s
apparent diversion of gaze away from men’s acts and actions and, arguably, its glossing- over of diverse sexualities and orientations (cf. Hearn, 2015).