Maskulinitet, imagination och livssammanhang. Att nå förändringspotentialer hos män

Abstract

The article discusses theoretical and methodical approaches to masculinity and social change. The authors argue that a Nordic critical research on men and masculinities should develop analytical tools that enable us to grasp potentials for change in what they call "normal male" life patterns. Changes in Nordic masculinities are not necessarily attached to experiences of subordination or marginalisation in relation to a hegemonic masculinity. We should also seize potentials for change in the tensions generated within men's life world and their structural position in the gendered division of work. In this light, alternative approaches to seize the social change that are generated within the process of men's intimate life patterns are discussed. The authors point at two theoretical approaches that enable us to grasp the dialectic between limitations and possibilities of "normal male" life patterns. The first approach is the concept of manliness - unmanliness, which catches the opposed paradox between preserving the conception of manliness and the fear of giving it up and take up new life patterns. This is gathered in the meaning of "fear of falling". The other approach is based on the concept of social imagination developed by the German sociologist Ulrike Prokop. This concept has been redefined to cover men's perception of their own subjective needs and to explain - in relation to intimate life patterns - the potential longing for creating new practices of the gender division of labour. Methodically, the article points at a qualitative approach where several narrative spaces are established in the individual interview to ensure a dialogue between the interviewee and the interviewerabouttheunderstandingofthediscrepancies of the different descriptions of the interviewee himself.