TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘These boys are wild'
T2 - constructions and contests of masculinities at two Jordanian high schools
AU - Shirazi, Roozbeh
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2016/1/2
Y1 - 2016/1/2
N2 - In Jordan, gender equality is often depicted as an important social concern in policy texts, national media, and reports by international development institutions. In these reports, ‘gender' is often synonymous with ‘women’, and efforts are directed to improving parity in social and economic outcomes. This article argues that males are often overlooked or invisible in such accounts, and are more readily visible as obstacles to gender equality or embodiments of masculine crisis. Drawing upon ethnographic work in two government high schools for boys, I analyse everyday practices and social experiences of male students and teachers in schools to argue that they constitute an overlooked site to analyse the construction of gendered subjectivities. Mainstream accounts fail to account for how schooling is constitutive of gender struggle for boys, and how this struggle is connected to the changing nature of social membership in Jordan spurred in part by social and economic pressures.
AB - In Jordan, gender equality is often depicted as an important social concern in policy texts, national media, and reports by international development institutions. In these reports, ‘gender' is often synonymous with ‘women’, and efforts are directed to improving parity in social and economic outcomes. This article argues that males are often overlooked or invisible in such accounts, and are more readily visible as obstacles to gender equality or embodiments of masculine crisis. Drawing upon ethnographic work in two government high schools for boys, I analyse everyday practices and social experiences of male students and teachers in schools to argue that they constitute an overlooked site to analyse the construction of gendered subjectivities. Mainstream accounts fail to account for how schooling is constitutive of gender struggle for boys, and how this struggle is connected to the changing nature of social membership in Jordan spurred in part by social and economic pressures.
KW - Middle East
KW - boys
KW - development studies
KW - ethnography
KW - masculinities
KW - post structural theory
KW - secondary education
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U2 - 10.1080/09540253.2015.1081877
DO - 10.1080/09540253.2015.1081877
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945232683
SN - 0954-0253
VL - 28
SP - 89
EP - 107
JO - Gender and Education
JF - Gender and Education
IS - 1
ER -