This entry does not provide an overview of the whole range of men’s violences (Hearn 1998). Many of the relevant issues are already addressed in a broad range of other entries noted at the end of this entry. This present essay partly responds to the task of bringing together analyses of different kinds of violence, including organisational and collective violence, military violence, rape and violence to women in the home. It also addresses another key question (Hearn and Pringle 2006): how do men’s gendered practices intersect with other oppressive power relations around sexuality, cultural difference/ethnicity, age, disability and class, and what are the implications of such analyses for challenging those practices and assisting those abused?
Whilst acknowledging that some women engage in acts of violence and that clearly not all men are violent (Hearn 1998), this entry starts from a recognition that
in modern Western and many other societies, men are the experts, the specialists, in the doing of violence. There are a multitude of connections and associations between the way violence is perpetuated in society and the ways men socially construct themselves/ ourselves and are socially constructed.
(Hearn 1996:99)
This essay is also premised upon the understanding that men’s violence represents a huge problem world-wide. In concluding their edited collection that surveys men’s practices across the world, Pease and Pringle consider the commonalities across men’s practices—some of them very negative—in various countries:
The most important of these is the broad and global extent of men’s violence towards women, children and other men… Thus the material in this book contributes in a major way to our awareness of an often neglected but absolutely essential fact: men’s violence represents one of the most massive global social problems.
(Pringle and Pease 2001:246)
Moreover, a recent large-scale and systematic re-evaluation of data on men’s practices across fourteen European countries highlighted that violence against known women is becoming recognised as a major social problem in most of the fourteen countries. Hearn and Pringle (2006) also add that a recent Council of Europe report has noted that for women between fifteen and forty-four years old, domestic violence is considered the major cause of death and injury. The fourteen-country European review concluded (Hearn and Pringle 2006):
first, that men’s violences to women, children and to some extent other men represent a massive form of social exclusion themselves; and, second, men’s violences, together with dominant and dominating ways of being a man, are intimately connected with the dynamics of racism—another profound form of social exclusion.
The review also confirmed the pervasiveness of men’s violences insofar as they clearly interconnected in complex ways with a very wide range of men’s practices associated with issues such as home and work or health.
This present essay seeks to conceptualise the huge and diverse problem of men’s violences within some broader theoretical understandings of men’s practices and masculinities. It is clear that a whole series of frames of understanding are available, and indeed have been used at various times in various places. These range from the biological and genetic through various psychological (including psychoanalytic) perspectives; through role theory and a variety of socialisation approaches as well as cultural/sub-cultural explanations; and, more recently, to more multi-causal and/or power-oriented and/or postmodern frames (Hearn 1998, and see also Archer 1994). The more recent recognition of the need for multi-causal explanations of men’s violences only partly arises from the fact that such violences are themselves diverse. In fact, multi-causality also reflects a growing awareness that the processes underpinning the generation of men’s violences are immensely complex and therefore a multi-dimensional analysis is necessary.
In the space available here, we examine only two of a number of suggested conceptual frames for analysing the complexity of men’s violence. They are in many ways complementary and closely related. For instance, both partly build on the theoretical model of masculimty/mascuUnities developed by R. Connell (1987, 2002) and both make explicit use of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘mutual constitution’ perspectives on power relations (West and Fenstermaker 1995).
The first frame is that developed by Messerschmidt (1997) as part of his broader approach to men and crime. In summarising Messerschmidt’s frame as it relates to violence, we focus on his classic study of lynching in the post-Civil War United States (1998). Messerschmidt locates men’s violences within the dynamics of gender, race and class oppression ‘viewed as structured action—what people do under specific social structural constraints’ (1998:128). Echoing West and Fenstermaker, Connell and Giddens (1984), he concludes that ‘the accomplishment of gender, race and class occurs simultaneously through social interaction, and…social actors perpetuate and transform these social structures within the same interaction; simultaneously these structures constrain and enable gender, race and class social action’ (1998:128–9).
As a point of clarification, Messerschmidt adds: ‘the salience of each social relation to influendng crime varies by social situation. Although gender, race and class are ubiquitous, the significance of each relation shifts with a changing context’ (1998:129). The meanings of this for the generation of violent crime are clear: ‘This perspective permits us to conceptualise masculinities and violence more realistically and completely, enables us to explore how and in what respects masculinity is constituted in certain settings at certain times, and how that construct relates to crime’ (1998:131).
The second conceptual frame for analysing the complexity of men’s violences that is explored here builds, in a sense, on Messerschmidt’s and is to be found in the work of the present author (Pringle 1995, 2005). As noted earlier, Messerschmidt drew heavily on Connell’s broader theoretical model regarding masculinities and, in particular, hegemonic forms of masculinity. Interestingly, Connell herself has never really applied her model of gender relations to the specific issue of men’s violences in any depth. Pringle’s 1995 study of men and social welfare explicitly sought to test out Connell’s model in relation to the empirical evidence we possessed about the potential dynamics of men’s violences, especially social psychological evidence (Archer 1994; Pringle 1995:94–8). In fact, the primary focus at that time was on men’s sexual violences, but the conclusions may well be valid for men’s violences more broadly.
Drawing partly on the earlier work of Liddle (1993), Pringle demonstrated how Connell’s (1987) three-fold structures—labour, power and, in particular, cathexis—can be used very effectively to illuminate the complex dynamics of men’s violences and to assist in developing strategies for challenging such violences (Pringle 1995:177–80). More recently of course, Connell (2002) has also recognised a fourth, symbolic dimension underpinning the development of hegemonic configurations of men’s practices. This symbolic dimension can certainly also be applied to the processes associated with the generation of men’s violences. For instance, in Messerschmidt’s analysis of lynching, there is a clear recognition of the symbolic force and meaning of that phenomenon (Messerschmidt 1998:148).
At that time, Pringle also highlighted the clear potential within Connell’s explanatory model for incorporating the concept of complex interconnecting power relations within the processes generating the violences of men. In later work (for example, Pringle 2005), Pringle explicitly related such interconnections to the concepts of intersectionality and mutual constitution of power relations (West and Fenstermaker 1995). In 1995 (Pringle 1995:175) Pringle had already suggested that men’s violences cannot be explained adequately only by reference to gendered power relations: instead, one needed to consider the complex and shifting interconnections of a range of power dimensions including those associated with gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality, disability and class.
It is important to acknowledge that both the conceptual frames outlined here for exploring the complex dynamics of men’s violences have several major limitations. First, each of them uses a series of conceptual tools, almost all of which derive from one, albeit rather broad, cultural context: the so-called ‘English-speaking’ world. One therefore has to keep an open mind about the extent to which such tools may or may not be applicable in other cultural contexts. For instance, even in a context which is relatively close, such as the Nordic countries, care must be exercised. As Eriksson (2003) has pointed out, West and Fenstermaker’s concept of ‘doing difference’ as a means to inequality may often be very useful in analysing social situations in the Nordic countries, but it needs to be supplemented by a recognition that ‘doing sameness’ can also be a powerful strategy for promoting inequality in that particular cultural context. For example, it has been suggested (Pringle 2005) that the extremely visible profile of gender equality discourses—and indeed social collectivist discourses more generally—in the Nordic countries has partly hindered acknowledgement of the high level in men’s violence to women in Finland and Sweden. Moreover, it may be partly for the same reason that Norway and Sweden have hitherto failed to play an important European role in the researching of men’s violences while they have been key European players in researching the topic of gender relations and work (Hearn and Pringle 2006). It has also been argued (Eriksson 2003) that the process of ‘doing sameness’ through gender equality discourses has played a central role in the previous tendency of Swedish courts to sometimes award joint custody of children to fathers who had a clear record of violence to their relationship partners. If one has to be so careful even when dealing with contexts relatively close, in cultural terms, to those of the ‘English-speaking’ world, then clearly considerable caution must be exercised when addressing contexts that are even more culturally diverse.
However, a further, perhaps even more salient, limitation of the Messerschmidt and Pringle frames exists—and this applies to most work in the field. The two frames may well assist us in exploring the complex dynamics of how and why men’s violences do occur. Yet they both seem relatively silent when it comes to helping us understand the complex dynamics of why some men do not engage in violent behaviours. This question is of great importance for the future well-being of all of us—and yet we are relatively ignorant about the potential answers. It may be that ongoing research elaborating the intersecting or mutually constituting relations of power will assist us more with that question in the future. Similarly, another key to the issue may be further and more detailed studies of both men’s violences and their non-violences in specific interstices of time and space. More broadly, despite considerable research in many parts of the world on numerous aspects of the topic, the fact remains that the problem of men’s violences is still a disturbingly closed book with many gaps awaiting further research—and action (Hearn and Pringle 2006).
References and further reading
Archer, J. (1994) Male Violence, London: Routledge. Connell, R. (1987) Gender and Power, Cambridge: Polity.
(2002) Gender, Cambridge: Polity.
Hearn, J. (1996) ‘Men’s violence to known women’, in B.Fawcett, B.Featherstone, J. Hearn and C.Toft (eds) Violence and Gender Relations, London: Sage, pp. 99–114.
(1998) The Violences of Men, London: Sage.
Eriksson, M. (2003) I skuggan av Pappa (In the Shadow of Daddy), Stehag: Forlags AB Gondolin.
Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Sodety, Cambridge: Polity.
Hearn, J. (1998) The Violences of Men, London: Sage.
Hearn, J. and Pringle, K. (2006) ‘Men’s violences’, in J.Hearn and K.Pringle, with members of Critical Research on Men in Europe, European Perspectives on Men and Masculinities, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Liddle, A.M. (1993) ‘Gender, desire and child sexual abuse’, Theory, Culture and Society, 10:103–26.
(1998) ‘Men victimising men’, in L.H. Bowker (ed.) Masculinities and Violence, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pringle, K. (1995) Men, Masculinities and Sodal Welfare, London: UCL Press.
(2005) ‘Neglected issues in Swedish child protection policy and practice’, in M.Eriksson, M.Hester, S.Keskinen and K.Pringle (eds) Tackling Men’s Violence in Families, Bristol: Policy, pp. 155–71.
Pringle, K. and Pease, B. (2001) ‘Afterword’, in B. Pease and K.Pringle (eds) A Man’s World? London: Zed Books, pp. 245–52.
West, C. and Fenstermaker, S. (1995) ‘Doing difference’, Gender and Sodety, 9 (1):8–37.
