Ideas of masculinity are fundamental to our understanding of the world. Value judgments about ‘sex appeal’, the appropriateness of employment opportunities, the ways in which families operate, always hold an idea of ‘masculinity’ at their core. This unit will examine and analyze ways in which popular ideas of ‘masculinity’ operate in everyday life. Via the perspectives of core theorists in gender and cultural studies, we examine the economic, social and cultural contexts in which masculinity is lived. We consider different case studies focused on changing articulations of masculinity in contemporary culture. These include aspects of style and consumption, roles within the workplace, and domestic practices.

This unit has three parts. Part one establishes the theoretical terrain of ‘youth studies’ as an interdisciplinary field comprised of scholars writing out of cultural studies, the sociology of youth and educational sociology. Part two explores core theoretical debates in the field: the production of childhood, moral panics and youth at ‘risk’, geographies of youth and the cultural politics of schooling. Part three features case studies of particular youth subcultures: online cultures, music cultures, tween film and T.V., arts cultures embedded in specific places. We employ changing ideas about youth and practices of youth culture as a way of understanding  some of the current forms, practices and theories of youth culture.