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Palgrave Macmillan

Men’s Friendships as Feminist Politics?

Power, Intimacy, and Change

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  • © 2022

Overview

  • Enables an intersectional analysis of men's friendship with focus on class, race, age, and sexuality
  • Integrates queer theory, feminist sociology, and poststructuralist perspectives
  • Connects the context of Sweden to developments in the wider, Western world

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences (GSSS)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book discusses men’s friendships in relation to queer, discursive, and intersectional feminist theories. It analyses stories of intimacy, touch, hugs, and conversations, connecting these with current discussions within feminism and critical masculinity studies on “new” men, men’s political activism, and how friendships are lived and conceptualised in relation to heteronormative relationship ideals. Drawing on individual and dyadic interviews with middle-class Swedish men, all engaged in or sympathetic to feminist issues in some sense, this volume shows that Swedish gender equality ideologies as well as feminist, therapeutic, neo-liberal, and individualist discourses prevalent in the Western world structured the men’s friendships and their engagement with gender politics. Chapters cover friendship temporalities, gendered friendship ideals, friendship as men’s politics, and friendship as performed in interaction. Bridging the literatures of feminist research and friendship, the author points to tensions and contradictions in pro-feminist men’s political projects and in contemporary masculine positions.

Reviews

“Given the limited quality research on men’s friendships, it’s even more exciting to read Dr. Goedecke’s work which creatively problematizes the connection between gender and sexuality and men's friendships. The book raises feminist perspectives about the nature of friendship among heterosexual men in Sweden who claim affinity to gender equality positions while also questioning feminist research on men's power and homosociality. Implications for how men’s friendship can lead to a possible decentering of sexual and familial intimate relationships are importantly introduced.” (Peter M. Nardi, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College/The Claremont Colleges, Author of Gay Men's Friendships: Invincible Communities)

“I would highly recommend this book, which offers a distinctive, engaging and critical analysis of male friendships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with men discussing their relationships, a discursive approach generates fresh insights on a range of topics, including temporalities, therapeutic experiences and gender politics. This book will be of interest to masculinities scholars as well as those working in the field of interpersonal relationships.” (Brendan Gough, Professor of Social Psychology, Leeds Beckett University, UK)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Klara Goedecke

About the author

Klara Goedecke is a researcher in Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research focuses on men and masculinities from intersectional perspectives, and includes work on men’s friendships, homosociality, postfeminism, Swedishness, and gender equality. Her work has appeared in Men & Masculinities, Feminist Media Studies, and European Journal of Culture Studies, and she is the co-editor (with Helena Wahlström Henriksson) of Close Relations: Family, Kinship and Beyond (Springer 2021).

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