Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Manhood on the Line
ISBN: 9780252098253
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Illinois Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Sexual division of labor; Working class; Automobile industry workers;

Stephen Meyer charts the complex vagaries of men reinventing manhood in twentieth century America. Their ideas of masculinity destroyed by principles of mass production, workers created a white-dominated culture that defended its turf against other racial groups and revived a crude, hypersexualized treatment of women that went far beyond the shop floor. At the same time, they recast unionization battles as manly struggles against a system killing their very selves. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Meyer recreates a social milieu in stunning detail--the mean labor and stolen pleasures, the battles on the street and in the soul, and a masculinity that expressed itself in violence and sexism but also as a wellspring of the fortitude necessary to maintain one's dignity while doing hard work in hard world.