Exploring the pastiche hegemony of men

Abstract

In this article I explore the continued hegemony of certain men. I use interview extracts to help think through the notion of pastiche hegemony as a means of understanding how men, and narratives about them, have changed but how unequal power relations persist. In particular, I explore this process within men’s understandings of how they were able to gain and maintain influence and power at work.

Through their reflexive reading of the changing shape of late modern Western society, these men believed they were able to craft selves and employ social scripts to produce social influence and power in situational and contingent forms. I argue that it is within this interactional process that the increasingly undermined ideological and material legacy of patriarchy might still be reified. As such, while there is clear evidence highlighting the undermining of men’s ability to assume power, within this article I theoretically unpack how certain men might be able to produce a localised, pastiche hegemony.

This article was published as part of a thematic collection on gender studies.

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