Privileges, unbearable lightness of masculinity and middle age crisis of ageing men
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | An ongoing qualitative study on institutions of ageing men targets power and care relations of Czech men as they age. The fieldwork in several social environments (marginalised as well as privileged) in the Czech Republic and work-in-progress analysis of in-depth face-to-face interviews with men provides an insight into men´s conceptualisations of their relations, everyday performance and impact on health as they age. This paper targets a more privileged group of men among our research participants and addresses their unreflected status presented as aspects of "ease". The analytical focus is on such a "lightness of being" as well as their accounts of the middle age crisis when reflecting on mental health, performance and bodily limits of their everyday achievement-oriented lifestyles. The outputs are based on interpretations of transcripts of interviews with men competing in veteran sports categories, managers passing on their businesses, and men participating in men´s groups reviewing their own lives. The analysis addresses ageing men as a gendered category (Hearn and Parkin 2021) and is informed by CSMM (Critical studies on men and masculinities) approach. We target how „social privilege and the ways in which men in later life with accumulated social, cultural and economic capital experience social relations" (Willis et al. l, 2023: 223) and their own mental health. |
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