In Acceleration: Sordid Stories of Septuagenarian Decline, sociologist Michael A. Messner tells humorous stories of ageing decline and forging ahead against ads to remain strong, virile, and forever young for a only few bucks. Ageing people face a quandary: as the passage of time accelerates, our bodies decelerate. We slow down. We hurt. We face limits, sometimes humiliating ones. And we complain. As boomer men get older, online musclemen bombard us with pitches: for a few bucks (often, qu...

High school yearbooks provide both a vivid snapshot of student life and a reflection of what the adults in the community valued the most. For instance, athletics are often covered more than academics, and boys’ sports routinely receive more attention than girls’ sports. But how have those values changed over time?In The High School, acclaimed sociologist Michael A. Messner reads through 120 years of El Gabilan, the yearbook from his own alma mater, Salinas High Sc...

Sport is a pervasive aspect of US society. Most children in the U.S. are involved in organized sport and it's the subject of much conversation, media content, leisure activity, and discretionary spending. There is a growing number of broadcast networks, online news sites, social media accounts, and streaming platforms devoted to covering sports that fans consume with keen interest. But do we truly understand sport?Fair and Foul explores our love of sport, just as it reveal...

When it first appeared in 1993, Barrie Thorne’s Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School became an instant classic in the budding fields of feminist sociology and childhood studies. Through detailed first-hand observations of fourth and fifth graders at play, she investigated questions like: Why do girls and boys tend to self-segregate in the schoolyard? What can playful teasing and ritualized games like “cooties” and “chase and kiss” teach us about how children perform gendered iden...

In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports.The chapter...

Over the last few decades, as the United States has become embroiled in foreign war after foreign war, some of the most vocal activists for peace have been veterans. These veterans for peace come from all different races, classes, regions, and generations. What common motivations unite them and fuel their activism?Guys Like Me introduces us to five ordinary men who have done extraordinary work as peace activists: World War II veteran Ernie Sanchez, Korean War veteran Woody...

What does it mean for men to join with women as allies in preventing sexual assault and domestic violence? Based on life history interviews with men and women anti-violence activists aged 22 to 70, Some Men explores the strains and tensions of men's work as feminist allies. When feminist women began to mobilize against rape and domestic violence, setting up shelters and rape crisis centers, a few men asked what they could do to help. They were directed "upstream," and told to "tal...

Vivid narratives, fresh insights, and new theories on where gender theory and research stand todaySince scholars began interrogating the meaning of gender and sexuality in society, this field has become essential to the study of sociology. Gender Reckonings aims to map new directions for understanding gender and sexuality within a more pragmatic, dynamic, and socially relevant framework. It shows how gender relations must be understood on a large scale as well as i...

Is sport good for kids? When answering this question, both critics and advocates of youth sports tend to fixate on matters of health, whether condemning contact sports for their concussion risk or prescribing athletics as a cure for the childhood obesity epidemic. Child’s Play presents a more nuanced examination of the issue, considering not only the physical impacts of youth athletics, but its psychological and social ramifications as well.The eleven original scholarly es...

Michael Messner, already known for his nuanced explorations of masculinities in sport, here humanely explores the evolving, often confusing dynamics of masculinities between three generations of boys and men. This candid memoir will make engrossing reading for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to gender studies. Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War For decades, feminist scholars, memoirists, and novelists have explored the lineaments of ...

Michael Messner, already known for his nuanced explorations of masculinities in sport, here humanely explores the evolving, often confusing dynamics of masculinities between three generations of boys and men. This candid memoir will make engrossing reading for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to gender studies. Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War For decades, feminist scholars, memoirists, and novelists have explored the lineaments of ...

The profound changes wrought by the feminist movement were by no means restricted to women. In the years since feminism has taken root, the role of men and masculinity has begun to undergo its own redefinition. Michael A. Messner provides a sociological framework to understand the responses of men to the changes, challenges, and crises in the social organization of gender. By examining not only what certain groups of men say about gender but what they do, Messner helps to illuminate the va...