To put "men" and "social policy" together may still seem a little strange. Yet there are numerous ways in which social policy is about men, in its formulation, implementation, delivery, and inclusions/exclusions. Different men have variable relations to social policy, and are involved and implicated in social policy in a wide variety of ways, as: users, family members, practitioners, managers, policy-makers, members of social organisations, and so on. Likewise, the explicit gendering and naming of men is uneven in different social policy arenas. This article discusses contemporary debates in Critical Studies on Men -masculinity and multiple masculinities; hegemonic masculinity and the hegemony of men; embodiment; and transnationalisation and virtualisation -and in each case considers their implications for social policy, before some concluding remarks.
Keywords: age, embodiment, hegemony, masculinities, transnationalisation, violencePreamble … … men in different parts of the world are spending vast amounts of money trying to kill each other, whilst a large proportion of the world"s population (mostly, but not exclusively women and children) are allowed to starve to death. Amnesty International [1991] reports the increasing use of rape of women and children throughout the world as a common instrument of oppression ... Male violence, sexual or otherwise, is not the unusual behaviour of a few "odd" individuals, neither is it an expression of overwhelming biological urges: it is a product of the social world in which we live. (Cowburn et al., 1992) The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation as a women"s issue. ... Platform for Action emphasises that women share common concerns that can be addressed only by working together and in partnership with men towards the common goal of gender equality around the world. (United Nations, 2001) In recent years there has been a major expansion of studies on men and masculinities.While not playing down differences between traditions in studying men, the broad critical approach to men and masculinities of recent years can be characterised by:an explicit and specific focus on men and masculinities; taking account of feminist, gay, and other critical gender scholarship; recognising men and masculinities as explicitly gendered; understanding men and masculinities as socially constructed, produced, and reproduced, rather than as somehow just "naturally" one way or another;Critical Social Policy Vol. 30(2), No. 103, 2010, pp. 165-188.seeing men and masculinities as variable and changing across time (history) and space (culture), within societies, through life courses and biographies; emphasising men"s relations, albeit differentially, to gendered power; spanning both the material and the discursive; interrogating intersections of gender with other social divisions in constructions of men and masculinities.In this article I reflect on conte...