English Abstracts

Sylka Scholz: Männlichkeitssoziologie. Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot 2012.

Review by Anna Buschmeyer

Sylka Scholz brings together various strands of her previous research on men and masculinity and is thus able to offer a good overview. She formulates a new theoretical frame for this much discussed field of research and examines its empirical validity in the fields of job market, military, and politics. She manages to show that, while the concept of masculinity is certainly becoming fragile, neither a collapse of male domination nor an alternative to the present hegemonic masculinity are looming. This book is a good introduction to the field of research, which also highlights several areas that need further research. The combination of the approaches of Connell and Bourdieu is, in theory, helpful for the development of the field – in parts however, it would have been good to theorize more already in this book.

Meike Sophia Baader, Johannes Bilstein, Toni Tholen (Hg.): Erziehung, Bildung und Geschlecht. Männlichkeiten im Fokus der Gender-Studies. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2012.

Review by Julia Maria Zimmermann

Men’s studies is still a rather young discipline, yet nevertheless has become increasingly serious in recent years, even in Germany. The anthology at hand offers insights into current research on constructions and strategies of masculinity in education and society. It shows how diverse, critical, and topical men’s studies can be beyond political monopolization. At the same time, however, it also shows how much ‘catching up’ still needs to be done in German-language research.

Gudrun-Axeli Knapp: Im Widerstreit. Feministische Theorie in Bewegung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2012.

Review by Tina Jung

With her collection, Gudrun-Axeli Knapp presents an impressive and exceptionally extensive retrospective on 25 years of feminist theorizing. The volume is subdivided into four subject areas, which deal with femininity criticism, feminist appropriations of critical theory, intersectionality, and the question of the nature of feminist (theoretical) criticism. The author does not only impress with her thorough yet also provocative argumentations and examinations of the terrain of feminist theory; but the figure of thought that she traces across all articles and that coins the collection’s title is also very appealing: “in conflict”. In doing so, Knapp does also outline aims and objectives of feminist criticism.

Nadine Teuber: Das Geschlecht der Depression. „Weiblichkeit“ und „Männlichkeit“ in der Konzeptualisierung depressiver Störungen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011.

Review by Karen Wagels

The question of whether women have a higher risk of becoming depressive is both starting point and theme of this study: Should depressive disorders be considered typical women’s diseases and if so, why? This question goes hand in hand with a distinct interest in the socially as well as individually embodied effects of a symbolic gender order, which Nadine Teuber manages to unfold in great detail regarding the field of depressive disorders. Thanks to the well-grounded presentation of the discursive processes of constructing sexuality and depressive disorders, which she develops with interdisciplinary references to psychological, psychoanalytical, and cultural studies perspectives, she succeeds in performing the balancing act of a gender-theoretical problematization of the phenomenon depressive disorders, which shows inherent traces of naturalization in numerous ways.

Rabea Krätschmer-Hahn: Kinderlosigkeit in Deutschland. Zum Verhältnis von Fertilität und Sozialstruktur. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2012.

Review by Tanja M. Brinkmann

Why do German women and men not have any children? What role do socio-structural and lifestyle-related reasons play? Krätschmer-Hahn pursues these questions in the publication of her dissertation. Using a secondary analytical design, her quantitative study outlines many known as well as several new gender- and East-/West-differences regarding the factors for childlessness. The publication is able to convince the reader through its rigor, complex quantitative analyses, systematic elaboration of the current state of research, and through its linguistic clarity and splendor. It does, however, not answer the questions as to what extent childlessness and parenthood are really – as assumed – rational decisions and why childlessness in Germany is a phenomenon that needs to be explained at all.

Ulrike Auga, Claudia Bruns, Dorothea Dornhof, Gabriele Jähnert (Hg.): Dämonen, Vamps und Hysterikerinnen. Geschlechter- und Rassenfigurationen in Wissen, Medien und Alltag um 1900. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011.

Review by Annette Kliewer

In this Festschrift commemorating Christina von Braun’s 65th birthday, former students of the cultural scientist dedicate themselves to the crisis of culture after the turn of the century around 1900 and to the phenomenon of the ‘abnormal,’ as it can, for example, be found in constructions of vamps, perverts, and primitives. The articles discuss topics from a very diverse range of realms such as everyday life, media (films by Murnau and Lubitsch, among others), academia (e.g. Freud and Haeckel), religion and art (Marquis de Sade and Stefan Zweig, among others).

Alexandra Martine de Hek, Christine Kampmann, Marianne Kosmann, Harald Rüßler: Fußball und der die das Andere. Ergebnisse aus einem Lehrforschungsprojekt. Freiburg: Centaurus Verlag 2011.

Review by Robert Claus

Soccer plays a crucial role as a social stage in Germany. After all, several millions of people are involved in this ball game in various ways every weekend – and thus also in the social hierarchies on the field and beyond it. This volume presents the results of a study project on discrimination and soccer at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences. The three articles offer valuable insights into phenomena of sexist, homophobic, and racist marginalization happening at the very basis of this mass sport as well as perspectives on overcoming them. However, the work shows some lacks in contentual consistency regarding the terminology.

Jürgen Lauffer, Renate Röllecke (Hg.): Gender und Medien. Schwerpunkt: Medienarbeit mit Jungen. München: kopaed 2011.

Review by Annette Kliewer

If people want to be mindful of gender differences when addressing and working with boys, it seems that they need to accept that these boys must not be confronted with excessive questioning of the traditional image of men as communicated through the media. This applies both to reading promotion, which calls for finally offering them ‘real heroes’ again, and to free youth work, which wants to attract them with ‘tough’ offers for identification. The reference book at hand illustrates this dilemma using examples from projects in media-oriented work with boys.