Helene Aarseth

From Modernized Masculinity to Degendered Lifestyle Projects Changes in Men's Narratives on Domestic Participation 1990—2005

This article explores mens motivations for change in the interface of a feminist demand for gender equality and the appeal of new consumerist lifestyles. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian dual career couples within a Nordic welfare state, the article analyzes the case story of four men interviewed in 1990 and 2005. During this period, the men and their partners challenge a gendered division of work in their families by turning the administrative and emotional cohesion in the familys daily life into a joint lifestyle project. The described trajectories suggest that this transgression is an outcome of a specific interweaving of a feminist discourse on equal responsibility and an aesthetic consumption discourse. The consumerist appeal seems to have offered a vehicle to turn a moral demand into a motivational force in these mens own life projects; consequently, it has facilitated the creation of a degendered commitment toward domestic participation.

Food and masculinity in dual-career couples

A lifestyle-oriented reformulation of food preparation in the family may serve as a vehicle for a transgression of the gender division of labour. Drawing on two qualitative studies of Norwegian and Danish dual-career couples, we identify three patterns of praxis in relation to food. The patterns are steps in a process of change towards a more gender-equal organization of family life. In the first pattern, the narratives expose feelings of shortcomings towards the ideal of equality. Food preparation is here a primarily female responsibility related to care for the familys wellbeing. From these narratives, a second pattern emerges, displaying different forms of masculine identification with food preparation. Drawing on either a practical or a ‘con amore’ orientation towards food preparation, these new masculine identifications create a departure from the cultural connotations connecting food, femininity and care. This change, in turn, paves the way for the third pattern, where food preparation becomes a new joint project in the family. We argue that this new masculine identification with food preparation as leisure activity does not represent a reproduction of the structural gender relationship, but rather a prerequisite for a more profound change in the gender division of labour.

Enriching intimacy: the role of the emotional in the ‘resourcing’ of middle‐class children

This paper analyses qualitative interviews conducted with Norwegian middle‐class parents. It explores how a particular type of intimacy – an enriching intimacy – is produced as part of everyday parent–child interactions and considers the notion of the social self that spurs middle‐class parents to seek this very type of intimacy with their child. By so doing it adds to the growing field of research on middle‐class parents’ child‐rearing strategies and the role these strategies play in the ‘resourcing’ of middle‐class children. The relevance of the dimension of intimacy for studies on the parental effect on children’s school achievement is discussed.

Conflicts in the habitus: the emotional work of becoming modern

This article argues that Bourdieus concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollass discussions of the ‘unthought known’ and of ‘transformational objects’ add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho-social understanding of the relation between agency and change. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a socially mobile chain of a middleclass grandmother, mother and daughter in a period of rapid change, we describe how conflicts in the habitus are produced relationally and can either impede or motivate desires for change. Relational and object relational psychoanalytic theories offer a way to move beyond what we consider a problem in Bourdieus theory of habitus that derives from his assumption of a subject who either consciously opts for change in habitus when faced with new social demands or non-consciously and unconflictually reproduces habitus.

Eros in the Field? Bourdieu's Double Account of Socialized Desire:

In his later works, Bourdieu draws extensively on psychoanalytic approaches in accounting for his concept of socialized subjectivity as bound to the social world by an intense affective grip. This emotional turn holds potential for further developing Bourdieus account of subjectivity as a formation of socialized desire. However, in accounting for this socialized desire, Bourdieu relapses into a dualism of subjective and objective structures, incompatible with the Merleau-Pontyian roots of his practice theory. Tracing this problem to the antagonism between desire and culture in the psychoanalytic accounts that Bourdieu draws on, I propose that the psychoanalytic scholar Hans Loewalds account of Eros may enable a move beyond this impasse, offering a promising conceptual basis for taking further the account of socialized subjectivity and socialized desire in Bourdieus practice theory.

Working class fathers and daughters: Thinking about desire, identification, gender and education

Given the overwhelming attention paid to the mother-child dyad in all realms of psychology and many in sociology, what theoretical frameworks are available to us through which to explore and understand father-daughter relationships? More specifically, what significance might working class fathers, both the flesh and blood person and the ‘father in the mind’ so frequently approached through the realm of the imaginary, have for their daughters’ relationship with education? Drawing on a longitudinal study of girls growing up from 4 to 21 years old, we look to the work of psychoanalytic and psychosocial theorists to think about the place of fathers in the educational experiences, trajectories and outcomes of working class girls and young women. In doing so, we want to disassemble some of the ‘heteronormative unconscious’ ideas and phantasies, so often dependent on splitting, that are attached to femininity and masculinity, especially in their classed representations. We also want to explore the ways in which the terms of gender are simultaneously fixed and fluid, binary and challenging of the binary, when we consider working class girls and young women’s relationships with their fathers and the connections that these may have with education and schooling.

Adaptation, equality, and fairness. Towards a sociological understanding of ‘the supportive husband’

ABSTRACT Many heterosexual couples today follow a neo-traditional pattern where she has main responsibility for the workings of domestic daily life – but there is also a growing number of couples where her job takes centre stage and he must adapt to that circumstance. This article focuses on the re-organization of gendered meanings prompted in such a situation. Drawing on narrative interviews with 22 men living in partnerships with career women, we investigate the cultural work required to construct intelligible masculine positions and identities when neo-traditional work/family patterns are unsettled. We identify and explore two central adaption narratives among the men: ‘running the family’ and ‘50/50 advocacy’. Both narratives are rendered intelligible using the cultural narrative of the family as a joint-working community and drawing on the egalitarian notion of mutuality. In this re-organization of meaning, the creation of the time-consuming ‘invisible’ work of practical, emotional, and moral domestic responsibilities is made visible, disentangled from the taken-for-granted link to femininity in ways that contribute to the de-gendering of domestic work.

Fear of Falling – Fear of Fading: The Emotional Dynamics of Positional and Personalised Individualism

This article explores the emotional dynamics involved in the shaping of middle-class subjectivities, aiming to move beyond the ‘fear of falling’ thesis and the attendant emphasis on the quest for positional advantage. I argue that this thesis offers a one-dimensional notion of what it is that drives middle-class perceptions, values and motivations, unsuitable for explaining current tensions between symbolic and economic fractions. Drawing on a comparative narrative interview study of managerial and professional parents in Norway, I describe the emotionally charged investments – ‘fear of falling’ and ‘fear of fading’ – as well as the excitements that drive different modes of socialisation in these groups. Further developing the phenomenological and psychosocial trajectories in Bourdieu’s practice theory yields a productive tool for exploring these modes of socialisation, contributing to an enhanced conception of emotional dynamics of different middle-class subjectivities.