Irina Novikova

Critical Studies on Men in Ten European Countries (1): the state of academic research

This article is on the work of the European Research Network on Men in Europe project, “The Social Problem and Societal Problematization of Men and Masculinities” (2000-2003), funded by the European Commission. The Network comprises women and men researchers with a range of disciplinary backgrounds from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The Networks initial focus is on mens relations to home and work, social exclusion, violence, and health. Some of the findings on the Networks fourth phase of work, namely the review of newspaper and media representations of mens practices in the ten countries, are presented. This is the last of four articles reviewing critical studies on men in the ten countries through different methods and approaches.

Critical studies on men in ten European countries: (3) The state of law and policy

This article is on the work of The European Research Network on Men in Europe project “The Social Problem and Societal Problematization of Men and Masculinities” (2000-2003), funded by the European Commission. The Network comprises women and men researchers with a range of disciplinary backgrounds from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The Networks initial focus is on mens relations to home and work, social exclusion, violences, and health. Some of findings on the Networks second phase of work, namely the review of statistical sources on mens practices in the ten countries, are presented. This is the third of four articles reviewing critical studies on men in the ten countries through different methods and approaches.

Mainstreaming gender in the EU-accession process: the case of the Baltic Republics

Since the early 1990s, the Baltic states have gone through processes of economic transition and liberalization. Although various reports give an overview of gendered impacts of these economic reforms, they fail to elaborate on the more complex relations between gender, citizenship, and social exclusion. This article explores these relations in more detail. The first decade of reforms in the Baltic states resulted in a lack of economic prospects, in particular for women from minority groups and women working in low-pay sectors. This made them increasingly vulnerable to trafficking for sexual purposes: migration to Western Europe was an attractive alternative for those without work, whether through legal or illegal migration channels. The failure to address this issue and other issues effectively cannot be attributed to the European level only. This argues that effective mainstreaming is also hampered by rapid changes in national governments, by political ideologies regarding the role of women, and by a lack of information and expertise within newly established gender-equality units.

Critical Studies on Men in Ten European Countries (4) Newspaper and Media Representations

This article is on the work of the European Research Network on Men in Europe project, “The Social Problem and Societal Problematization of Men and Masculinities” (2000-2003), funded by the European Commission. The Network comprises women and men researchers with a range of disciplinary backgrounds from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The Networks initial focus is on mens relations to home and work, social exclusion, violence, and health. Some of the findings on the Networks fourth phase of work, namely the review of newspaper and media representations of mens practices in the ten countries, are presented. This is the last of four articles reviewing critical studies on men in the ten countries through different methods and approaches.

Critical Studies on Men in Ten European Countries (2) The State of Statistical Information

This article is one the work of The European Research Network on Men in Europe project “The Social Problem and Societal Problematization of Men and Masculinities” (2000-2003), funded by the European Commission. The Network comprises women and men researchers with range of disciplinary backgrounds from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The Networks initial focus is on mens relations to home and work, social exclusion, violences, and health. Some of findings on the Networks second phase of work, namely the review of statistical sources on mens practices in the ten countries, are presented. This is the second of four articles reviewing critical studies on men in the ten countries through different methods and approaches.

Imagining Africa and blackness in the Russian empire: from extra-textual arapka and distant cannibals to Dahomey amazon shows – live in Moscow and Riga

In the nineteenth century, Dahomey amazon shows, traveling circuses with menageries and ‘African villages,’ emerged as part of the transnational entertainment industry. This article extends the geography of this global model and generic system and its role in the visual politics of whiteness and blackness in a context outside the imperial colonization of Africa. The first sections examine a rise of visuality in the Russian imperial imagination of race, Africa and blackness through a ‘symptomatic’ reading of Aleksandr Griboedovs play Woe from Wit and Arkadii Averchenkos Death of an African Hunter. These are followed by a discussion of the Dahomey amazon shows in Moscow and their significance in the Russian cultural imagination of Africa and blackness, Europe and whiteness. The discussion of the Dahomey amazon shows in Riga unravels the complexities of interaction between the global visual model and its reception in the Baltic colonies of the Russian empire.1

Sounds of the Cold War: gendered submarine narratives

The article discusses different narrative and discursive ways in which American and Soviet submarine narratives of the Cold War period scripted nuclear-age submarine masculinity as a ‘structure’ of experience and a ‘structure’ of feelings different from vision-centred technologies of violence and warfare. The comparative discussion of the selected submarine narratives about Cold War underwater adventures is in no way exhaustive. But it allows looking into narrative constructions of submarine masculinity as articulations of subtle ‘gender’ modifications in the cultural normative ideologies of the competing projects of hegemonic war-related masculinity, otherwise, perceived as coherent and singular in other popular narratives of war, action and violence. A comparative approach to the narratives, structured by the antagonist patriarchal settings and ideologies of normative masculinity allows arguing against viewing masculinity as a linear developmental transformation from the traditional to the modern but as both a condition and process of social hegemony and control.

Configurations of Europe

This book has sought to gender men in Europe by drawing on various sources of information and in relation to key themes and policy arenas. In this final chapter, we consider some broad issues concerning the position and impact of men in the context of changing configurations of Europe, including, but not only, in relation to the EU. There are many ways in which the more explicit gendering of men raises new sets of questions about the EU and the changing definitions of ‘Europe’.

Media and Newspaper Representations

In recent years there has been a large expansion of European scholarship on the representation of men and masculinities in a wide variety of media, including film, television, video, magazines, painting, fine art, music, dance, Internet, photography and advertising (for example, Middleton, 1992; Pedersen et al., 1996; Edwards, 1997; Nixon, 1997; Sterr, 1997; Penttila, 1999; Jokinen, 2000). However, relatively little attention has been given to the mundane medium of daily newspapers. When studying men, the daily press appears to have been frequently taken-for-granted, unlike, say, Hollywood film. Newspapers are literally everyday phenomena; their very ordinariness may mean that they are not taken as seriously in studies on men, gender relations and media as other ’more dramatic’ or ’glamorous’ media such as film, video and television. Furthermore, newspapers are generally designed for more local, national or regional audiences and markets than some other media, such as Internet websites, mailing lists and newsgroups.