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This paper focuses on the literary, narrative and cultural function performed by Michele Ardengo’s model of corporeity in Gli indifferenti, intended as a tool for probing the inner life of the character and of an entire social class. I will underline how the internal and external representation of the character are closely connected according to a still early twentieth century vision, whereby the evils of the soul are reflected on those of a physical type. I will also investigate the role that Michele’s pre-existentialist body image plays within the novel and the relationship first with Leo Merumeci and his sister Carla and then with the male characters of the adolescent trilogy, formed by Inverno di malato, Agostino and La disubbidienza.

In this work I expose an analysis of the different discourses and imaginaries of masculinity that appear in Bolivian contemporary cinema. Specially, my study focuses in two films, Rodrigo Bellot’s Dependencia sexual and Juan Carlos Valdivia’s Zona Sur. I posit that there is a prevailing masculinity expression, virility, which comes from a social construction that drives men to a situation of constantly doing the effort of showing power. Nevertheless, the study also highlights other ways in which different versions of masculinity are shown and their typical issues. Finally, this work tries to adopt a structural look of masculinity imaginaries, these being a determining tool to negotiate within social contract.

The main hypothesis of this work is that national heroes have been for a long time a tool for the dissemination of dominant masculinity and the legitimisation of the patriarchal order established in Central America since the proclamation of independence in 1821. In the first part, breaks and continuities in the evolution of the heroic models are examined, and the place of women in the official narrative is determined. The third and last part looks at current issues of the links between history and gender.

This article examines the way pastors view masculinity through three main themes: the ideal of the Christian man, the necessary domination over women, and the role of men in the Church. One can conclude that a masculine model is manifested in practices of domination in the family, of active behavior in the exercise of sexuality, of power in ecclesial society. All this allows the man to be defined as superior to the woman and to dominate her. But men were also asked to obey the authorities, to be gentle and peaceful, which allowed the idea of opposition between a model advocated by the pastors and a more traditional model more associated with virility to be put forward. The Reformation could thus have contributed to a redefinition of gender and the promotion of a 'moderate masculinity' that was very much influenced by religious discourse.

If the literature in the history of the Soviet space program is extremely prolific since the 1960s, including regarding cosmonaut embodiment, a lack remains regarding the contemporary reality of human spaceflight in Russia. As this article discusses, based on interviews and a long-term ethnography of the Russian training of astronauts from Western Europe, North America, and Japan, becoming an astronaut is to develop a legitimate body fitting dominant cultural and gendered models. Three mechanisms serve the manufacture of “heroes” and masculine bodies through the astronaut training: the historical narrative of human spaceflight; the values and virility attributes embed as part of the training; and the instruments used in the daily activity of astronauts (such as spacesuits). This manufacture of a legitimate body, characterized by masculinity and discipline inherited from the past, is a heuristic field for corporality and studies of global politics as it underlines how an interweaving of gender, Soviet heritage, and cultural fantasies frames the bodies of a professional elite.

This article studies the tricks and practices of Greek conscripts to defend and create an intimate space in the barracks. During the compulsory service the institution takes control of all aspects of conscripts’ lives resulting in the domestication of their sexuality. Conscripts form gangs of boys, peer groups engaged in a form of institutional resistance associated by bonds of male camaraderie, which allow them to access sexual activities in a collective manner: group seduction, collective flirting, rearranging the schedule to facilitate an intimate encounter, visits to brothels. Using data from semi-structured interviews and participant observation, and mobilizing analytical tools from the sociology of the military and sociology of gender, I examine gendered criteria for exclusion and inclusion in those gangs: access to these tight-knit groups is allowed only to those who demonstrate heteronormative sexuality and manifested masculinity.

In this article I examine the presence and influence among Italian Jews of Max Nordau’s image of the “muscle Jew” and more broadly of a virile imaginary, intertwined with Zionist and Italian nationalist ideas. I first document the relevance of an early phase of Italian muscular Judaism at the beginning of the twentieth century, at the time of the rise of Zionism in Italy. I then study the development, in the 1920s and 1930s, of a virile imagery among the two trends of Italian revisionist Zionism and of what we may call Italian Jewish Fascism. I end by asking whether there were not inherent contradictions, or at least relevant tensions, in the ideal of the muscle Jew, between radical nationalism and Jewish forms of virility, as developed after the First world war and in connection with the rise and stabilization of Fascism.

The black man’s body is subject to two types of representations in the French medical literature from the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Descriptions of black men often contributed to emphasizing the virility of white men. Indeed, African men were described as physically and intellectually effeminate, similar to women and children, inferior and lacking authority. This inferiority was used to legitimize the colonization of Africa by men of the French nation, who were presented as manly and powerful, and thus able to protect the African population. Parallel to this representation, another stereotype emerged at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century with the development of the naturist doctrine and colonization, this time foregrounding the hyper-virility of black men. The representation of his robust, resistant, strong and muscular body, was contrasted to the weakened body of white men, at a time when, in the colonies, white men suffered from the climate and tropical diseases and, in France, the defeat of 1870 led to rising fear about the “decline of the race”. So, the definition of black man’s masculinity evolves during the nineteenth century and the beginnings of the twentieth century according to the political context and the sexual and social norms prevailing in France.

The percussion sections of samba schools, known as baterias, express virility, physical strength, endurance – supposedly masculine attributes. However, women are increasingly joining these groups, gradually taking up instruments formerly reserved for men. They imprint on their bodies their belonging to a virile space, oscillating between an ideal of femininity that they are supposed to adhere to because of their sex and the virility model with which they are confronted. Positioning themselves in the space of the bateria, these women (re)compose their bodily strategies and (re)build their perspective and ways of being.

What is it about hair that helps humanise the dead, particularly these well-preserved bog bodies who are so often the victims of violence? As the articles in this special volume of Internet Archaeology make clear, hair is an exquisitely rich source of evidence on origin, diet and health as well as social traditions. Yet the meaning of hair can vary greatly between times and cultures.

Industrial subcontracting is associated with a deterioration in occupational health and safety. A survey among subcontracting male workers in heavy industry shows that they are highly exposed to work instability and difficulty, with frequent impacts on their health. Risk awareness does exist, but many mechanisms attenuate it, including persistence of defensive strategies, based on virility and the profession. But work is not just a « health impact factor », it is also a « health factor », through professionalism and cooperation practices within working groups. Work is also a « health revealer », which is also constructed elsewhere, through health selection effects. Finally, work regulates health and aging, via promotional career paths that can remove workers from the most difficult and dangerous work situations.

This article examines the discursive manifestations around heterosexual norms, when they emanate from members of the Senegalese family institution to young men. To do so, we will present four different male profiles, all belonging to the same family unit, in order to understand how someone comes to be designated by the reputation of “loving women”. Our observations show that a man must display a certain number of aptitudes in order to be considered as “loving women”. His seduction capabilities are tested as well as his ability to sustain multiple romantic relationships. This reputation is gratifying for young men from Dakar, up to a point. Their reputation of “loving women” shouldn’t prevent them from reaching a social recognition obtained through matrimonial alliance. Thus, they shouldn’t “love women too much” or “love them too long”, or they would risk an excessive stigmatization. This article tends to conceive of the notion of reputation as the wording of judgements by a group, on one of its member. If this is a tool enabling normative and heteronormative aspirations to be heard, it is interesting to question the various issues of appreciation/depreciation of a gendered reputation, centered around the subjectivization of the evaluation of masculine desires. If this reputation clearly articulates a social injunction to virility and heterosexuality, it also expresses the limits of its functioning in terms of social reproduction when the individuals bearing it develop strategies of resistance and of getting around it.