From the drama of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, The Father (Faderen), written in 1887 (trans.. from a quote by Jørgen Lorentzen in a Norwegian P2 Academy essay on men's studies, 1996).

....and the other science: a glimpse from Tasmania

- Do you think the men's studies area is important?

Yes very.

- Do you want to join IASOM?

Yes.

- Are you able to be as active in the field as you want?

No.

- Why not?

No time, no organizational support.

- What should IASOM emphasize?

Network building. Theory and method debate. Publication opportunities. More information about men's work and developments in Europe.

- What should we target as important research areas?

Male abuse survivors. Male domestic violence victims. Aboriginal men's health. More European feedback to the world.

- How are your financial opportunities for developing this research?

Not so good.

- How about the opportunities for Australia as a whole?

Not so good.

How many people would you estimate as active in the field in your country?

About 20.

What about people interested, potential or sometime active?

About 200.

(Excerpt from a IASOM questionnaire from Malcolm Tyler, social consultant and community organizer in Glenorchy, Tasmania)

Debate: Mythopoets and pro-feminists

Jørgen Lorenzen, The Institute of Comparative Literature and Nordistics, University of Oslo: Cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it - on Michael Kimmel (ed.): The Politics of Manhood. “Few of the profeminists' comments approach the movement as move-ment, something that is moving”, Lorenzen writes in a paper that argues for more cooperation and less political correctness-thinking in the men's movement.

This paper, in English, was published in the Norwegian Network newsletter Mannsforskning (2/96) which can be obtained from Likestillingsrådet, Pb. 8036 Dep., 0030 Oslo, Norway, or from the author, e-mail jorgen.lorentzen@inl.uio.no.

Is violence masculine?

Yes, the Swedish feminist Eva Moberg argued at a conference in Stockholm in January on this theme. However, she differed between men and masculinity. It is a misunderstanding, she said, that ending violence is a question of control of innate (or animalistic) aggression. According to Swedish statistics, 90 percent of those taken in by the police for violence are men.

Yes, but saying only “gender is masculine” is imprecise also. And easily fundamentalist; men as gender is what we must change. Instead of men as part of society, men and women also.

Research shows that violence is created by a number of social circumstances. Not all of these are gendered or relate especially to gender. Saying “violence is masculine” without qualifying this view, without also saying violence is also power-related and conflict-related (etc.) across gender, easily becomes ideological.

I agree with the well-known feminist researcher Toril Moi, (Duke U, US/Bergen U, Norway, interviewed on current theory debate in the paper Klassekampen 12 Apr 97):

“A bad argument cannot be hidden behind saying that I have actually felt this way. In that case one should instead analyze one’s experiences in new ways. I do not agree that everyone knows best themselves what their experiences mean. The personal example is not bad because it is a personal example, but because it does not fit the argument.”

Øystein Gullvåg Holter

Øystein Gullvåg Holter Men and business

Industriousness and the masculine norm

Ever since Max Weber’s portrayal of the ethics of Protestantism, the male norm and the gender segregation in modern worklife have been a ‘latent’ areas of study. Yet the cognitive acceptance of this norm plus an ignorance of women and equal status issues were for a long time dominant trends in the field, as well as in the associated business theories and more popular consultants’ philosophies (with some noteable exceptions like C. Wright Mills in the US). Today the male norm has become somewhat less marked. Yet studying men from a more egalitarian perspective is still a new proposition. It is only recently that serious studies have emerged in this area.

Can business become a balanced proposition in terms of gender? Can it be an equal affair between women and men? In Norway today, the proportion of women in politics is ten times as great as the proportion in business leadership. Internationally, also, it has become clearer that the business sector often lags behind the rest of society in terms of gender equal status. Why is this? How do we know that business-as-masculine is healthy for business itself?

Currently, the male cultural meaning or signification of 'business' is emerging more distinctly as a new, important research field. A prominent example of this tendency is the new anthology from David Collinson and Jeff Hearn, Men as Managers - Managers as Men, published by Sage, London. Here, male leadership is dissected in terms of a hidden system of lusts, homosocial (partly but not necessarily homoerotical) system of desire, a power order behind the official one, and other angles.

There can be no ignoring the fact that business has been fairly slow regarding gender equality. Yet today, it is increasingly understood that gender discrimination may mean a waste of ‘social capital’. Gender equality is good for firms, an increasing number of studies argue.

New thoughts in a time of change

“Few big business decisions can be reached by counting only, additional judgments are also needed. These additions relate to rationalities which it is not ”comme-il-faut" to speak about. (..) Yet even male leaders also use their intuition. Daring to admit that leadership also contains feelings and that these play a role is important."

Sven-Erik Sjøstrand, Prof.. at Handelsakademiet, Stockholm (LA Dialog 1/97)

“The next phase has been a humanization of work life. The personal sphere and work life is increasingly allowed to interact. Old structures are dissolving. (..) [Traditionally,] the system sphere has dominated the life world. People have believed that the system sphere is the end, the personal sphere the means. Yet work is also a place for personal development, and the well-being of the people employed is not only a means for growth. Both are legitimate perspectives. When they converge, there is a synergy effect.”

Claes Trollestad, researcher at Handelsakademiet, Stockholm (LA Dialog 1/97)

“The seminars of the Leadership Academy on young people in business have shown that the young quickly conform to the perceived norms of their employers. Therefore it is important to catch their ideas before they are formed in order to create a dialogue on expectations on the basis of work.”  

Christina Franzén, Director of The Leadership Academy, Stockholm

“When customers' demand push an issue, it is quickly and effectively brought forwards. In the future, gender equality will become a natural part of the firm's customer-driven quality work. In order to meet harder competition, it is important to always have improvement as a goal, whether it concerns aluminum profiles or gender equality work.”

Lars Johansson, director of The Profile Group AB, Sweden (1997 National Equal Status conference, Växjö).  

Young leaders and new leadership

According to Swedish researchers, care-oriented equality norms work well in firms; “profitable firms look to people's life conditions” (Öivind Engebö). Swedish leaders discuss new humanitarian forms of leadership based on gender equality on the conferences and courses of the new Leadership Academy. One projects aims at understanding more of young people today, leaders especially, and how business may relate to their potentials and problems.

This new trend for egalitarianism in the private sector - countering and following a period of breakup of many of the welfare state benefits of the ‘Folk Home’ with heavy downsizing and restructuring - is interesting and promising in an otherwise fairly depressed Swedish economic-political situation. Compared to the more complacent Norwegians (with the oil), the Swedes have been backed up in a corner and are now learning new things.

“The wife's place is in the home!”

So says a main headline in the Norwegian paper Dagens Næringsliv ( Sunday 31 Aug. 96) followed by a reportage showing that headhunters and firms often prefer top leaders who have a partner to take care of the home and the children, and that this principle (and its implications of non-sharable jobs and 24 hours heroic leadership) is still connected to the convention that the man is the one who should take the job.

“If you select fetching the child [in the kindergarten], you deselect your career”, argues psychologist Thor Johansen at the Institute of organizational Development. “There are good reasons why couples choose to emphasize one of the partners’ careers. Life on the top is characterized by ever shorter response times in order to make things happen. The leader who goes to work in the morning can be asked to be in New York in the evening. (..) Also, having a wife at home still confers status among male leaders.”

The interviews of couples in the paper does not show a group of anti-egalitarianists, however, but people who have had to choose the one-partner-career alternative, more or less against their will. Their main point is that they want to care for their children and that as things stand, usually with economy as one main factor, they have found out that the man should take the job and the woman the child.

A new agenda

Should we expect “a new social agenda” in business to appear as a set of rules? Or, rather, as an entrepreneurial process? Probably some of both, possibly mainly the latter. The new awareness on men and equality issues is a point in case.

Despite traditional and new forms of resistance, an increasing number of voices call for a change regarding business life and for more action regarding its lacking contribution to equal status. In Norway, what Johansen describes in terms of leaders being sanctioned for fetching children goes for some traditional firms, while others have been successful building on alternative traditions for a number of years. In the latter group, there is an emphasis, instead, on relating to leaders and employees as full persons.

Generally, business has a growing public image problem, which becomes especially marked when the male norm is broken in culture and politics - not dissolved, but no longer monolithic. This has been achieved in Scandinavia over the last two decades and can be found as a tendency world-wide.

Even with 42 percent women in the government, 39 percent in the parliament, a country like Norway only has 3 percent women on the top leadership level in the private sector (NHO area, 1996). Voices ask why business can keep on with the old system, as if nothing happened, when everyone else in society should try to achieve full equality between women and men (what is called the “integration policy”; the goal that sexism and inegalitarian relations should be dismantled in all areas).

In the future, customers can be expected increasingly to ask equity questions and demand standards, like they ask ecological questions today. A growing minority of business leaders are realizing that the idea that “equality hurts effectiveness” may be a piece of patriarchal dogma. They do not accept the premises of a theory that what Johansen calls “shorter response times” requires more patriarchal arrangements. Or that women’s traditional activities are less important than men’s, or that technology ranks above life - or other fossilised ideas.

“Dialogue willingness”

Debate, conferences and seminars show awareness of gender and men as an emerging framework and issue in the private sector.

In Norway, March 1997, many people who probably would have been less willing to talk with each other twenty years ago - if not just crying slogans at each other - met in order to discuss “Working life and family in a period of restructuring (omstilling)”. This varied gathering included feminist-minded researchers as well as trade union, government and employers' union representatives. Among the contributors at were Prof.. Agneta Stark (Stockholm U); Bjørn Willadsen, publishing director; Yngve Haagensen, trade union (LO) leader, Karl Glad of the employers' union (NHO), government representatives, and researchers (including Charlotte Koren, Marit Hoel, Tom Colbjørnsen and others from Norway and Liz Bargh from Opportunity 2000, London).

The conference is part of an international trend which is important and interesting both in terms of organizations and in terms of development of knowledge.

Generally, there are three main parties to the new kind of dialogue - the women, and the various groups of men, meaning mainly employers and employees. What is new is that there is a conscious attempt to bring women’s perspectives into the center, with at least some power to define the world at large.

Some trends appear. Bringing in different women’s perspectives (lower level women, home workers) seems of major long-term importance, in order to move beyond the ‘triadic’ situation described, with its dangers that male hegemony is reestablished. In this perspective, the dialogue process also be new in “form”, connected to networking and horizontal relations.

A key strategic goal is to shift “gender” from the side of cost to the side of income in the organizational outlook and practices. The may be achieved by going beyond formal gender equality, to informal desegregation and a dissolution of men’s view as “norm”, in a more balanced co-working and dialogue.

Although this kind of process needs public opinion and pressure to initiate, it cannot mainly be imposed upon business from the outside, pushed from the state above or from labor below, it must instead develop mainly as a business matter.

The minimal requirements for introducing this new form of process includes an acceptance that greater equality could be beneficial, and a dialogue willingness among feminists, business, and union leaders or activists.

Probably, this kind of development/equality process will gain ground in the coming years, despite setbacks. In turn, the process may turn into a movement of more general organizational significance for work life organization in general, including how to ‘untie’ or at least soften up old class-related patterns.

Today, we see the contours of such a process based on a combination of free initiative and business entrepeneurism with broadly defined pro-equality and feminist goals, a process brought about mainly through free initiative and networking linked to egalitarian cooperation between women and men. This is now “surfacing” also at the top levels of many organizations (or in some cases, surfacing there first).

This will require new research that more consciously addresses gender and other hierarchy and differentiation issues at the same time, and it will be easier to construct better models and theories as more specific problems appear.

For example, consider the problems of male-dominated middle management (as gender, stratum or class layer, etc.) when the top has committed itself to plans to introduce greater gender equality at this level. We know about status fall among men in traditional terms, yet now we can reinterpret these in view of the new gender issues, or what gender brings up in the organization. This is a new angle.

Now, groups in the organizational structure can be perceived in a more consistent perspective, since what was thought women-only (or men-only/’normal’) becomes understandable as part of wider social processes. One can compare, and better yet, relate, since masculinity and feminity exist as relation, although often hidden relation. Hopefully, all this means a more coherent “gender, class and other issues” kind of research, with less strictures and energy spent on protecting “just this equality issue” from the world at large.

When gender researchers meet business, look at business from the perspective of their own subjects, what appears in the connection with their subject is not so much class relations in the old manner, but a broader spectrum of inner-sex and cross-sex ranking. This belongs to the constitution of masculine/feminine as socially effective dimension or ‘force field’. Relations between the sexes are linked to relations within them. Much of this is informal, some of it exists only in body language, symbols, silences, some of it even unconscious; together it is like a broad tapestry. Gender researchers do not evaluate the world mainly according to class issues, but according to gender issues, so they regard the threads in the weave according to how they are tied to continued discrimination of women.

Gender theorists almost unanimously agree that in-depth disciplinary processes and blocked learning are involved in gender discrimination. Often, it is precisely the links between gender, class, ‘race’ and other ranking systems that seems most central, ‘disciplinary strongholds’ that block inovation. Also, much recent evidence suggests that the disciplinary system has an important background (only sometimes manifest) connection to hidden victimization practices in the organization.

On dialogue

“Talking at” is what you do when you fight.

Example: crying slogans at someone.

“Talking to” is what you do when you command.

Example: giving orders.

“Talking with” is what you do when you share.

Moving from “talking at” and “talking to” towards “talking with” means a movement towards less discriminating and victimizing forms of communication.

To be able to move, to sustain the process, however, the institutions and organizational frameworks and sanctions supporting the old way must be freely examined and allowed to change.

Work evaluation

New work evaluation systems may be part of future gender equality standards as part of quality control management.

In Norway, a new parliamentary report (NOU 1997:10) argues that work evaluation (arbeidsvurdering), though somewhat open for subjective errors (indeed, so much so that it can become a “double-edged sword” against equal status), can nevertheless be used consciously and restrictively in order to raise the value of typically women-dominated work.

Further sources

From 'The Woman's' Point of View: Feminist Approaches to Organization Studies.

In Clegg, Hardy & Nord 1996: Handbook of Organization Studies, Sage.

Journal of Contemporary Change Management, 10, 2, 1997

Publications from the Swedish Business Leadership Academy, Birger Jarls gt. 13, Stockholm, Sweden

Opportunity 2000 publications (UK)

‘Family friendly’ firms and work/family studies (mainly in Europe and the US)

IASOM encourages research on new forms of change and equity potentials in business support and activities. We also plan specific activities in this area in the next years.

Please contact Mike Whitty or the editor for further information:

Mike Whitty, Research Director,

The FutureWork Institute,

c/o Mike Whitty, University of Detroit Mercy,

Box 19900 Detroit, MI 48219 USA

Fax +313 993 1052. E-mail whittymd@udmercy

Robert Connell: Australian research on men and masculinity

Australian debates on masculinity have followed a trajectory broadly similar to that of other English-speaking countries. Some differences result from Australia's semi-colonial economic and cultural position, and from the political strength of labour, and the interplay between the state and social movements.

The rapid development of the Women's Liberation movement in the 1970s produced little public debate about masculinity, but many local attempts to remake relationships between men and women, and some men's consciousness-raising groups. Significant groups of men supported “Equal Opportunity” programs for women. By the early 1980s some left-wing men were trying to theorise masculinity as a problem in socialist politics. I wrote an essay on “men and socialism” in 1982; Glen Lewis published Real Men Like Violence in 1983; and a special issue of the journal Intervention on masculinity and violence (called War/Masculinity) came out in 1985.

An active Gay Liberation movement developed in the 1970s and called into question the homophobia of conventional masculinity. Dennis Altman's pioneering book Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1972) was widely read and influential. In the 1980s gay communities established unusually effective relationships with governments around HIV-AIDS issues. This resulted (inter alia) in funding for extensive research on gay men's sexuality.

The research by Susan Kippax and Gary Dowsett especially (e.g. Sustaining Safe Sex, 1993) is the most sophisticated Australian work on men's sexuality.

From the mid 1980s there was increasing recognition in the social sciences and humanities that feminist work on gender and the position of women implied a need for research on men and masculinity. David Buchbinder's work in cultural studies, Masculinities and Identities, was published in 1994. In the field of history, a controversy arose over the Australian national identity (a favourite topic for historians) and its implicit masculinity. Historical research has been done on men's position in domestic life (Michael Gilding, The Making and Breaking of the Australian Family, 1991) and the definition of masculinity in a country town (Peter West).

It was in sociology, however, that the most active development has occurred. An argument for “a new sociology of masculinity” was published in 1985 (Carrigan, Connell and Lee), and an increasing number of empirical studies have followed. Mike Donaldson's Time of Our Lives (1991) analysed masculinity, work and family in the industrial city of follongong. Jim McKay has analysed the role of tgemonic masculinity in commercial sports and mass media. Steven Tomsen has studied masculinity and violence in public places such as hotels; Lin Walker has studied masculinity and motor vehicles in working-class life. In 1991 a conference on masculinity research was convened at the Sociology department of acquarie University in Sydney - expected to be about 20, it suddenly expanded to about 60 people. Some of the papers at this conference were published in a special issue of Theory and Society (1993). My book Masculinities, with case studies of four groups of Australian men, appeared in 1995. Anthony McMahon's critique of theories of masculinity is soon to be published in full. Currently a number of PhD theses are being written about issues of masculinity in sociology, education and psychology.

Educational research has already produced field work on the making of masculinity, including James Walkeis Louts and Legends, (1988). In the last few years there has been an active public debate about boys' education and the role of masculinities in schools. This includes research on sexual harassment by boys in schools, a media controversy about boys' alleged “failure” in examinations, and a parliamentary inquiry into boys' education in the State of New South Wales in 1994. Excellent research into masculinity and elementary schooling has been done by education researchers such as Bronwyn Davies and Ellen Jordan. New work on the secondary curriculum is reported in a special issue of  Interpretations (an English teachers' journal) edited by Wayne Martino. Currently, around Australia, existing policies promoting the education of girls are being replaced by “gender equity policies” which include statements on the education of boys, amid vigorous debate about the rationale of policy about boys.

Sara Breinlinger: A UK study of men's feminism

The aim my thesis is to take a closer look at the different responses men are making towards feminism. This is a two-part study; part one involves a Q-sort story which looks at the attitudes of a random sample of men towards feminism. The second part is an investigation into the “men's movemenent” of Great Britain. The focus will be on both anti- and pro feminist men's groups.

1) Q-sort study looking at men's responses to feminism

Q-sort methodology combines a quantitative technique for the measurement of subjectivity with the use of interviews (Brown 1980). Q technique is a procedure  whereby a sample of statements are placed in a significant order, e.g. “disagree” - “agree” - with the final arrangement comprising the Q-sport. Q-sorts from various different people can then be correlated and factor analyzed. The resulting factors indicate clusters of people who have arranged the statements in essentially the same way, suggesting that they share a similar viewpoint. Interpretation of each factor is achieved by first inspecting the original Q-sorts and then using follow-up interviews with the participants who define each factor. This method is thought particularly appropriate because the interest here is not in imposing an a priori structure on men's responses to feminism, but allowing these to emerge from the data.

The items for the Q-sort map onto a number of possible strategies related to men's perceptions and reactions to feminism. The litterature argues that there are a multiplicity of responses to feminism by men, in that some ignore it, others systematically denigrate its arguments, and others welcome its political implications (see for example - Kimmel, 1987; Brittan, 1989; Connell, 1987). The items selected will reflect these perspectives and those proposed in Social Identity Theory. These theoretical perspectives will provide different possible frameworks in which the data can be analyzed.

2. Investigation of Men's movement - interview and questionnaire data

The main source of data will come from interviews with  members of different men's groups, and from questionnaire data. I also intent to undertake some content/discourse analysis of media material (TV, radio programmew newspaper articles) which has addressed these issues. Although men's groups have been around since the 1970s these were mainly pro-feminist, consciousness raising groups, it is only recently that an anti-feminist men's movement has emerged. This new movement can be characterised as a 'backlash' against femininisms. In this regard there are a number of interesting questions: Why do men get involved in formal political activity of this kind and what do men get out ot participation in men's groups?

My main starting point for analyzing this data is Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, l986). I would like to look at how in this context a collective identity is developed and the strategies men are using in response to the challenge that feminism presents. ln relation to understanding why men become involved in men's groups, I will be using the framework of Relative Deprivation Theory and looking at the importance of personal and ¢ollective relative deprivation for collective action.  How is relative deprivation socially constructed? What is the impact on group identification on this process? I will also look at the type of attributions men involved in these groups are making for a) the discrimination the perceive against both men and women; and b) the so called “crisis of masculinity” (unemployment etc). This analysis will look at what functions these attributions serve and to what extent they are shared between members of different groups. There is of course a growing literature on the nature of different forms of masculinity which will also be addressed in this thesis.

International project debate

Themes for an international survey

A large international project, discussed in earlier issues of the newsletter, depends on the establishment of a group of experienced researchers who do not just share a perspective but a more concrete question list and research agenda also. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer.

In my view, the project should consist of a kernel module with a representative survey and a smaller interview study, as well as connected more qualitative modules. A minimal number of countries (5?) should be represented, hopefully 15-25.

A representative survey is not enough and not always feasible. The smaller interview study can be designed using halfway structured interviews performed by researchers and other trained personnel. I believe that this dual approach (study/survey) is important in order to enhance the project as a whole, in an effort to.combine subjectivity and objectivity.

The ideal kernel study could be a series of life course structured interviews (2-3) given to a minimum of 25 men and women in each regional/national sample, preferably more. If this cannot be followed up by a survey, the study should use a representative sample, if it can, strategic samples should be allowed also.

The interview study and the survey can be constructed on the basis of a list of themes, and structured according to life course individual chronology. Questions relate to the person’s path along the life course; focused on men’s behavior and experiences in gender-relevant areas. Here is an item list:

Men and women

- men’s changing sex role socialization patterns (adults memory reports)

- men in dyadic relations in current unions or marriages

- men in relation to women in work life

Men and men

- men's class relations and changing class mobility

- how class relations are linked with gender issues

- ethnicity, racism and masculinity

- homophobia and sexual discrimination among men

Patriarchal traits

- systems of ranking and repression that hinders men’s equal status participation and inhibit the care potential in men, mapped especially as regards

- degree and form of authoritarianism and related power phenomena

- degree and form of reification of human relationships

- men’s self-relationships (disembodiment/embodiment; soma, psyche)

Oppression of women among men

- patterns of violence and abuse

- patterns of exploitation of women

Men's change possibilities

- egalitarian factors in the life course

- men's relational work and emotional 'bearbeiding' - possibilities

- how learning, gender and power is related among men

- new patterns of identity, culture and work/family adaptation especially among younger men

Besides introspectional data, health and background data should be included. Health data should be included in the survey and may be developed in new ways in qualitative studies (cf. Frigga Haug's group). Data on authoritarianism can be created on the basis of dialogue with the authoritarian personality studies traditions and others.In the questionnaire design, we can have men answering one version of the questions (answering mostly for themselves), women another (answering partly for themselves and partly regarding men).

The main research task is to extend our knowledge of men's possibilities for advance in favor of gender equity, focusing on obstacles and how to remove them.

I ask IASOM members to consider contributing to this sketch being realized. Could you do a representative survey or a smaller-scale study in your country/region? Would you join a special IASOM task group in order to help create the first large international study of men and equality? This will probably cost you in terms of time, and will include bothersome work like writing applications for funding. Yet there is a great challenge in such a project. I ask all to be very realist about possibilities. The group needs to be able to work as a group, and we need a demonstrated capability for networking before we eventually try to realize the project. Yet with your contributions, we can probably move into a 'formulation, exploration and pilot study phase' within a year or two.

Although the project has an empirical focus, we know that theory and method development needs special emphasis.

Robert Connell has written about Australian possibilities for participating in an international study (under a heading like “Men in work and family life”). Connell writes:

“It is possible that Australian funding might be found for a study here, and an international partnership would certainly help; the national funding body is very keen on that”. He asks if we have any planning documents yet - sorry to say, no; I can only refer to the discussion in the IASOM newsletters - including the above draft.

Øystein Gullvåg Holter

Øystein Gullvåg Holter: More on authoritarianism

As discussed in the last IASOM Newsletter (3,1), the World War 2 left European social researchers with a great sense of shock, and on American initiative the research on the “authoritarian personality”that had courageously emerged in the face of nazism in Germany in the late 1920s and 30s was taken up and broadened.

I noted that although the authoritarian personality tradition is often hazy in terms of sociological mid-level theory and institutional patterns and also mostly lacks feminist perspectives, it nevertheless represents a main point of departure for current studies of men.

I demonstrated this using Norwegian representative material, showing how a specific type of father absence, similar to the one theorized by Max Horkheimer of the authoritarian personality theorists, connected to not criticizing the absent father, had a dramatic impact on the Norwegian political scene - “dramatic” since generally one finds that family-of-origin variables have only weak effects in politics. The men with divorced and idealized absent father in their socialization experience were strongly ooverrepresented among the neo-right-wing voters, especially the younger ones.

In other words, we have evidence that what Robert Bly calls “the father wound” is part of the recreation of certain political tendencies. These are not as openly authoritarian as the kinds of tendencies described by Horkheimer, yet they resemble the latter by building on “victimisation logic” (a politics based on hostility towards immigrants, especially).

A Swedish researcher comments this:

“Even more than young women, young men are governed by their traditional gender role when choosing an educational career. Regardless of their individual aptitude, most young men choose to study science and technology”, Karin Sandquist (Stockholm Institute of Education, +46 8 737 55 84) reports from a project based on 1980-88 data (N=9000).

Sandquist writes of two new papers based on longitudinal and other material, of which the first, “Dimensions of parenting”, “ties in nicely with the publications in the last newsletter, about father-son relations and authoritarianism. This is also true for my earlier study on the importance of the absent father.”

She continues:

“Together, these studies tell us that having no father-contact is quite disastrous for a boy, but the father does not necessarily have to reside in the home. If there are a father and a mother in the home, the 'social competence' of boys is enhanced, provided that the father is involved in a 'motherlike' fashion and not just restricting himself to playing with the boy. - A study of 'verbal boys' shows that men are even more restricted by social expectations than women, at least in some ways.”

My presentation in the last issue did not say much of the Norwegian tradition in the authoritarianism research field, and the following is included for further information:

The Norwegian Nationalism Project

Researchers: Christian Bay, Ingemund Gullvåg, Harald Ofstad and Herman Tønnessen, with Arvid Ammundsen (statistics) (project group 1950-54).

Theory outline: Nationalism. A study of identification with people and power. Institute for Social Research (ISF), Oslo 1950

Questionnaire: Created in cooperation with Herbert Hyman, a critique of the US project, Analysis in cooperation with Else Frenkel-Brunswick, David Krech and others.

Survey date: 1951

Sample: 509 adults in Oslo. Incidental sample.

Summary of results: Harald Ofstad: Nationalism and Innocent Aggression. TSF 7:199-240 (1966). In Norwegian.

Model: Among the independent variables, five factors are targeted, moralism, reservedness, authoritarian preferences and uncritical acceptance - interrelating with the fifth, central factor, projective aggression. These five are related to denial of one's own aggression. This is called the innocent aggression syndrome. Through a series of modifying variables and control variables (gender, age, centrality, education etc.), the syndrom enhances the dependent variables. Of these, three are primary - power-oriented nationalism, individual nationalism and perceptual nationalism, and five are secondary; intolerance, anti-semitism, authoritarian attitudes towards worker/capitalist issues, towards other states, and towards other minorities.

Conclusion:

“The two dominant themes in the syndrome are innocence and aggression. If we keep to those scoring highly on projective aggression, the aggression is expressed through a spectrum running from positive attitudes to brutal punishment and to emphasis on discipline and distance to other people. Yet the aggression does not appear nakedly. It is legitimized and made innocent by being channeled through the generally accepted institutions of society: punishment and morals. (..) They are positive to punishment and moralistic condemnation. The aggression is projected on the outer world, yet these high-scorers do not experience this 'outer aggression' as in any way related they themselves being aggressive persons. Quite the contrary. They see themselves as unagressive. Those scoring low, on the other hand, also experience themselves as more problematical, more aggressive, and therefore have problems accepting aggressive measures even when used in the name of accepted institutions. The thought: 'Am I positive to this aggressive measure because I myself am aggressive?' lies there, more or less conscious, in the mind of the low-scorers. The aggressive person, on the other hand, lives before the Flood.” (Ofstad 1966:237-8, my trans.)

Having shown that the empirical study did yield a convincing cluster, a 'syndrome', Ofstad also says: “Especially in the wake of The Authoritarian Personality it became, for a while, very popular to talk of different personality types, the authoritarian among them. Yet such conceptual constructions easily lead to the association that one has, thereby, marked the evil ones, and draws the researcher towards a kind of psychological race ideology. It is wise, therefore, to avoid expression like 'the authoritarian personality'”. (ibid.).

Comment: As argued in IASOM vol. 3 no. 1, the 1950s studies generally did not investigate authoritarianism as a life course process, nor did they connect it to patriarchal and gender-related traits. In the Norwegian case, gender was treated as an external modifying variable, and left in the periphery of attention. This said, however, the Norwegian study contributes to the main picture that there is indeed something “there” concerning authoritarianism, and is interesting especially in its focus on masked or denied aggression. The underlying question characterizing postwar Norway, why some people supported the nazis, while others remained “good Norwegians”, is not answered, yet the study confirms the importance of social psychological background variables. Since these are measured as traits, not investigated as family-, gender- and work-related patterns and pictured as cultural and social processes, however, we do not know much about them.

Øystein Gullvåg Holter

Men in movement...

“Get out of the thought bubble”, a new Norwegian organization argues: men should be more active, changing their role. You can find them on the internet - http://www.men.no/men/ - starting with a profile fairly indicative of the Norwegian setting: “a more survival-prone man and father role”.

This sounds fine. Become egalitarian or else. Which makes me think: often it is the kind of survival which is the issue. As for the thought bubble, however, MIM does not advocate antiintellectualism, instead it seems to try widening men's consciousness under the “You're ok, I'm ok” slogan, and it also makes a main issue of its support for the new studies of men in its first (summer 96) newsletter, edited by Heming Leira.

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