In his introduction to this collection of academic essays about different aspects and types of contemporary Australian masculinity – or, as the authors prefer, masculinities – R.W. Connell notes that: ‘It is now a familiar observation that notions of Australian identity have been entirely constructed around images of men.’ This is a familiar observation. Another old chestnut that better sums up recent discussions of masculinity and men, including this book, is that masculinity is in ‘crisis’, and that, at least in part, the solution lies in ‘problematising’, ‘deconstructing’, ‘destabilising’, and then collapsing’ it. It’s all, as such language makes clear, terribly sociological and cultural studies in approach. Which is not beyond interest, once one swims beneath the dense disciplinary jargon to the ideas below.
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