Masculinity And Crime Analysis
Masculinity and crime: a comparative study of a quantitative and a qualitative research addressing the same topic
Masculinity is a notion that made history and has permanently influenced Western culture and beyond. Not long ago, social sciences have begun to challenge questions and analyse the idea of masculinity which, until that time, was used as such, as a fact of nature. This move was due to not only the feminist movement, but also the development of social sciences which have aimed to critically analyse what it means to be masculine, what is the process of identifying as masculine, and not least, what actions are considered masculine. As a result, an impressive amount of social questions arisen concerning public health, interpersonal …show more content…
(2003) as the title suggest is a quantitative study of the relationship between masculinity and crime. Krienert (2003) uses self-reported data from newly incarcerated offenders from Nebraska in order to observe the relationship between masculinity features and violence. The US high rate of violent crimes, at the time of the article, and with a majority of them committed by males (83% in 2000), as well as the lack of evidence concerning what is causing males to be more aggressive contributed to the emergence of the current study. Previously, it was simply assumed that men are more criminogenic than women (Hagedon, 1998), and characteristic male features have never been analysed in relation to violent outbursts. At least not until a couple of decades ago when Messerchmidt (1993, 1997) first discussed about this relationship. He reflected on Parsons (1964) hypothesis that masculinity is usually internalized during the early adolescence, reason for which boys will be more prone to engage in illegal activities or a delinquent behaviour. The article is based on West and Zimmerman (1987) reflections as well, more exactly on the idea of “doing gender” that stands for that gender is conceptualized through the manifestations of everyday and as Krienert (2003), masculinity is as well constructed the same. In other words, masculinity is defined by the actions of individuals that are perceived as tough. Moreover, Mersserchmidt argues that delinquent behaviour is used as a resource to obtain masculinity when all other resources are unavailable “people who have used violence as a way to assert masculinity in the past, come to accept violence as an acceptable rout to display their manhood “ Krienert
Masculinity is a notion that made history and has permanently influenced Western culture and beyond. Not long ago, social sciences have begun to challenge questions and analyse the idea of masculinity which, until that time, was used as such, as a fact of nature. This move was due to not only the feminist movement, but also the development of social sciences which have aimed to critically analyse what it means to be masculine, what is the process of identifying as masculine, and not least, what actions are considered masculine. As a result, an impressive amount of social questions arisen concerning public health, interpersonal …show more content…
(2003) as the title suggest is a quantitative study of the relationship between masculinity and crime. Krienert (2003) uses self-reported data from newly incarcerated offenders from Nebraska in order to observe the relationship between masculinity features and violence. The US high rate of violent crimes, at the time of the article, and with a majority of them committed by males (83% in 2000), as well as the lack of evidence concerning what is causing males to be more aggressive contributed to the emergence of the current study. Previously, it was simply assumed that men are more criminogenic than women (Hagedon, 1998), and characteristic male features have never been analysed in relation to violent outbursts. At least not until a couple of decades ago when Messerchmidt (1993, 1997) first discussed about this relationship. He reflected on Parsons (1964) hypothesis that masculinity is usually internalized during the early adolescence, reason for which boys will be more prone to engage in illegal activities or a delinquent behaviour. The article is based on West and Zimmerman (1987) reflections as well, more exactly on the idea of “doing gender” that stands for that gender is conceptualized through the manifestations of everyday and as Krienert (2003), masculinity is as well constructed the same. In other words, masculinity is defined by the actions of individuals that are perceived as tough. Moreover, Mersserchmidt argues that delinquent behaviour is used as a resource to obtain masculinity when all other resources are unavailable “people who have used violence as a way to assert masculinity in the past, come to accept violence as an acceptable rout to display their manhood “ Krienert