Hegemonic masculinity: new spaces,practices,and relations

Abstract

Hegemonic masculinity is a key theory in research about men and masculinities, including in human geography. We focus on its spatial and temporal specificity, the ways it is practised and performed, and the relationalities that are a key component of it, advocating for the importance of geographical contributions. For each, we review important work and suggest ways forward for scholarship. We also outline ways in which the concept could be advanced through paying attention to spatial issues relating to bodies, embodiment, and intersectionality, in geographic research about work, employment, and migration, and in studies about climate, sustainability, and well-being.

I Introduction

Over twenty years ago, Longhurst (2000: 443) identified the emergence of ‘a number of provocative and politically useful lines of inquiry … opening up on research in masculinities, male identity and men’ in relation to place. Emerging initially from research informed by social and cultural geography (Jackson, 1991, 1994) and feminist geographies (e.g. Longhurst, 2000; McDowell, 2003), work about men, masculinities, and place can now be found within many of the key sub-disciplines of human geography, as evidenced in edited collections and overviews published over the last couple of decades (e.g. Berg and Longhurst 2003; Gorman-Murray, 2008; Gorman-Murray and Hopkins, 2014; Hopkins and Gorman-Murray, 2019; Hopkins and Noble 2009; Tarrant, 2010; Van Hoven and Hörschelmann 2005). One of the most influential theoretical and analytical concepts in the interdisciplinary field of critical studies of men and masculinities – including in related work in human geography – is hegemonic masculinity. This was initially formulated by Connell (1987, 1995) and colleagues (Carrigan et al., 1985) who have also noted that the concept is contested and has received widespread criticism (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005).

In this paper, we explore the key characteristics of hegemonic masculinity – itself identified as a ‘promiscuous concept’ by Nayak (2023: 167) – and focus upon its location in place and time, the ways in which it is practised and performed, and its relational aspects. For each of these, we consider the key contributions, suggest ways forward that build upon important ideas developed by geographers, and extend further spatially informed and geographically inspired understanding of gender relations. In the second half of the paper, we focus on exploring fertile ground for future scholarship about hegemonic masculinities in geography. Here, we focus on bodies, embodiment, and intersectionality, followed by work, employment, and migration, and finally climate, sustainability, and well-being. Each of these provide interesting, engaging, and important avenues for future geographical research extending further the impact of place and the influence of space-time in the making and re-making of hegemonic masculinities. Before doing this, we set out what hegemonic masculinity is and how it has been applied in research.

II What is hegemonic masculinity?

Connell used the term hegemonic masculinity to refer to ‘the culturally exalted form of masculinity’ (Carrigan et al., 1985: 592) operating in each place. It represents the configuration of masculinity that is dominant in a specific context (Messerschmidt, 2019). Hegemonic masculinity is, at its core, about gender relationality: ‘hegemonic masculinity is always constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women’ (Connell, 1987: 183). The theory recognises that multiple configurations (Connell, 2005) of masculinities co-exist. By formulating hegemonic masculinity, Connell (2005) hoped to investigate how seemingly distinct configurations of masculinities relationally intersect, and how and why one configuration of masculinity becomes more dominant and exalted than others within a specific cultural context. The question at the heart of the theory is: of all the typologies of masculinity co-existing, which one is the most ‘exalted’ (hegemonic) in a particular geographical locale at a particular time; and how is this exalted hegemonic identity symbolically accomplished and sustained relationally between actors?

Hegemonic masculinity – while representing an exalted version of masculinity that other masculinities are relationally judged against and subordinated through – is not fixed and static. Rather, space and time determine what constitutes hegemonic masculinity here and now. Geography matters. Hegemonic masculinity is a fluid notion, formulated in specific circumstances and open to flux. Different forms of masculinity can replace others as the hegemonic configuration of masculinity. In this sense, the theory is valuable in exploring how masculinities – as pluralistic constructs – relate to place and time, and how men reproduce and align themselves with dominant notions of masculinity operating through their clothing, embodiment, and other forms of symbolism (Berg and Longhurst, 2003; Jackson, 1991).

Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) reformulated the concept of hegemonic masculinity by building upon and clarifying the relational foundations of the theory, summarised above. They did so in response to the way the concept was being misused because ‘over the years the concept has been terribly misunderstood’ (Messerschmidt, 2019: 86). However, despite Connell and Messerschmidt’s efforts, concerns persist that some scholars continue to misread the concept and, therefore, apply it in problematic and essentialist ways sometimes suggesting that a singular configuration of masculinity necessarily constitutes hegemonic masculinity, always and in all places. Ontologically, such an approach positions white, middle or upper middle-class, heterosexual men with certain behavioural attributes associated with this identity – for example, ‘macho, tough, competitive, self-reliant, controlling, aggressive and fiercely heterosexual’ (Bradley, 2007: 47) traits – as an archetypical hegemonic masculinity. Further, this approach advocates that actors who do not fit this rigid, static a-priori hegemonic masculine ‘ideal’ (e.g. gay men, disabled men, and men from ethnic minority backgrounds) are necessarily subordinated by men who do (Messerschmidt, 2019; Yang, 2020).

However, the concept of hegemonic masculinity is not – in its original formulation or re-formulation – merely a synonym for a cohort of men who are hegemonic based on objective identity markers or because of their supposed proclivity to participate in stereotypical ‘masculine’ traits like violence, aggression, and solipsism. As noted by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005: 840):

‘It is difficult to see how the concept of hegemony would be relevant if the only characteristics of the dominant group were violence, aggression, and self-centeredness. Such characteristics may mean dominant but hardly would constitute hegemony—an idea that embeds certain notions of consent and participation by the subaltern groups.’

Crucially, this is not to say that a configuration of white, heterosexual, middle-class masculinity does not exist as hegemonic in some – indeed many – contexts, and that the presence of this configuration does not subordinate those with ‘other’ identities (Ashcraft, 2013).

However, there are contexts where hegemonic masculinity is bestowed upon men because men do not fit a supposedly normative ideal. Ridgeway et al. (2022) explored the experiences of Asian, Black, Latinx and mixed-race architects, showing that they experienced subordination because they do not fit a-priori expectations that operate in professional spaces, which position white men as hegemonic ‘ideal workers’. Yet, in other contexts, such as in athletics, men from specific ethnic backgrounds are held in high regard and often regarded as proprietors of hegemonic masculine ideals (Carrington, 2010). Men who objectively fit a simplistic definition of hegemonic masculinity on account of their ethnicity, sexuality, and class can actively reject the norms and behaviours associated with a static view of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and agentically choose to bypass the power and privilege their hegemonic identity is assumed to bestow. This is shown in Sang et al.’s (2014) examination of the UK architecture profession, depicting men who fit a one-dimensional, a-priori definition of hegemonic masculinity on the basis of their class, ethnicity, and sexuality resisting cultural norms (e.g. misogyny) that are historically hegemonic in their profession, but which they disagree with; asserting that ‘studies of masculinities cannot assume that all white, male, middle class, heterosexual professionals are able (or willing) to embody the ideals of hegemonic masculinity’ (Sang et al., 2014: 259).

Geographers clearly appreciate the subjective nature of hegemonic masculinity which has enabled complex and sophisticated understandings of hegemonic masculinities and place to unfold. Undoubtedly, advocations to not essentialise the theory by Berg and Longhurst (2003), van Hoven and Horschelmann (2005), and Gorman-Murray and Hopkins (2014) have played an important role here. We thus now consider three key components of hegemonic masculinity including its spatial and temporal specificity, the ways in which it is practised and performed, and its relational aspects, and suggest ways in which geographers could usefully continue to take forward work in this area and to further advance a nuanced and spatially informed appreciation of it.

III Hegemonic masculinities in place and time

It has been emphasised that hegemonic ‘masculinities and male identities vary over spaces and across time’ (Hopkins and Noble, 2009: 814). Thus, what constitutes hegemonic masculinity in a particular context may be very different to how it is understood in another place and time. Masculine ideals are spatially and temporally contingent (Meth and McClymont, 2009). For example, a macho, strong and blokey masculinity associated with heavy industries has been hegemonic in working class areas of Northern England for many years (e.g. Nayak, 2006, 2024). When working class men attended (and still attend) workplaces and leisure spaces – such as pubs and when playing sport – they are expected to reproduce this classed and spatial definition of hegemonic masculinity if they are to secure this and avoid subordination. However, the loss of industrial work presents fewer opportunities to acquire this form of masculinity, however, working class men in post-industrial places:

…continue to preside through the embodiment of a particular ‘hard’ masculinity in the present. Heavy labour, hard ‘graft’ and physical work retain high prestige … it is still the case that body mass, the ability to ‘handle oneself’ and physical prowess remains alive in the region and can be traced in the post-industrial circuits of drinking, football, and a masculine gym culture, where bodybuilding and the use of steroids is not unusual’ (Bonner-Thompson and Nayak, 2022: 1244).

So ingrained is this configuration of masculinity in working class places that inability to reproduce it can have devastating consequences on men’s well-being (Bonner-Thompson and McDowell, 2020).

But this embodied working class notion of hegemonic masculinity – a relic of the industrial past still retained in the post-industrial present – is very different to the middle-class notion of hegemonic masculinity that exists in the city of London – and indeed in many other global cities. Trim, smartly dressed, and well-presented masculinities are seen as hegemonic among professional men employed in finance or IT roles, who work in the City having attended elite universities (McDowell, 2003; McLeod et al., 2009) and having been encouraged to openly express political correctness and disguise signs of working class identity in terms of accent, dentistry, and skin (Giazitzoglu and Muzio, 2021).

Scholars – including geographers and other social scientists – interested in the complexity of hegemonic masculinities have explored these in a diverse range of places and times. For example, research has focused on the contexts of large urban centres (e.g. Gorman-Murray, 2013) or regional cities (e.g. Nayak, 2006), rural and remote contexts (e.g. Gibson, 2016; Kenway and Hickey-Moody, 2009), in specific workplaces such as finance and banking (Madrid, 2017), heavy industry (Adams, 2023), in fishing (Gustavsson and Riley, 2020), and surfboard industries (Warren, 2016) as well as in sport and leisure contexts such as the rugby pitch (Giazitzoglu, 2020), when surfing (e.g. Waitt and Warren, 2008), cycling (Fogarty, 2024), in ‘strong man’ competitions (Tivers, 2011), and in sports betting/gambling (Waitt et al., 2022). It has also been considered across amongst different age groups including younger men (Barber, 2015; Noble, 2009), men who are grandfathers (Tarrant, 2013) and fathers (Ammann and Vermue, 2024), and in connection with debates about intergenerational relations (Richardson, 2015).

Collectively, these studies demonstrate the significant attention that geographers have given to teasing out the complex ways in which place and time operate to shape hegemonic masculinities, including how this can change over time or remain resistant to transformation. We argue that it is important that geographers continue to focus on the importance of place, the role of space, and the temporal components of hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, we contend that future research could usefully expand to focus upon different spatial and temporal contexts in order that we continue to advance our appreciation of the complexity of hegemonic masculinity.

Whilst much research has focused on the work and employment issues in cities (McDowell, 2003), the move to more hybrid forms of working – or indeed working from home full-time – present new opportunities to explore how hegemonic masculinities are made and remade in the context of ‘work’ and ‘home’. These also present important questions for longstanding scholarship about gender and the home (Domosh, 1998) and the unsettling, troubling, and possible overturning of binaries associated with masculine/feminine, home/work, employment/social reproduction as new relational geographies of home emerge presenting changing landscapes for the enactment of hegemonic masculinities.

The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic with national lockdowns and changing social relations – such as the ‘great resignation’ or ‘quiet quitting’ – that have emerged from this may have adjusted the ways in which hegemonic masculinities relate to place and time. Orman et al. (2024) explored experiences of working from home during the pandemic and periods of national lockdown in Sydney to consider the ways that the material spaces of home were spatially reconfigured to enable work and related responsibilities to take place pointing to the gendered labour involved in managing such spaces and relations. This raises important questions about the possible reconfiguration of hegemonic masculinities in such space-times. Added to this, there are evolving intergenerational relations and potential tensions emerging from this that are worthy of further consideration in the context of the spatial construction and contestation of hegemonic masculinities.

IV Practising and performing hegemonic masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity is not necessarily associated with ‘a certain type of man but, rather, a way that men position themselves through discursive practices’ (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005: 841). Men must reflexively practise and perform masculinity to symbolically align their personal identities with the structurally supplied notion of hegemonic masculinity operating in a specific setting:

‘Men are not intrinsically hegemonic; rather, they must accomplish hegemonic masculinity in and through their enactments, by referring to the particular codes of the (hegemonic) masculinity sought’ (Giazitzoglu, 2020: 69).

Giazitzoglu and Muzio (2021) demonstrate the importance of clothing and appearance in accomplishing classed hegemonic masculinity in the habitus of a prestigious, multinational IT firm using the pseudonym Ferguson, focusing on a cohort of men who exhibited working class masculinity when they were first recruited. The men were initially alienated in Ferguson, owing to their classed backgrounds and the lack of hegemonic masculinity they encountered because of their class backgrounds. As put by one of the men studied, line managers:

‘looked down on us, not because of … work [technical skills] which has always been good but because of how we were, like how we looked and acted and spoke’ (Giazitzoglu and Muzio, 2021: 77).

However, over multiple years, the men learned ‘the rules of the game’ in Ferguson, using symbolic cultural capital – including suits, shirts, ties, facial hair, and even dentistry work and fake spectacles – as part of discursive practices, that allowed them to cumulatively accomplish corporate hegemonic masculinity symbolically. Likewise, Giazitzoglu and Down (2017) observe self-employed men engaging in symbolic acts including wearing tweed jackets, driving Germanic cars with private registration plates, carrying wads of cash, and expressing Conservative political opinions to reproduce a configuration of masculinity seen as hegemonic for local entrepreneurial men.

Looking at how masculinity is expressed in a University Business School, in which a ‘Boy’s Club’ dictates the School’s culture, Fisher and Kinsey (2014) show men patting each other on the back and shaking hands before meetings as part of ‘matey greetings’, and playing in male-only football teams, which see male academics socialise together after games – including drinking heavily – where they share information away from female colleagues. As well as accomplishing a configuration of masculinity that is seen as hegemonic among business academics, these acts ensure male academics (and not female academics) dominate decision-making and promotions in the Business School.

In another example, Barber (2015) examines how hegemonic masculinity is conceptualised and performed by British-born Vietnamese men, who are labelled with effeminate stereotypes that subordinate them, such as ‘boffins’ and ‘geeks’. To accomplish hegemonic masculinity despite these stereotypes, the men ‘perform ‘oriental masculinities’. They do this through their hair and dress styles; thus using ‘embodied and aesthetic presentations of the self … to challenge power asymmetries’ in the geographies they inhabit. In a final example, Gahman (2015: 1210) explores how the practice of gun ownership in rural Kansas was bound up with a hegemonic masculinity that focuses on the importance of ‘exerting control over the rural frontier and “nation”’ alongside the promotion of patriarchy, whiteness, and colonialism. In all these examples, the focus is not only about being men but about what men do in relation to other men and women, and therefore in relation to hegemonic masculinity (Fogarty, 2024).

Several different practices have featured in research about hegemonic masculinities in geography and in neighbouring fields. However, we contend that further work could usefully continue to explore and uncover the ways in which hegemonic masculinities are practised and performed in different places and times. There is arguably more work about traditionally masculine practices – such as playing sport, drinking, and homosocial bonding – compared to those that are not traditionally seen as ‘masculine’ or indeed are categorised as ‘feminine’. There is scope here for geographers to explore hegemonic masculinities in contexts where it may appear to be out of place, in juxtaposition to the context, or highly resistant to it. For example, how do hegemonic masculinities play out in the context of practices such as engaging in meditation, participating in yoga, or in massage therapy? And, what about men who engage in healthy eating, who wear makeup, or have their eyebrows threaded, for example? Finally, there are interesting quandaries to be addressed about the role of hegemonic masculinities in the context of debates about equality, diversity, and inclusion, especially where the deliberate de-centring of power is an important tactic.

Also, there may be specific practices that are being reinvented or reworked in the context of hegemonic masculinities – these may be practices traditionally associated with hegemonic masculinities that have changed meanings and associations. This could include, for example, the changing content of the pages of men’s lifestyle magazines (Jackson et al., 1999), an interest in, and promotion of, the reduction of risk in sport, or in monitoring the body and the self through tracking devices and apps (Fletcher, 2022). Moreover, there may be practices that are rendering the performances associated with masculinities as redundant or far less significant than they once were; here, the growth of AI raises important questions about the role and value of ‘work’ for men and the practices associated with masculinity. These juxtapositions, reinventions, and reworkings have important spatially inspired and geographically rooted space-times given the different ways they are unfolding in the multiple spaces of home, work, mobility, leisure, and how they are embodied and practiced in daily life.

V Relational hegemonic masculinities

Alongside considering the significance of place and the role of difference practices and performances in understanding the complexity of hegemonic masculinities, work about masculinity has often emphasised the importance of relationality. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005: 832) clarified that hegemonic masculinity ‘was understood as the pattern of practice (and not just a set of gender roles) that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue’. They also note that it was about distinguishing hegemonic masculinities from other masculinities that are more marginal or subordinated. Attention to these relationalities has been important in work in geography. For example, van Hoven and Horschelmann (2005: 5) observed that ‘a focus on the relational formation of male identities and masculine spaces seems long overdue in both feminist and gender-oriented geographical work,’ and Hopkins and Noble (2009: 815) made the point that there exists an ‘array of vectors of relationality’ when it comes to thinking about masculinities.

The relationality between men and women, between men, and between and within groups of men is an important aspect of understanding the complexity of hegemonic masculinities and their variation over time. Hopkins (2006) observed that young Muslim men’s masculine identities in Scotland were partly shaped in relation to the masculinities of white working class young men. In a different example, Tarrant’s (2010) work with grandfathers has demonstrated the important ways in which the relations between the generations – between grandfathers and their grandchildren – play an important role in shaping the construction and contestation of their masculinities. Moreover, Atherton’s (2009) work has explored how men who have served in the military transition back into civilian life and the negotiations of masculinities that take place in this context. There is an evident relationality between the military masculinities that the men enacted whilst serving in the army and the domestication of these masculinities in the home.

Geographers could usefully expand their relational repertoire to consider the different typologies or ‘competing gender taxonomies’ (Nayak, 2023: 168) that might be at interplay with hegemonic masculinities in different contexts. This could include complicit, subordinate, marginalised, and protest masculinities (Connell, 1995) as well as emerging formations such as caring masculinities (Elliott, 2020; Nayak, 2023). Other examples here include the religious, middle-class, rebellious, and ambivalent masculinities discussed by Dwyer et al. (2008) or the sacrosanct, subversive, and scored masculinities outlined by Kenway and Hickey-Moody (2009).

Relational hegemonic masculinities could also be considered with respect to binaries associated with health/ill-health – through work, for example, about men’s experiences of long covid or energy limiting conditions – or in relation to slimness/fatness (Evans et al., 2021) or with respect to discourses of crisis/crises (Hearn, 2022; Hopkins, 2009). Moreover, whilst it is useful to continue to explore the problematic and exclusionary ways in which masculinities are performed and enacted, there is much potential for work that focuses on the ways in which men might participate in gender justice groups (Peretz, 2020), actively produce non-hegemonic masculinities (e.g. Dery et al., 2024), or be strong advocates for feminism (Gorman-Murray and Hopkins, 2018) and challenge actively toxic and problematic masculinities, and so promote social justice and gender equality in the process.

VI Potential new research directions

6.1 Bodies, embodiment, and intersectionality

Attention to the significance of the body and to processes of embodiment (Waitt and Stanes, 2015) – alongside consideration of the complex ways that masculinities intersect with other markers of social difference represents a fruitful focus for future scholarship about hegemonic masculinities and place. This is important as the gender binary becomes increasingly fluid and the assumptions made about the bodies of different genders increasingly come into question (Johnston, 2016). For example, Rosenberg’s (2023) important work on the impact of hegemonic gay masculinities on the construction and contestation of queer spaces in Toronto provides important insights into the visual representation of gendered bodies and how this shapes the experiences of feminine, trans, and gender non-conforming young people’s lived experiences. Future work could usefully pay attention to different places and times as well as the practices and relationalities involved by building on work such as that by Abelson (2016) with rural transgender men, Rosenberg and Oswin’s (2015) exploration of trans embodiment in prisons, and Johnston’s (2019) work on gender variant geographies.

Giazitzoglu (2024) also shows how embodiment plays a role in symbolically (re)accomplishing hegemonic masculinity. Looking at rugby players whose bodies have created a loss of hegemony and organisational belonging (e.g. due to a lack of fitness), he shows players using their bodies as resources that allow them to reclaim a hegemonic masculinity otherwise, temporarily, lost, for example, by participating in embodied acts that dramatically prove a player’s fitness compared to other men in the rugby team. Ageing also represents a loss of hegemony to the grandfathers discussed by Tarrant (2013). To offset the loss of hegemonic masculinity that ageing creates for grandfathers – as well as the challenges to their masculinity that ‘caring’ may create – grandfathers engage in spatial-temporal practices, where they can manufacture hegemonic masculine identities in the spaces they control (see also Liu and Zhu, 2023 on ageing masculinities in rural places). Research could usefully continue to explore the ways in which hegemonic masculinity can be gained, lost, and re-secured for different bodies and in relation to different processes of embodiment.

Alongside this, we contend that geographers are positioned strongly to continue to explore and analyse the complex intersections of hegemonic masculinities with other markers of social difference (Hopkins, 2019). Ten years ago, Christensen and Jensen (2014) set out some ideas about how hegemonic masculinities and intersectionality might be combined and there now exists several examples of these issues being considered from an intersectional perspective including the intersection of masculinities with age (Gorman-Murray, 2015; Tarrant, 2010), sexuality (Gorman-Murray, 2013), race and ethnicity (Hopkins, 2007; Nayak, 2003), and migration status (Datta et al., 2009; Wojnicka and Nowicka, 2022) to name only a few. Alongside paying attention to the ongoing emergence of trans geographies, there is fruitful ground for scholarship to focus on hegemonic masculinities and intersectionality in the context of the growth of black geographies (Noxolo, 2022; Shabazz, 2014) and indigenous research (Sullivan, 2020) as well as continuing to pay attention to the ever-evolving complex intersections of masculinities with different social identity markers and power relations (Wojnicka K, 2024), and the ethical and methodological issues arising in such work (e.g. Rushton, 2024, Vanderbeck, 2005).

6.2 Work, employment, and migration

A second set of issues that provide fertile ground for new scholarship focusing on hegemonic masculinities includes research about work and employment alongside issues of migration and mobility. Focusing on managerial masculinities, the assertion that one fixed, rigid sort of masculinity necessarily constitutes a monistic hegemonic masculinity was refuted in the early 1990s, in Collinson and Hearn’s (1994) important work where they demonstrated that (at least) five configurations of managerial masculinity (authoritarianism, paternalism, entrepreneurialism, informalism, and careerism) exist in organisations. Managerial men consciously dilute, exaggerate, switch, and hybridise schemas of masculinity, to conform to temporal definitions of hegemonic masculinity.

The complex geographies of hegemonic masculinities are nicely highlighted in Reimer’s (2016) research into UK design agencies. She studied design consultancy companies in the UK cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Newcastle, and found that the men ‘essentialise a binary between a hegemonically (even heroically) masculine London in contrast to a regional imaginary connoted as an other-than-masculine space’ (Reimer, 2016: 1042). Gokariksel and Secor (2017) also show how different cities construct different definitions of hegemonic masculinities. Focusing on devout Muslim men in Turkey, they demonstrate that pious masculinities are conceptualised and expressed differently in the Turkish cities of Istanbul and Konya each hosting different ‘moral geographies’ that, in turn, dictate how Muslim men are expected to behave and present themselves if they are to be locally hegemonic.

Geographers could usefully build on this important work to continue to explore the contested landscapes of hegemonic masculinities in relation to different types of work in different places, including how the relationship between home and work has altered since the pandemic and as a result in changing patterns of working from home (Orman et al., 2024). One example here considers how new ‘islanded spaces’ were generated by creative practitioners during lockdown so they could continue to make and perform music (Brennan-Horley et al., 2024). Such research could usefully pay attention to specific workplace attributes, practices, and cultures, including forms of work traditionally associated with men and masculinities as well as types of work that challenge or rework gender stereotypes. The unstable nature of hegemonic masculinity is demonstrated through Mazei et al.’s (2021) analysis of corporate men involved in negotiations. When corporate men are successful in negotiations, they command hegemony as ‘exalted men’ in their places of work and among their peers. However, when men fail to negotiate successfully, they lose status and hegemony – indeed, their legitimacy may be open to question. In a very short space of time, a negotiator can gain then lose hegemonic status. Only future successful negotiations can restore hegemonic status in these contexts. In a rather different example, Bonner-Thompson and Nayak (2022: 1252) show how young men come to embody ‘caring’ masculine identities within care work. Caring is not necessarily associated with hegemonic masculinity – especially in working class contexts – yet it can be ‘consolidated through many of these caring acts, in an extension of patriarchy that further subordinates marginalized others who are reduced to being the vulnerable recipients of care.’

In thinking about work and employment – as well as paying attention to locally embedded cultures of hegemonic masculinity in specific neighbourhoods or urban contexts – geographers could also usefully consider the interplay between the local and the global. This could include considering hegemonic masculinities within transnational business interactions, amongst those working in regional development (Ormerod, 2023), in the gig economy (Bakas and Salman, 2024; MacDonald and Giazitzoglu, 2019), or in seasonal labour migration (Rai, 2020) including amongst other aspects of the economy contributing to important questions about who speaks for economic geography (e.g. Cockayne, 2024; Pugh, 2018). Furthermore, attention could also usefully be given to hegemonic masculinities in the context of diverse forms of international tourism (Yang and Schanzel, 2023), and through the participation of young men in international volunteering or gap year activities. Connected with this transnational focus, there is also fertile ground for new scholarship about how men seek to secure hegemonic masculinity after migration including for those seeking asylum (Huizinga and van Hoven, 2021) as well as economic migrants (Datta et al., 2009) who may have occupied hegemonic masculine status in specific spaces and times in their home countries and now find themselves negotiating a very different gendered hierarchy that demands performances and repetitive accomplishments unfamiliar to them.

6.3 Climate change, sustainability, and well-being

A final set of issues where attention to hegemonic masculinity provides rich opportunities for future scholarship is in relation to climate change, to issues of sustainability, and to the geographies of health and well-being. Wilson and Chu (2020) observe that there is already some work about hegemonic masculinity and climate change (Pease, 2016) and that there are indications that some men – especially those in engineering and the sciences – remain sceptical of climate change. The urgency of the climate crisis suggests this is an important topic that has much potential including in relation to different practices such as recycling (Nunn, 2013) or gendered responses to disasters (Haworth et al., 2022) such as earthquakes (Rushton et al., 2021) and wildfires (Eriksen and Waitt, 2016; Reimer and Eriksen, 2018), including how this intersects with sexuality and gender identity (e.g. Gorman-Murray et al., 2016; Haworth et al., 2022; McKinnon et al., 2016). On the other hand, there may be hegemonic masculinities at play in the climate science and politics domain as men position themselves as defenders of the climate or as guardians of the planet in leading the challenge to promote sustainability and resist further damage to the climate (Telford, 2023). There are also interesting questions to be asked about the performances of climate activists and how this interplays with hegemonic masculinities (Gobby, 2020).

As well as the transnational business class noted above, there are groups of men who engage in specific practices connected with the ongoing accomplishment of hegemonic masculinity and who are contributing to heightened climate change in the process (Pease, 2016); moreover, climate change also has differential gendered impacts (Khan et al., 2023). For example, Thurnell-Read (2012) has explored the phenomenon of premarital stag tourism for British men visiting Eastern Europe. Not only do such events often involve groups of men seeking to perform and secure hegemonic masculinity, what was one a ‘night out’ locally or in a regional city has increasingly involved international air travel.

Food consumption practices also provide an interesting perspective for further work about geographies of hegemonic masculinities. DeLessio-Parson (2017) observed that hegemonic masculinity in patriarchal societies is often associated with meat eating and that gender was often reworked in food spaces in Argentina by men who are vegetarian rejecting the assumed link between meat and masculinity whilst also rejecting sexism and racism. Moreover, research in France and Italy with men who were vegetarian or vegan, found that their masculinities were often challenged by other men. In response, they engaged in new forms of masculinity focused on health promotion (Fidolini, 2022). The recent work by Oliver et al. (2023) setting out vegan geographies provides fruitful possibilities here (see also Oliver, 2023).

The need for repetitive accomplishments to constantly secure and re-secure hegemonic status also raises important questions about men’s health and mental well-being given the stress and anxiety that may be involved in constantly having to ‘work at’ accomplishing hegemonic masculinity. This important set of issues could usefully build upon related work on masculinities, place and health (Thien and del Casino, 2012) including work on drug treatment (Wilton et al., 2014), alcohol programs (Evans et al., 2015), and chronic illness (Giesbrecht et al., 2016). Also important here is men's participation in sport such as rugby or cycling competitions (Fogarty, 2024), as well as paying attention to men as both caregivers (e.g. Olson, 2019) and care receivers, and the complex relationships between masculinities and care (Bonner-Thompson and Nayak, 2022; England and Dyck, 2014).

VII Conclusions

In this paper, we have focused upon hegemonic masculinity as the key theory within studies of men and masculinities, including in work in human geography. We have emphasised that hegemonic masculinities are spatially and temporally specific, shaped by specific practices and performances, as well as being relational. For each of these aspects of hegemonic masculinity, we have explored key contributions from geographers – as well as those from neighbouring disciplines – and suggested ways in which each of these could be taken forward in future work. Furthermore, we have set out ways in which work about hegemonic masculinities could usefully be taken forward in geography including in work about bodies, embodiment, and intersectionality; in research about work, employment, and migration; and in studies of climate, sustainability, and health and well-being. Hegemonic masculinity is important not just because it helps us understand masculinities and the power relations between typologies of men, it also enriches our appreciation of gender relations more generally. Moreover, this is not simply another category of identity but also about behaviours, attitudes, and values that shape what people do (Fogarty, 2024), how they perform their gender identities, and how they use, manage, and/or abuse power.

Whilst understanding the complexity of hegemonic masculinity is important (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005), the potential for geographically inspired work here is significant. The role of place, the impacts of space-time, and changing local, regional, or urban landscapes (Hearn et al., 2014) associated with work, family, and leisure, present important opportunities for future research as does transformations in embodied practices, changing traditions of work and uses of home, alongside the increasing urgency of the climate crisis and environmental justice. Given geography’s attentiveness to power relations, inequalities, and justice (Hopkins, 2021), there is a pressing need to critically explore such issues and to be attentive to hegemonic masculinity as both an identity category and as something that is performed, enacted, resisted, and challenged. Geographers have a responsibility to bring a spatially inspired attentiveness to appreciating hegemonic masculinities and their multiple relationalities and performances in space and time.