‘Speak and Act in a Manly Fashion’: The Role of the Body in the Construction of Men and Masculinity in Primary Teacher Education in Ireland

Abstract

Based on a study of the masculinising practices of a single-sex primary teacher training college in Ireland 1928–38, this paper argues that the body served as the primary means of classification and differentiation in the social construction and regulation of masculinities. Following Connell's body reflexive practice theory that bodies are both agents and objects of practice and that ‘masculinity refers to male bodies but is not determined by male biology’, and Bourdieu's conceptualisation of the body as a form of physical capital as a bearer of symbolic value, produced presented and managed to acquire status and distinction across social fields, this paper demonstrates how the body was used as an object and, to a lesser extent, agent in the masculinisation process at this institution, especially while students practised teaching in Practising Schools under the supervision of college staff.