Death. So what? Sociology,sequestration and emancipation

The paper argues for the widely unacknowledged importance of death in the motivation of human conduct and the significance of the sequestration of death for sociological theory. Sociological studies that illuminate modern strategies for coping with death also contribute to its sequestration as they routinely naturalise the contemporary commonsense understanding of death as something negative that must be coped with. The (negative or morbid) representation of death, it is argued, should be re‐cognised as a social product, not reproduced in sociological studies as something that is seemingly innate to the human condition. Otherwise, a commonsense representation of death as unequivocally negative is reinforced rather than scrutinised; and alternative understandings of the significance of mortality for analysing everyday life and human emancipation are suppressed.     

The Question of Rural Masculinities*

Abstract By way of introduction to this special issue on rural masculinities, we provide an overview of masculinity studies, emphasizing the influential work of Robert W. Connell on hegemonic masculinity. We go on to distinguish between two main avenues of rural inquiry in masculinity studies: studies of the masculine in the rural and studies of the rural in the masculine, or what we also term the masculine rural and the rural masculine. We apply this distinction to the six contributions to this special issue, showing how most of the papers maintain a kind of dialogue between the two. We conclude by arguing that studies of rural masculinities are a contribution rather than an alternative to feminist scholarship in the rural social sciences, and that the topic of rural masculinities provides rural scholarship with opportunities for conducting research in other disciplines.     

The Glass Phallus: Pub(lic) Masculinity and Drinking in Rural New Zealand*

Abstract In this article I report the findings of an ethnographic study of men's pub drinking in rural New Zealand. By using the idea of hegemonic masculinity and incorporating theoretical ideas of gender performativity, the analysis focuses on aspects of drinking performance that are central to the establishment of hegemony by a particular version of masculinity in this community. Two important characteristics of pub drinking performance are conversational cockfighting and the disciplines of drinking. These combine to ensure that a particular version of masculinity, here called pub(lic) masculinity, is able to reproduce itself. A further finding is that masculinity in this kind of performative situation develops a degree of invisibility. Using the metaphor of the “glass phallus,” I engage with the difficulties of analyzing an invisible masculinity and argue that rendering masculinity visible is an important task for any sociological analysis of both public leisure sites in rural society and the embodied performance of alcohol consumption by men in public spaces.     

Counselling and Psychotherapy: Is There a Difference? Does It Matter?

The terms ‘counselling’ and ‘psychotherapy’ are often employed in a loosely interchangeable way, especially in Australia. Where distinctions are made, there has been little agreement on what each term should cover. This article examines several axes on which ‘counselling’ might potentially be distinguished from ‘psychotherapy’; the most promising basis for such a distinction seems to be whether or not the mode of work attempts to access the unconscious. On this basis, several modalities currently termed ‘therapy’ would in fact be classed as types of ‘counselling’, including those modalities of family therapy which aim to engage clients at the level of conscious behaviour change and restructuring. Consideration of how new professionals are trained lends support to a continuum, with short‐term, problem‐focused conscious‐oriented approaches at one end, and longer‐term, transference‐focused, unconscious‐oriented approaches at the other, the dividing line coming at the point where trainees learn the skill of ‘immediacy’.