Abstract

Based on fieldwork conducted among middle-class university students primarily at the national university (UNAM) in Mexico City, this study explores gender relations as reflected in the words macho and machismo. The author concludes that the students use them to denote aspects of their families of origin that they consider unfavorable and aspects of the cultural past that they wish to leave behind in their own lives. In capturing the lively and revealing conversations of these young voices, the author offers a compelling analysis of how gender concepts and identities are changing in contemporary Mexico City.

Josué Ramirez is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hofstra University. He received his PhD in anthropology from Brown University, was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, an instructor at MIT, and a lecturer in anthropology at Northeastern University. From 2004 to 2008 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Currently, he is living in Brooklyn and writing a book about growing up in New York in the 1970s.

"This work is effective in speaking about the valuable insights of youth as critical and insightful individuals and intellectuals who have much to share about cultures in transition, while still claiming a space to express their individual quirkiness and aspirations within their society. This work seems most appropriate for scholars of gender and urbanization, youth culture and gender ideologies, and gender in Mexican society. I also strongly recommend this book as an ethnographic accompaniment to any introductory text in Cultural Anthropology or the Social Sciences in general, for its appeal to young university students in the United States and elsewhere."  ·  Ethos

“Ramirez contributes to the study of masculinities by providing us interviews that reveal the terms macho and machismo as ineffective descriptors of Latin men, but rather as lenses through which to study social and cultural relationships between the speaker and the person signified.”   ·  Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality