Kimmel, Michael, Professor

By Stine Adrian on 28 Aug | 0 comments

Michael Kimmel is Professor of Sociology at SUNY at Stony Brook, New York, USA.
He is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world today.

GEXCEL PROJECT AUTUMN 2007
Globalization and its Mal(e)contents: Masculinity and Sexuality on the Extreme Right

What is the impact of globalization on gender identities? How does globalization affect different classes and different groups in terms of their definitions of masculinity and femininity?

Michael Kimmel's work addresses these questions by focusing on the gendered experience of globalization for a specific group of men – younger, lower middle class, downwardly mobile – in both the US and Scandinavia.

Based on archival research and interviews with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists (including members of EXIT in Sweden and Jackie Arklöf) Kimmel describes the ways in which political extremism actually serves a gender agenda.

These men experience their class and race situation as gendered, as having to do with their masculinity. They use gender as a discursive mechanism to problematize the racialized and sexualized "other" (black men, immigrants, jews and gays) especially in terms of sexuality. And they use political mobilization in the service of the restoration of gendered identity.