Reflexivity Denied? The Emotional and Health-Seeking Resources of Men Facing Disadvantage.

Abstract

Based on focus group discussions of self-generated photographs of individuals aged 19-67

resident in urban Northwest England, this article examines the health narratives of men facing

disadvantage because of economic hardship and/or mental health difficulty. In contrast to

stereotypes of men as uncomfortable with emotions linked to vulnerability, we explore how

such men can develop within self-help groups the kind of emotional resources that encourage

health-seeking behaviours. Our argument contrasts with theories that risk

denying/diminishing working-class men’s emotional reflexivity or that frame reflexivity

(thought on feelings and behaviour to effect life changes) as individualized and more

available to middle-class (younger) men. We argue that participant accounts indicate

development of more collective emotional and epistemic resources from a position of

subordinated masculinity. This argument challenges stereotypes of working-class men as

lacking in knowledge/skill in health and self-care. Collective reflexivity over health/well-

being was particularly visible in three main accounts that emerged during focus groups:

involvement in self-help ‘communities of practice’; use of local aesthetic spaces; and

negotiation with/qualified challenge to healthy eating discourse.

Disadvantaged men, emotions, health, mental health, reflexivity

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Are men so stoic, dismissive or ignorant of their health and well-being? A masculine coping

ethic is thought to contribute to their delay in seeking medical help (O’Brien et al, 2005),

which can have serious consequences. For example, men experience significantly higher

mortality rates than women from cancer (McPhail et al, 2015). Men are also less likely than

women to consult mental health services (Galdas, 2013) yet they could benefit from such

help when we consider that suicide is the most common cause of death among men aged 20-

34. The suicide rate among men in this age group is twice that of women, accounting for a

quarter of deaths of males, compared with 12 per cent of females (ONS, 2015).

Moreover, working-class men are assumed to be less concerned with and knowledgeable

about health than middle-class men (Dolan 2011). They are more likely to take risks related

to smoking and alcohol consumption (Farrimond, 2012) and their morbidity and mortality

rates are higher than their middle-class peers across all age groups (Nazroo, Zaninotto and

Gjonca, 2008). The primacy working-class men tend to place on physical toughness and

emotional invulnerability can contribute significantly to this situation (Dolan, 2011). Whilst

we acknowledge that this narrative of reluctance/delay is dominant in shaping thought and

action, it risks homogenising men’s health/well-being related behaviours and obscuring

diversity in practices. Therefore, this article focuses on what men facing disadvantage

because of socio-economic hardship and/or mental health difficulty (mhd) know, do and feel

about their health/well-being. Further, we explore various beliefs and practices, including

those that negotiate with health discourses and indicate health-seeking behaviours. Such

beliefs/practices are suggestive of changes in how working-class masculinities are expressed

collectively and in ways that involve greater self-care whilst maintaining a strong conception

of maleness.

2

This article draws on self-generated photographs used to discuss thought and practice of

study participants concerning well-being within three focus groups comprising 14 men aged

19 to 67, resident in three urban areas of Northwest England. We also refer to photographic

images of health provided by six men living in another Northwest city but who felt unable to

participate in a focus group because of mhd. Participant narratives, (spoken and

photographic) acknowledged, complicated and challenged dominant expectations of

masculinity (see Connell, 1995/2005) and stereotypical views of working-class men’s health

beliefs and practices. We define health holistically, as co-constituted by physical, socio-

cultural, environmental, intellectual and emotional influences, signifying both absence of

illness and capacity to maintain the physical and psychological resilience required for

everyday life (Saylor, 2004).

Essentially, we propose an alternative to two kinds of theorizing. We offer an alternative to

the kind of accounts that risk diminishing or even denying working-class men’s emotionally

reflexive capacities and specifically in relation to distancing from ‘feminine’ emotions

connoting vulnerability as exemplified in Seidler’s work (2006; 2013). We also offer an

alternative to those who theorize reflexivity as largely individualized and the product of

engagement with globalized consumer culture used to refashion masculine identity (Anderson

2009; McCormack 2013, 2014). By reflexivity, we refer to thinking that can be used to ‘alter

one’s life in response to circumstances’, which involves deployment of emotions (Holmes,

2010: 139). This kind of thinking can be denied to working-class men not just in popular lore

‘Men are from Mars’ but also in academic discourse (see Gilligan, 1982 and Seidler, 2006).

Basically, we demonstrate the ways in which working-class men involved in self-help groups

can develop emotional reflexivity in relation to health/wellbeing collectively and from a

position of struggle/hardship.

3

Men, Health Beliefs and Emotionality: Key Themes in the Literature

The main strands of the literature on men’s health have been intimated above and are

examined here. Because mhd featured prominently in participant accounts, we also evaluate

contemporary theorisations of masculine emotionality.

In terms of health beliefs and practices, men’s comparative lack of vigilance over health/well-

being resulting from gender socialisation (Galdas, 2013) is a common trope. Moreover, some

feminist theories of gender relations have demonstrated the ways in which class and gender

ideology encourage a comparative lack of bodily vigilance and underuse of healthcare

services by men (Connell, 2012). The view of men as reluctant help-seekers is often

attributed to the influence of hegemonic masculinity. In particular, ‘poor’ health choices

among working-class men can be attributed to ‘protest masculinities’ from a subordinate

position that react against hegemonic masculinity by asserting an alternative masculine status

through risk-taking (e.g. smoking, heavy drinking, risky driving) and repudiation of

emasculating ‘healthy’ lifestyles (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Whilst illuminating for

its articulation of hierarchy of masculinities, this body of work has been criticised for

overlooking women’s motives for delaying help-seeking because of pressures to prioritise

family needs (Smith et al, 2006) and working-class men’s own motivation to seek help

because of employment requirements for fitness e.g. as fire-fighters (Noone and Stephens,

2008).

However, a varied landscape of knowledge is emerging on men’s beliefs and practices

regarding health and illness. For example, Robertson (2007) has observed how the

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essentializing of gender (in the form of male traits) has homogenized men and thus ignored

the contingent, varied and sometimes contradictory character of their health beliefs and

practices, which can involve both capitulation to and criticism of normative masculinities.

Recent research has also identified a spectrum of masculine health-seeking responses to

depression that range from the self-protective (reflecting traditional masculinity) through to

guarded disclosures and owning of emotional vulnerability (Johnson et al, 2012). Yet others

have observed convergence in the cancer narratives of stoicism told by men and women

(MacLean et al, 2017) and how age and type of cancer can be as effective as gender in

occasioning self-referrals (Lyratzopolous et al, 2010).

This more nuanced work also recognizes that reluctance to disclose symptoms could

represent less avoidance than a reflexive strategy that involves maintaining bodily autonomy

whilst seeking information to assess one’s symptoms. Such action can serve as a prelude to

further help-seeking (Smith et al, 2008). Self-surveillance can also involve negotiating a

hierarchy of risks to determine whether or what action to take (O’Brien et al, 2005) or even to

avoid unwelcome surveillance by authorities (Robertson, 2007).

In terms of men’s capacities for feeling, theories of emotional self-alienation have a long

pedigree spanning radical (Rich 1980) and psychoanalytic feminisms (Chodorow, 1992). If

women have been caricatured in popular culture and academic work as (overly) expressive

and other-directed (Gilligan, 1982), men have been caricatured as steadfastly rational,

control-oriented and individualistic (Gilligan 1982; Seidler, 2006). This reasoning reflects the

commonplace view that males are socialised in ways that result in distancing from the softer,

‘feminine’ feelings associated with vulnerability that are thought necessary to maintain

5

normative masculinity (Pullen and Simpson, 2009) and to avoid feminizing concern with

health (Robertson 2007).

The thinking just described characterises pro-feminist men’s movement theorising (see

Seidler, 2006). Here, men’s emotional self-management is a distinctly historical project,

emerging from a modernity that privileged rationality (Seidler, 2006; 2013) and identified

masculinity with objective reason and a bourgeois self-restraint that equips them for the

public realm/workplace. By contrast, femininity became identified with subjectivity and the

domestic sphere. Emotions were thought to govern an excessive femininity requiring

regulation and naturalizing male dominance. However, investment in rationality is thought to

extract costs. Self-distancing from emotions associated with vulnerability mean that men

become alienated from women, each other and their own body-selves as atomised individuals

competing for dominance economically, politically and culturally (Seidler, 2006; 2013).

Theorising on masculine emotional (self-)estrangement has highlighted the discursive

resources men draw on when ‘othering’ women (Connell 1995/205; Seidler, 2006; 2013) and

is sensitive towards men’s suffering occasioned by the constraints of masculinity, though

Seidler’s theorizing overlooks the contingent, plural character of men’s emotional expression,

which can serve as resource and include behaviours not necessarily oriented towards

dominion over self and others. We observe this more egalitarian sensibility below in study

participants’ accounts indicating collective support, conviviality and connectedness.

In contrast to Seidler’s concerns indicating a crisis in masculinity (a consequence of men’s

discomfort with ‘feminine’ emotions), scholarship has emerged in the shape of ‘inclusive

masculinity theory’ (IMT), which registers considerable shifts in masculine emotional

6

performances. Whilst it provides a counterpoint to Seidler’s theorizing around masculine

emotional lack, we consider that it over-privileges emotional reflexivity as an individual

affair and thus neglects reflexivity as a collective endeavour.

Referring to changes in gender discourse as well as the efforts of the lesbian and gay

liberation movement, IMT considers that younger, largely middle-class men represent

masculinities that no longer fear association with femininity or gayness. Anderson’s work

(2009) based largely on studies of white, Anglophone University students in Britain and the

US, claims that contemporary hetero-masculinities have become much more emotionally

literate and egalitarian in their attitudes to women (and gay men). This theorising is critical of

Connell’s (1995/2005) notion of hegemonic masculinity arguing that, in overplaying the

structural-ideological constraints on men’s self-expression, Connell occludes the gentler,

more self-questioning expressions of masculinity that represent an individualized emotional

reflexivity that draws on globalized consumer culture (McCormack, 2013).

Whilst IMT opens up consideration of advances towards gender equality and masculine

emotionalities, as presently constituted it suffers from the same problems as theorising on the

individualisation of identity to which it owes considerable debt (Giddens, 1991, 1992).

Indeed, Giddens’ work risks downplaying persistent, deeply ingrained gender inequalities

(Skeggs, 2004). IMT has also been challenged for its failure to recognize the constraints of a

more ‘defensive heterosexuality’ expressed by men keen to distance themselves from

femininity and gayness (Spandler et al, (2014). Indeed, work by Spandler et al concluded

that gendered talk, within a mixed-gender mental health and football project, contradictorily

involved compliance with dominant gender relations (thus reproducing division from women

and gay men) and transgression of normative masculinity in the shape of therapy talk.

7

Theorizing of such ambivalent experience appears missing from IMT, which focuses on the

good news story of change. It has also been observed that inclusive masculinities involve

borrowing from subordinate forms of masculinity that simultaneously involve defining the

self against working-class men who are positioned as representatives of a regressive

masculinity (Bridges and Pascoe, 2014).

For our purposes, IMT assumes emotional reflexivity as a property of rational, individual,

economically and culturally resourced younger men. Indeed, McCormack (2014) has argued

that, because of a comparative lack of ability to grasp middle-class cultural capital, (young)

working-class men are less emotionally open than their middle-class peers. Besides, whilst

IMT refers to a confluence of economic, cultural, historical, and legal-political processes to

explain change in masculinity and gender relations (Anderson 2009, McCormack, 2013),

reflexivity here appears lacking in nuance and understanding of inequality. It appears as an

overly individualised affair that ignores contradictory emotions that can develop from

collective experience (Simpson, 2014).

In sum, both Seidler’s and IMT theorising beg questions about who is equipped with the

cultural and emotional resources necessary to create more equal relationships. For IMT,

emotional reflexivity appears contingent on ability to access individualized, middle-class

cosmopolitan youth cultures of consumption and denies the significance of masculine

hierarchy (Anderson 2009, McCormack, 2013). For Seidler (2006), gender equality is

contingent upon men’s capacities for critique of dominant and domineering forms of

masculinity. In contrast, we aim to avoid polarised views of masculine emotionality that

either problematise or risk excluding working-class men. Instead, we contend that

8

collectively produced emotional resources can be expressed in repertoires of context-bound

feelings (Walton et al, 2004).

Research Design: Methods and Men

Fieldwork was conducted between May 2016 and April 2017 and involved 21 participants.

Given the dominant account of stoic indifference, the over-arching research question was

designed to generate accounts of what men facing disadvantage actually know and do about

achieving and maintaining health/wellbeing. In particular, our questioning was designed to

explore (in group settings) beyond commonplace accounts of emotional distancing or

ineptitude to discern the ways in which participants negotiate complex lived experience.

Focus groups were used to explore the diversity of participant understandings of how health

and well-being appeared in their everyday lives. We asked men to generate photographs that

signified health and well-being for them and then asked them to explain the meanings of their

self-authored images (probing when necessary) as a basis for group discussion/debate. The

method afforded participants (who were familiar with each other) a significant degree of

control over the content of discussion and encouraged consideration of responses to collective

concerns (Frankland et al, 1997). We considered that focus group discussions would be

enriched if based on participant-generated photographs. Whilst images can produce

unexpected meanings (Banks, 2000), photo-elicitation furnished historical, biographical and

relational details beyond participants’ present selves/experiences that were not obvious from

the photographs, which alone represented only snapshots of moments (Kuhn, 2002).

9

Sampling, recruitment and characteristics

Initially, our sampling strategy was determined by definitions of male and working-class. We

were prepared to include in the study anyone over the age of 18, self-defining as male.

Working-class was defined in accordance with Savage et al’s (2013) schema, based on

Bourdieu’s (1984) class theory that comprises objective and subjective dimensions thereof.

This involves consideration of combinations of economic capital (income and wealth);

cultural capital (education and knowledge); symbolic capital (status/reputation); and social

capital (personal/social networks). This schema differentiates working-class people in terms

of: 1) home purchase/ownership (‘new affluent workers’); 2) individuals with household

incomes of about £13,000 per annum and educated to GCSE level (the ‘traditional working-

class’); 3) individuals with household incomes of about £8,000 per annum living in rented

accommodation, with few educational qualifications and either unemployed or reliant on

precarious employment contracts (defined by the authors as the ‘precariat’). Ten of the

fourteen focus group participants could be accommodated within the two latter categories and

the remainder were new affluent workers and students.

The participant recruitment strategy drew on our own and colleagues’ professional, academic

and voluntary work networks to target community organisations that attract working-class

men. As we discovered in three of the groups, mhd emerged as significant, which encouraged

widening of the research focus to include this element of disadvantage. Indeed, one

community group/programme (Merseyside) existed to support men with such experience who

were referred to it by medical and other practitioners. Three community organisations based

in Merseyside, Deeside (concerning people requiring benefits), and Greater Manchester (a

fathers’ self-help group) offered to participate in the study. Because we had a modest sample

10

of 11 at one point and the Deeside group’s participation was uncertain, we supplemented this

with a focus group of students (n = 3) aged 20, late 20s and mid-40s who all provided

photographs and two of whom originated from working-class backgrounds. Whilst the

sample is necessarily specific (men facing disadvantage) it reflects some diversity terms of

age but not race and we were unsure about sexuality as accounts indicating sexual difference

were not apparent. Thirteen participants were in their thirties and forties, four in their

twenties and four in their early fifties.

Our argumentation is based mostly on discussions of self-produced images held in three

focus groups comprising men living in East Manchester (n=6), Merseyside (n=5), and West

Lancashire (n=3). In total, 17 men/support group users produced over 100 photographs that

were taken with disposable cameras or personal phones. A support group in Deeside provided

photographs but did not participate in a focus group, which was explained by the group

facilitator because of mhd. Table 1 below clarifies the different contributions that participants

made and by group.

Table 1: contributions of the sample by type and group

Provided photos & commented on own &/or others’photos

No photographs provided but commented on others’ photographs

Provided photographs only

11 (Manchester = 6, Merseyside =

1, W. Lancs = 3)

1Merseyside

9 (Deeside = 6, Merseyside = 3)

11

Making sense of accounts

To make sense of men’s verbal accounts of their photographs, thematic analysis was used,

which involved identifying and interpreting latent patterns within data (Braun and Clarke,

2006). Initially, this involved separately identifying key themes in (audio-recorded) verbatim

transcripts via open coding of themes/instances consistent throughout the data and/or that

struck us as significant in terms of answering and complicating research questions. Typical

codes included ‘traditional masculinity’, ‘challenges’ ‘negotiations’, ‘emotional expression’

‘health-seeking’ and sub-codes of key themes e.g. health-seeking regarding ‘food,’ ‘activity,’

‘friendship’ etc. The codes were sometimes clustered and then refined inductively into the

themes structuring this article. These were discussed at an analysis meeting where we agreed

the main themes, participant quotes and photographs to be foregrounded. The analysis

process involved three passes through the dataset.

We did not formally code participant photographs, which were used more as prompts for

interpretation within the focus groups. Although photographs can function as data and allow

access to men’s thinking, our strategy was here was concerned ethically, methodologically

and theoretically to prioritize participants’ understandings of their photographs as interpreted

in a group setting.

Ethics

Prospective participants were given an information sheet at a group meeting that concerned

the aims of the study, what was required of participants and offered a guarantee of

anonymity. Prospective participants had the opportunity to questions and were given a week

to decide whether to take part. Those who agreed were asked to take photographs they

12

considered to represent health in their everyday lives but to avoid taking photographs of

faces, illegal activities or those that could provoke embarrassment, discomfort or censure

(Wang and Redwood-Jones, 2001) e.g. photographs in swimming pools or images of people

that may breach privacy.

Three forms of reflexivity

Participant accounts demonstrated collective emotional reflexivity in three main ways. We

acknowledge that, whilst not representative of working-class men, the accounts generated

inevitably draw on common discourses and could be common within men’s self-help groups.

First and foremost, collective reflexivity was evident in accounts indicating how positive

mental health (a subjective sense of well-being that involves the self-esteem required to

manage common stresses and participate in community life (WHO, 2001)), was aided by

support from men sharing experiences/circumstances and in an informal, non-clinical, non-

didactic way (See also Spandler et al, 2014). Such accounts were suggestive of ‘communities

of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) whose importance was to provide support in a more

informal way and where health registered as a group concern (see Creighton and Oliffe,

2010). Second, accounts indicating emotional engagement with local physical environments

could promote a sense of security and well-being and showed that reflexivity, developed with

significant others, could occur outside self-help groups. Third, emotionally-saturated

accounts of practices concerning food, also involving significant others, were understood as

contributors to health/well-being. This kind of account was distinct for indicating qualified

challenge to dominant meanings of healthy eating that involve avoidance of food considered

enjoyable but thought to contain ‘unhealthy’ ingredients (e.g. fat, salt and sugar).

13

Reflexivity: communities of practice

The first kind of collective reflexivity was apparent in accounts suggesting the power ‘of

informal’ support from similar others. Such accounts were particularly evident in the

Merseyside football community group (football and sport being occasions for expression of

powerful emotions (McKeown et al, 2015)) and the Manchester father’s group: both groups

existed to address men’s self-esteem.

Reflecting the thinking of Connell (2005) and, more recently, Messerschmidt (2018), we

observed that participant health beliefs and practices both dialogue with (see below) but can

also, more agentically, exceed the influences of hegemonic masculinity. Indeed, accounts

indicating ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) provided insight into the

collective development of cognitive and emotional resources that not only undergird positive

mental health but also entail criticism of the costs of hegemonic or more prized masculinities.

Also, in contrast to theories of masculine emotional discomfort (Seidler, 2006, 2013) and of

individualized reflexivity (Anderson, 2009), we observe a reflexivity, a quality commonly

denied to working-class men (Spandler et al., 2014), that developed from involvement in

community groups and cohering around a shared identity and social positioning. This

expertise is thought to develop more organically through everyday, ‘informal,’ habitual

thought and interaction and particularly through stories of shared experience and problem-

solving resources: in effect, a 'community of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991).

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Photos/plates 1a and 1b: Signifiers of community of practice (Geoff, early 50s, Merseyside)

.

At first blush, images of football boots, medals and trophies suggest pride in individual

achievement through competition. Significant in the top photograph are the motivational,

emotionally-saturated notes to self - ‘Stay positive’ and, on the Scrabble board (word game),

‘Believe’, ‘Ebullient’, ‘Hope’, ‘Desire’ ‘Dedication’, ‘Never Give Up’ and ‘Life.’ Further,

the poem affixed to the wall about the value of the football team/community was valued for

having been written by another group member. Although the poem’s author, Phil, (mid-30s),

did not attend the focus group, he did provide photographs indicating pride in relation to the

community group and the two participants registered his role as the ‘Mr Motivator’ of the

community group.

15

Further, Geoff used his photographs of his trophies as lead-in to talk about his achievements

in terms of recovery from severe mhd and the reciprocal support available in the community

group:

I have no shame whatsoever talking about mental health... Until we can talk as openly

about mental health as we do physical health, there will be a stigma and I feel that if I

can talk about... my near-death experiences, the dark times... hopefully that touches

someone else and makes them reach out for help.... One of the most difficult things to

say is, like coming out, “That’s what it is!” It’s making that admission... It [football]

was always where I could be myself... The lads on the programme are like any other

football team but we take it one step further because, not only do we care for each

other, we actually counsel each other... We’re all peer-support workers in a way... I

am the person I always wanted to be and that’s due to the programme.

Striking in the above excerpt are emotional resources available in the group that can help

normalise discomforting talk about mhd as a strategy to destigmatise such difficulties. The

‘coming out’ metaphor is reflexive in registering the importance of owning emotional

vulnerability, which runs contrary to stereotypes of suppression of emotions or distancing

from feminine weakness (Seidler, 2006; 2013). This is evident in Geoff’s recounting of his

journey towards an unofficial mental health champion for men who has spoken publicly

about his story of recovery from a ‘dark place’. The group’s opportunities for supporting

other men and reciprocal support appear to function as ongoing therapy for Geoff, which

serves as a reminder of the emotional distance travelled. The football group is not just an

effective vehicle for reaching out to others who share mhd in a space where Geoff can feel

free to ‘be myself’, which includes expression of emotional vulnerability among similar

16

others who represent subordinated masculinity on the grounds of class and mhd (Spandler et

al., 2014) who understand his experience.

Geoff’s account above also indicates that the norms underpinning the group enable men to

express emotions that might in other contexts compromise masculine status. His words also

mark limits to Robertson’s (2007) views concerning men’s perceptions of health as private

and the working-class masculine tendency to express emotions more through practical action

than verbal articulation. Much of the thinking just described resonates with conclusions in

previous studies of men’s support groups organized around football/sport, which afford

participants opportunities to be critical of the demands of normative masculinities and enable

refashioning of masculinity in more health-promoting ways (Bunn et al, 2016). Just as

significantly, Geoff’s words highlight the care provided by the community group in the form

of co-counselling and peer-support. Such activities, qualities and resources are, again, seldom

associated with working-class men (Dolan, 2011; Farrimond, 2012). Indeed, Geoff’s account

contests the notion of therapy as a middle-class experience (Spandler et al., 2014).

A further statement by Geoff that ‘football is their medication’, (referring to fellow group

members) registered a sense of recovery from intense mhd through involvement in a men’s

group that is based on mutual support. Indeed, he observed that: ‘Hundreds of guys on the

programme have come from a dark to a really good place... to be able to manage and live

with it (mhd) or, in some cases, have recovered.’ This challenge to medicalisation resonates

with Wilson and Beresford’s (2000) theorising concerning survivors of the mental health

system. Critique of medicalisation of mental health services was stated even more starkly by

fellow group member, Mike, (early 20s), who had developed mhd following a bereavement.

The group, which operates as a form of social prescribing as opposed to its clinical variant,

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had helped Mike begin reckoning with grief and loss and was contrasted favourably with,

‘doctors who just give you pills.’ Such testimony resonates with the observation of McKeown

et al (2015) about men’s greater satisfaction with such projects which are experienced as

empowering compared to psychiatric/mental health services, thought to be dominated by

professional power (Spandler et al., 2014).

The kind of accounts just discussed resonated in other ways in the Manchester group. Chris

described the Manchester group as a ‘little ecosystem’ comprising ‘...other dads... that can

improve your feelings and well-being.’ Another member (Darren, mid-30s), spoke about the

dad’s group as ‘life-changing.’ Referring to a photograph of himself making papier-mâché

figures with his children, he described how sharing thoughts within the group had, ‘helped

me bond with my kids... which I couldn’t do before in my own space’. In turn, this had

helped Darren to develop ‘...into the dad I am now where I can play with the kids and then

get on with housework.’ In sum, both community groups functioned as fields of existence

that enabled ‘informally’, and through sharing of feelings as an incidental process/function of

the group, the development of emotional resources. Such resources appear to legitimate

expression of emotional masculine selves in spaces whose norms reference understanding of

(positive mental) health as a collective accomplishment. Further, the accounts just discussed

contest accounts like Seidler’s that tend towards overemphasis on men’s struggle to be

emotionally reflexive and IMT’s individualized, middle-class version of emotional

reflexivity.

Whilst participant accounts indicate criticism of the pressures exerted by normative

masculinity, it is worth noting that the hegemonic variant could impose limits on critical

thought and actual behaviour (Courtenay, 2000). Indeed, very much in support of Seidler’s

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thinking, it could operate as a standard by which men felt judged (see also Connell,

1995/2005; Robertson 2007). This benchmark of masculinity was spoken of by participants

in the Manchester and Merseyside focus groups in ways that indicated the demands of

economic and emotional self-reliance (Connell, 2005; Seidler, 206 and 2013) and especially,

the ability to support a family financially (see Besen, 2007). Whilst Chris (late 40s,

Manchester), who was long-term unemployed, spoke of fulfilment through childcare-related

activities, this was overshadowed by concern over reliance on his wife as the sole wage-

earner. The putative failure to provide for/protect his family required daily reckoning his

sense of self-worth (See Dolan (2014)).

Reflexivity: shared emotional spaces

The second form of reflexivity expressed by study participants concerned the health benefits

arising from use of local parks and recreation grounds. This account is distinct for indicating

that emotional reflexivity can be derived collectively i.e. from relations with family, friends

and group members and beyond the specific context of self-help group meetings. This kind of

account was particularly apparent in the Manchester fathers’ focus group and stood out for

showing how shared, emotionally-coded spaces can represent a ‘healthy’ if inexpensive

response to difficult living conditions/environments.

Common among the Deeside and student groups were accounts highlighting the value of

spaces of purposeful escape and freedom to think as per figure 2 below.

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Plates 2a and 2b. Aesthetic spaces of self-recuperation: a) view over the river Dee; and

b) view from New Brighton promenade.

The image on the left (figure 2a) presents a scenic view of Chester’s riverside. Although we

have no verbal commentary from the photographer (Derek, mid-50, Deeside), the image is

emotionally evocative being suggestive of tranquillity. It is beautifully framed and balanced,

with reflection of trees on the water with the edge of boat visible near a quayside with several

grand riverside houses situated just behind. The photograph, taken on a sunny, spring day,

together with the apparent stillness of the river conjures up not just a bucolic scene but also

invites relaxation whilst suggesting a space for calm reflection, peace of mind or intrinsic

pleasure in observation of the social-natural world.

The image on the left below (figure 2b) taken from New Brighton promenade on the Wirral

peninsular looking towards the iconic Liverpool waterfront in the background was narrated

thus:

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I’ll often peddle to New Brighton... Nine miles there, nine back and it’s just sea and

sand all the way. You feel like you’re abroad... like Portugal, for some of the stretch.

So, that’s nice mentally rather than physically... I just look back at the city where I

grew up and think about life and it really helps, especially when there’s hardly no-one

on the beach... I often go there with my partner of a night and we’d just sit there and

it’s dead relaxing. (Daniel, late 20s Merseyside/West Lancashire).

Significant in Daniel’s account is less the physical exercise in cycling 18 miles than

appreciation of the liminality of the place in question: that it might (when sunny) be

somewhere abroad ‘like Portugal’. The bicycle foregrounded in Daniel’s photograph is also

suggestive of a means of agency, freedom or purposeful escape. The city, to which homage

is paid in the outline of the ‘Three Graces’ (iconic, Pier Head buildings) is backgrounded and

the almost empty beach is foregrounded. This suggests that the view provides Daniel with

some emotional as well as physical distance; a space of escape to consider his life’s journey

but the place also signified the intimacy shared with his partner and child in this location.

Similarly, the value of nature and space to think registered strongly in photographs by Sam

(mid-40s, West Lancashire and of East African origin). We cannot show Sam’s photographs

because they contained images of himself (wearing sports clothes, engaged in physical

exercise) taken by another or else with his children in parks/nature reserves. Nonetheless,

Sam’s verbal account reflected the tendencies of fathers in the cohort to speak of how

recreational activities with children satisfy emotional needs whilst providing opportunities for

shared physical exercise.

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Interestingly, spaces signifying freedom to think etc were contrasted with talk about mean

streets that signify urban blight, danger and social problems such as the debris of (injecting)

drug use. Such accounts were especially apparent in the father’s group, which was located in

a part of Manchester with significant levels of socio-economic deprivation. Significantly,

such unaesthetic spaces were mentioned but never photographed. Various examples were

spoken of, which referenced how exclusion is arranged in social space in the form of

Council/social housing estates. Indeed, when discussing his originary social class, Daniel

(student, late 20s) declared: ‘I lived for most of my years on a Council estate and all the

people I grew up with are either in jail, dealing drugs or using firearms.’ Again, this account

is suggestive of how reflexivity is forged within communities but, in this case, ones marked

by danger and acute disadvantage.

Reflexivity: accounts of the emotions of food

This section addresses the third strand of our argument concerning the emotions of food and

reported practices that also involved reflexivity developed in relations with significant others.

Whilst men’s accounts convey partial accommodation to dominant, officially-sanctioned

views of healthy eating, some photographs indicated a more emotionally reflexive and critical

view of ‘healthy eating’ through enjoyment of foods considered less health-promoting, which

could be framed in ways indicating their role in cementing close familial and social

relationships.

22

Photos 3a) healthy ingredients; 3b) Sunday roast

Both the above photographs were taken by Jason, (group co-ordinator, late 30s, Deeside)

whilst on a group outing. The rice and vegetables dish looks nutritious and suggests

accommodation of dominant healthy eating messages. Simultaneously, it indicates a classed

aesthetic in terms of how this dish has been presented. In contrast, figure 3b, which displays

Jason’s roast dinner, consumed along with some community group members and

accompanied by a well-known fizzy drink suggests a very different emotional and classed

aesthetic. This quintessentially British meal consisting of meat, vegetables (including roasted

potatoes), gravy (sauce derived from the fat of the meat), crackling (fat from the meat) and

Yorkshire pudding (made of batter) appears to be enjoyed across social classes and is a staple

in homes and pubs. What is interesting about this image is how the food is arranged on the

plate. The image hints at working-class habitus in the way the food is piled high in a

delightfully sloppy mound from a self-service carvery, suggesting anticipation of sheer

sensory enjoyment.

23

Although Jason did not participate in a focus group, the representation of the meal, replete

with fat, salt and possibly sugar, suggests reflexive challenge to official standards of healthy

eating. It offers an alternative, emotionally-saturated meaning of healthy eating, though Jason

did clarify (by e-mail correspondence) that he had cut down on roast dinners and increased

his rice and vegetable consumption to lose four stones in weight. (See Robertson (2006) on

negotiation of balance and moderation). It could, though, be concluded that the image

resignifies what counts as healthy food because it involves a deeply sedimented form of

sensory and emotional enjoyment that is preferable to the self-sacrifice that ‘boring’ healthy

eating can require (Gough and Connor, 2006) as well as emotional release from the well-

behaved, healthy citizen, which can be read as health-promoting (see Jallinoja et al, 2010).

Indeed, sensory and emotional forms of enjoyment have been identified as integral to

working-class male culture and storytelling (Slutskaya et al, 2012).

As reflected in the photographs in figure 3, men’s thought and practice concerning food and

nutrition varied and were not reducible to solitary pursuits or concerns with individual

culinary knowledge and skill. Indeed, Jason’s Sunday roast dinner is regularly consumed

with group members. Also, one of the Manchester-based participants displayed a photograph

of a comically messy chocolate cake of which he was proud because it had been made with

his children for a community event, again, signifying a reflexive, emotionally and practically

engaged fathering and as part of a community of practice. Another group member combined

his enjoyment of a particular space (an allotment) with satisfaction at being able to grow with

his children and for his family and friends healthy produce that helped ease the strain on

family economies whilst indexing care for significant others.

24

Whilst we have emphasised men’s accounts of health and well-being largely as collective

products (in families, groups/communities of practice and wider class communities) also

noteworthy in our study were accounts acknowledging individual responsibilities for welfare,

which indicate limits to reflexivity in relation to food and provisioning:

You can still eat healthily on benefits... So, the classic is the person with £20 and they

choose to go to KFC [fast-food outlet] whereas if they went to Lidl and Aldi [cheaper

supermarkets], you could actually stretch that £20... In these poor areas the shops are

littered with betting shops and fast-food places, and it’s easy to walk into KFC and get

a family bucket, and the kids are happy because it’s pleasing... (Daniel, late 20s,

student, Merseyside/West Lancashire).

Invoking the need for budgetary management, Daniel challenges the idea that dependence on

Government assistance should lead to poor food choices. He appears to be drawing on

dominant, neoliberal welfare discourse rife in Government policy (Jensen and Tyler, 2015)

and right-wing British media (Jones, 2012). We have no doubt that participants were self-

responsible and agentic (as already described) but the primacy on individual responsibility in

Daniel’s account risks downplaying the significance of the material and structural constraints

of social exclusion on choices. For instance, Tom (early 40s, Manchester) spoke of having to

‘budget aggressively’ to make ends meet, which involved shopping in ‘the bargain

basement’, a signifier of lower socio-economic worth and suggesting constraints on healthier

options (Dowler, 2008).

Indeed, Tom’s circumstances were redolent of how the time and energy of those dependent

on Government aid and/or who are forced to subsist on lower incomes are heavily regulated

25

if not dominated by constant pressure to ‘make ends meet’ (Chatzitheochari and Arber,

2012). Individualizing responsibility also neglects the structural-institutional constraints of

‘time poverty’ (Chatzitheochari and Arber, 2012), which was particularly salient for Tom

who has less time to shop around given a lack of personal transport and that he was looking

after three children of different ages who were placed in different schools. Such narratives as

expressed above are suggestive of the demands of neoliberal citizenship, which overlook that

individual-biographical factors and opportunities for agency can be eclipsed by socio-

economic, political and cultural influences (Roberts, 2002) over which individuals have less

and unequal control.

Conclusion

This article has attempted to present a more nuanced alternative to homogenizing accounts

represented in two different bodies of work that either risk denying/diminishing reflexivity

and gloss over a plurality of responses to well-being (Seidler, 2006; 2013) or highlighting the

individualized reflexivity of economically and culturally resourced (younger) men able to

access globalized cultures in the service of self-refashioning (Anderson, 2009, McCormack,

2012). We have observed how study participants’ accounts concerning three different spaces

involving mutual self-help among disadvantaged men can facilitate challenges to stereotypes

of masculine emotional self-estrangement (Seidler, 2006; 2013).

Study participant accounts indicated the development of collectively derived emotional

capabilities. However, participant reflexivity appears much less individualistic than

elaborated by IMT. Such reflexivity derived more from ‘informal’ but no less important

group endeavours born of hardship/difficulty and forged with significant others who

26

understood that experience. Not only do study participants’ emotional resources suggest

health benefits, they are also indicative of a situated working-class masculinity that could be

inclusive (of gender difference), though, again, more through collective than individual

means. This suggests a fruitful avenue of further enquiry. Simultaneously, and like Spandler

et al (2014), we have suggested limits to critical capacities and agency, though specifically in

relation to the continuing regulatory power of hegemonic masculinity and accounts of food

choices that reflect over-responsibilization of the individual.

Nevertheless, deploying the idea of emotional resources that become integral to habitual

behaviour in particular fields, we have highlighted the particular modes through which

working-class men facing hardship on the grounds of class/economic positioning and/or mhd

develop ways of reflecting, knowing, and questioning. This move has also helped identify

health-seeking behaviours that challenge stereotypes of working-class men as lacking in

vigilance and ignorant about their body-selves. The more collective reflexivity we have

described was evident in three ways. First, it was visible in communities of practice that

legitimated and encouraged collective development of emotional resources. Second, it

featured in health-promoting accounts of emotional engagement with the local physical

environment commonly with significant others. Third, it was visible in shared, emotionally-

oriented thought concerning food enjoyed with others that offered partial challenge to

‘healthy eating.’

Our study reflects several limitations. As only one participant (a student) could be described

as middle-class, we were unable to make class comparisons. Examining the influences of

education/class and age on participant accounts and with a larger sample that includes

intersecting differences of ethnicity and sexuality also suggests further lines of enquiry.

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Further studies could also evaluate the transferability of emotional resources developed in

community groups to other domains of participants’ lives. Indeed, a significant omission

from our study is consideration of how the mutual support available in the relatively

egalitarian context of men’s groups may/not transfer into gender relations outside of this

context and in the home in particular, (though this was not our focus). Spandler et al (2014)

have observed a reluctance to be emotionally available in the presence of women in mixed-

gender mental health projects organized around football, which suggest further limits to

reflexivity and the persistence of essentialized gender differences. Their observation supports

the view, to which we subscribe, that the shifts in masculinity claimed by IMT have been

overstated.

Despite its limitations, our study has made innovative use of self-authored visual data and

verbal accounts to explore the varying collectively forged health beliefs and practices of men

facing disadvantage, which indicate possible health benefits. We have also shown how

participant accounts can present emotional and epistemic challenges to medicalisation of

mhd. This kind of under-recognized knowledge, suggesting a plurality of responses to health

management, could enable health educators to fine-tune their messages, policies and practical

initiatives. It should also inform how researchers and practitioners approach men given that

mental health projects organized around football/sport can be more successful than

psychiatric services as a ‘hook’ to engage men in reciprocal disclosure around distress

(McKeown et al, 2015: 365). Indeed, we have highlighted the benefits of addressing

disadvantaged men in non-didactic, non-clinical ways and approaching men as members of

community groups.

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Finally, we have indicated how communities of practice can not only enhance quality of life

but also indicate the role that working-class/disadvantaged men and their insights have in

educating policy-makers and service providers. Indeed, the Merseyside Service Co-ordinator,

Mathew, declared of the men in his group: ‘They are not a hard-to-reach group... Services are

hard to engage with because they are designed by people who aren’t working-class men.’

Service providers, academics and Government should remind themselves of the need to view

men facing disadvantage not just as individuals they need to work with but as partners with

emotional and cognitive resources that they can learn from in the design, development,

delivery and evaluation of health/welfare services.

29

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Acknowledgements

We should like to thank our study participants and the community groups that helped our study. Thanks are also extended to Professor Peter Beresford, the anonymous reviewers and Editor whose judicious comments have helped focus and strengthen our argument.

34