Frontier Myths
Settler Colonialism and Masculinity in the American Heartland
Levi Gahman(Author)
Pluto Press
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-0-7453-3823-1 (ISBN)
Description
Land, manhood, and work. Three desires that have come to define American society since its colonial beginnings. They were the aspirations of the first white settlers to the continent, and continue to resonate deeply across contemporary rural America.
Frontier Myths takes you to the American Heartland to interrogate these desires, and how they are realised today. Levi Gahman spent years living and working in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas in order to understand the perspectives and practices of white settler men and show the links that masculinity in the region has with dispossession, nationalism, and capitalist production.
Through a critical analysis of how the construction of both history and gendered power relations in rural America are linked to race, place, sexuality, religion, and violence, Frontier Myths chronicles how rites of passage related to competition, consumption, gun culture, and 'being a man' are as compromising and constraining, as they are enabling and privileging.
Frontier Myths takes you to the American Heartland to interrogate these desires, and how they are realised today. Levi Gahman spent years living and working in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas in order to understand the perspectives and practices of white settler men and show the links that masculinity in the region has with dispossession, nationalism, and capitalist production.
Through a critical analysis of how the construction of both history and gendered power relations in rural America are linked to race, place, sexuality, religion, and violence, Frontier Myths chronicles how rites of passage related to competition, consumption, gun culture, and 'being a man' are as compromising and constraining, as they are enabling and privileging.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Library binding
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7453-3823-1 (9780745338231)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Levi Gahman is a radical geographer from Kansas who has worked in the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. His research, drawing from anti-colonial, feminist, and anti-capitalist perspectives, focuses on gender, land and dignity. He is also an editor for ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. He is the author of Frontier Myths: Settler Colonialism and Masculinity in the American Heartland (Pluto, 2018).
Content
1. There's No Place Like Home...
2. Masculinity: Definitions and Perceptions
3. Settler Colonialism, Land, History
4. Capitalism, Work, Respect
5. Guns, Nationalism, Violence
6. Going Forward...
References
2. Masculinity: Definitions and Perceptions
3. Settler Colonialism, Land, History
4. Capitalism, Work, Respect
5. Guns, Nationalism, Violence
6. Going Forward...
References