Chapter 16

Conclusion

Masculinity, power and modernity

FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION

Those supporting the traditions of social theory have generally found it easier to think about the power that some groups or classes have in society than about how some people are systematically oppressed in the way that society is organised. It might be because we inherit visions of sovereignty that encourage us to believe that authority has a single unified source, for example, the Queen in Parliament or the American Constitution, from which flow all other forms of legitimate power and authority. Weber has helped consolidate such a vision of legitimate authority within classical sociology and encouraged us to think about the different forms that this authority can ...

Get Unreasonable Men now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.