In this book, James W. Messerschmidt and Tristan Bridges apply a new conceptual framework of sex, gender, and sexual identity formation. Sociologists tend to study social practice as exclusively or primarily accomplished either routinely or reflexively, although theorizing gender has been less susceptible to that criticism than have other subfields. Yet, the dynamic relationship between routine and reflexivity is undertheorized. Sociologists often miss the coexistence of reflexivity and routine in gender practice and identity formations.

Rather than interrogating gender practice as either routine or reflexivity, Messerschmidt and Bridges present data from life history interviews that documents routine and reflexive sex, gender, and sexual identities as typical and extensive rather than exceptional. A Kaleidoscope of Identities reveals the more elusive elements of sex, gender, and sexual life, which are often difficult to capture in quantifiable variables.

About the Author

James W. Messerschmidtis Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Sociology, who previously taught for 35 years in the Criminology Department at the University of Southern Maine, USA. In addition to over eighty research articles and book chapters, he has authored fifteen books, most recently, Hegemonic Masculinity: Formulation, Reformulation, and Amplification and Gender Reckonings: New Social Theory and Research co-edited with Patricia Yancey Martin, Michael Messner, and Raewyn Connell. His research interests focus on cognitive sociology; inequalities; the mutual constitution of identities; gender, masculinities, and sexualities; criminology, youth crime, and violence; and political sociology.

Tristan Bridges is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is presently Co-Editor of the Sage journal, Men and Masculinities and Co-Editor of Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity, and Change (2016 Oxford University Press). His research is broadly concerned with shifts in gender and sexual identities and inequalities with a focus on masculinity. He has conducted research with bodybuilders, fathers' right activists, pro-feminist men, bar regulars, and on gendered demographic shifts in sexual minority identities in the U.S., the relationship between American masculinity and mass shootings, and gendered anxieties present in search data on Google.com. He lives in Goleta, California with his family.

Book Information
ISBN 9781538167861
Author James W. Messerschmidt
Format Hardback
Page Count 168
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 431g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 158mm * 20mm