Title: Masculine aspirations
Description: In this dissertation, which is based on a 2.5 year ethnographic study, I examine how a group of middle school Latino boys collectively constructed and promulgated a local, prevailing form of masculinity that lauded and upheld patriarchy and heteronormativity within their social world. I situate the boys within entrenched ideological tensions in masculinity theories. Taking a social constructionist approach, I interpret how the boys communicated, performed, and embodied masculinity during social interactions. In order to understand how the boys collectively delineated their narrative of hegemonic masculinity, I paid attention to their masculine practices as well as the views they espoused regarding gender over the course of their institutional middle school experience. I analyzed the boys' masculine practices in relation to the social context in which they took place and examined them in relation to the students' gender relations. The leading form of masculinity among the boys was the patriarchal one found on "the streets", as the boys referred to their working class and low-income neighborhoods. This situated masculinity emphasized male superiority, physical dominance, and toughness, all attributes central to the biological essentialist perspective, as well as bravado and street smarts.