Men’s Everyday Health Care: Practices, Tensions and Paradoxes, and Masculinities in Denmark

ABSTRACT

My interest is in how masculinities are enacted and implicated in different care repertoires. Drawing on Mol’s notion of “logic of care,” I illustrate that in Denmark some men’s care practices are an integral part of their life projects, and so they target both the human body, and sociality and relationality, as everyday care. In this way, men enact, embody, and weave together a self- and other-directed “caring masculinity” with practices of autonomy, self-discipline, and the aestheticization of male bodies. Contesting and enriching familiar framings of men’s health care and masculinities, I draw attention to the value of considering practices of health care beyond individualized experiences, and of acknowledging the complex patterns of masculinity in health and illness.

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KEYWORDS:

• Care
• caring masculinity
• gender
• health promotion
• masculinities
• visual anthropology

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the research participants who so generously shared their time and stories with me, as well as to Elizabeth Cartwright, Jerome W. Crowder, Lenore Manderson and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

Funding

This study was supported by the Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

^1. Research of men’s health demonstrates a complex relationship between health ideas, behaviors and, for example, age, social class, sexuality, ethnicity, and health needs (e.g., Adams, Braun and McCreanor 2012; Davidson and Meadows 2010; Kalmar et al. 2016; Parent et al. 2016; Robertson 2007). It is, however, beyond the scope of this article to address these issues in detail.

^2. In Denmark, alternative treatments such as osteopathy are provided in the private health care sector. A number of men in this study used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a “positive choice,” a way of being active and engaged in everyday self-care. Typically associated with women’s health practices, women’s use of CAM is suggested to fulfill and challenge women’s traditional gender roles and discourses of caring femininity (Nissen 2013). More work is needed that critically explores men’s CAM use, but it can be tentatively suggested that some men’s use of CAM reflects a self-directed “caring masculinity” at the nexus of logics of care and choice. Further, some men may embrace feminized forms of care that play into and project a “caring masculinity.”

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark.

Notes on contributors

Nina Nissen

Nina Nissen is Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests include the diversity and diversification of medical knowledge and therapeutic practices, and explorations of the interplay between health care, gender (and other social differences), and personal and social change.