Failing at school, disadvantaged in a changing labour market, and characterized by policy-makers as thugs, young men are said by some to be experiencing a crisis of masculinity. In Redundant Masculinities? Linda McDowell, known for her path-breaking work on gender relations and identities, investigates this crisis as it relates to young working-class men in the West.

The book focuses on a case study of young, white, male school leavers, based in the contrasting British cities of Cambridge and Sheffield. Drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches as well as interviews with the young men over the course of 18 months, it looks at the level of anxiety unskilled school leavers suffer about their sense of themselves as men and as wage earners. McDowell's analysis brings together arguments about the social construction of identities and about economic restructuring to reveal that the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' is not what it seems.

Linda McDowell is Professor of Geography at University College, London. Her previous publications include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (Blackwells, 1997) and Gender, Identity and Place (1999).